In 1919, long after the lake had vanished, a geologist named J. W. Gregory was scouting the area for mineral prospects
1919年，在湖泊早已干涸之后，一个名为J.W.格里高利的地质学家来到这一地区寻找矿石。
when he came across a stretch of open ground littered with anomalous dark stones that had clearly been shaped by human hand.
他穿越一个开阔地带时，突然发现地上散落着一些黝黑的古怪石头，上面有明显的人工打磨的痕迹。
He had found one of the great sites of Acheulean tool manufacture that Ian Tattersall had told me about.
他发现了伊恩.塔特萨尔曾经跟我说起过的阿舍利工具最重要的制造点之一。
Unexpectedly in the autumn of 2002 I found myself a visitor to this extraordinary site.
2002年秋，一个偶然的机会，我来到了这个神奇的地方。
I was in Kenya for another purpose altogether, visiting some projects run by the charity CARE International,
当时我在肯尼亚完全是为了另一个目的，考察美国援外合作署的一些援助项目，
but my hosts, knowing of my interest in humans for the present volume, had inserted a visit to Olorgesailie into the schedule.
但主人知道我为了写作本书正在搜集有关人类起源的一些资料，便将访问奥洛戛萨里列入了考察的日程中。
After its discovery by Gregory, Olorgesailie lay undisturbed for over two decades
在地质学家格里高利发现这个地方之后，有20多年的时间没有人光顾奥洛戛萨里。
before the famed husband-and-wife team of Louis and Mary Leakey began an excavation that isn't completed yet.
之后，由著名的路易斯.利基和玛丽.利基夫妇组成的考古队来到这一地区开始挖掘，这一工作直到今天仍未完成。
What the Leakeys found was a site stretching to ten acres or so,
利基夫妇所发现的是一个约4万平方米的地方，
where tools were made in incalculable numbers for roughly a million years, from about 1.2 million years ago to 200,000 years ago.
从约120万年前到20万年前，在大约100万年时间里，那里曾有无数的石器被制作。

Today the tool beds are sheltered from the worst of the elements beneath large tin lean-tos and fenced off with chicken wire to discourage opportunistic scavenging by visitors,
今天，制作石器的地方用了铁皮大棚来遮风挡雨，并且用铁丝网拦起来，以防心怀叵测的来访者偷盗。
but otherwise the tools are left just where their creators dropped them and where the Leakeys found them.
除此以外，石器依然保存在制作者扔下它们的地方，同时也是利基夫妇发现它们的地方。
Jillani Ngalli, a keen young man from the Kenyan National Museum who had been dispatched to act as guide,
吉拉尼.安哥里，肯尼亚国家博物馆一位干练的小伙子，被指派担任我的向导。
told me that the quartz and obsidian rocks from which the axes were made were never found on the valley floor.
他告诉我说，原始人类制作手斧的石英石和黑曜石在谷底根本找不到。
"They had to carry the stones from there," he said, nodding at a pair of mountains in the hazy middle distance, in opposite directions from the site: Olorgesailie and Ol Esakut.
“他们不得不把石头从那里搬过来。”他边说边点头示意对面不远处云雾缭绕的两座大山：奥洛戛萨里山和奥尔埃斯库特山。