The most astounding place I've ever been is the Mosquitia Rain Forest in Honduras.
我去过最惊人的地方是洪都拉斯的莫斯基蒂亚雨林。
I've done archaeological fieldwork all over the world, so I thought I knew what to expect venturing into the jungle, but I was wrong.
我在世界各地做过考古实地考察，所以我以为我知道在丛林中冒险会发生什么，但我错了。
For the first time in my life, I might add.
但我要补充一点，这是我一生中第一次错。
First of all, it's freezing.
首先，天气很冷。
It's 90 degrees, but you're soaking wet from the humidity, and the canopy of trees is so thick that sunlight never reaches the surface.
气温是摄氏32度，但湿气太重让你全身湿透，树冠太浓密，以致阳光从未到达地面。
You can't get dry. Immediately, I knew that I hadn't brought enough clothing.
你身上的水干不了。我马上知道我带的衣服不够。
That first night, I kept feeling things moving underneath my hammock, unknown creatures brushing and poking against the thin nylon fabric.
第一天晚上，我一直感觉有东西在我的吊床下面移动，未知的生物在薄尼龙织物上又蹭又搓。
And I could barely sleep through all the noise.
噪音太多，我几乎睡不着。
The jungle is loud. It's shockingly loud. It's like being downtown in a bustling city.
丛林里很吵，吓人的吵，简直像在大城市嘈杂的市中心一样。
As the night wore on, I became increasingly frustrated with my sleeplessness, knowing I had a full day ahead.
来到夜里，失眠让我越来越烦躁，因为明天有一整天的事要做。
When I finally got up at dawn, my sense of unseen things was all too real.
当我终于在黎明时分起床时，我在夜里感觉到的东西都是真的。
There were hoofprints, paw prints, linear snake tracks everywhere.
到处都是蹄印、爪印、蛇爬过的线条痕迹。
And what's even more shocking, we saw those same animals in the daylight, and they were completely unafraid of us.
更令人震惊的是，我们在白天看到同样的动物，它们完全不怕我们。
They had no experience with people. They had no reason to be afraid.
它们没有和人接触的经验，没有理由害怕。
As I walked toward the undocumented city, my reason for being there,
当我走向那个没有历史纪录的城市时，
I realized that this was the only place that I had ever been where I didn't see a single shred of plastic. That's how remote it was.
我意识到这是唯一完全没看到半点塑料的地方，可见得那里有多偏僻。
Perhaps it's surprising to learn that there are still places on our planet that are so untouched by people, but it's true.
也许令人惊讶的是，我们星球上还有一些人类还没糟蹋过的地方，但这是真的。
There are still hundreds of places where people haven't stepped for centuries or maybe forever.
还有无数的地方，人们几个世纪或可能从未涉足。
It's an awesome time to be an archaeologist. We have the tools and the technology to understand our planet like never before.
在这时代当考古学家太棒了。我们有工具和技术用前所未有的方式来理解我们的星球。
And yet, we're running out of time. The climate crisis threatens to destroy our ecological and cultural patrimony.
然而，我们的时间不多了。气候危机有可能摧毁我们的生态和文化遗产。
I feel an urgency to my work that I didn't feel 20 years ago. How can we document everything before it's too late?
我对工作感到一种急迫感，这是20年前我感觉不到的。我们要如何在为时已晚之前记录一切呢？
I was trained as a traditional archaeologist using methodologies that have been around since the '50s.
我接受的是传统考古学家训练，用的方法是从50年代传下来的。
That all changed in July of 2009 in Michoacán, Mexico.
2009年7月在墨西哥米却肯州时，那一切都改变了。
I was studying the ancient Purépecha Empire, which is a lesser known but equally important contemporary of the Aztec.
我正在研究古代的普雷佩查帝国，这是一个和阿兹特克同时期、一样重要却鲜为人知的帝国。
Two weeks earlier, my team had documented an unknown settlement,
在那两周前，我的团队记录了一个未知的部落，
so we were painstakingly mapping, building foundations by hand -- hundreds of them.
所以我们费尽心思地徒手绘制建筑物地基的地图，而且有好几百个。
Basic archaeological protocol is to find the edge of a settlement so you know what you're dealing with,
基本考古程序是先找到部落的边缘，先对挖掘对象有个概念，
and my graduate students convinced me to do just that.
我的研究生说服我这样做。
So I grabbed a couple of CLIF Bars, some water, a walkie,
于是，我抓起几个营养棒、一些水、一个无线对讲机，
and I set out alone on foot, expecting to encounter "the edge" in just a few minutes.
然后我独自步行出发，期待在几分钟内到达“边缘”。
A few minutes passed. And then an hour. Finally, I reached the other side of the malpais.
几分钟过去了。然后一个小时。最后，我到达了马尔派的另一边。
Oh, there were ancient building foundations all the way across. It's a city? Oh, shit.
哦，有古老的建筑地基贯穿。这是个城市？哇，糟了。
It's a city. Turns out that this seemingly small settlement was actually an ancient urban megalopolis,
这是一个城市。原来，这个看似小的部落实际上是一个古老的巨型都会区，
26 square kilometers in size, with as many building foundations as modern-day Manhattan,
面积26平方公里，建筑地基与现代曼哈顿一样多，
an archaeological settlement so large that it would take me decades to survey fully, the entire rest of my career,
一个考古聚落如此之大，需要我几十年的时间才能全面勘测完毕，可能要花我余生的整个职业生涯，
which was exactly how I didn't want to spend the entire rest of my career -- sweating, exhausted, placating stressed-out graduate students
但我就是不想这样度过我剩下的职业生涯--挥汗如雨，精疲力竭，安抚紧张的研究生，
tossing scraps of PB and J sandwiches to feral dogs, which is pointless, by the way, because Mexican dogs really don't like peanut butter.
扔花生酱加果酱三明治安抚野狗，告诉你，那一点也没用，因为墨西哥的狗真的不喜欢花生酱。
Just the thought of it bored me to tears.
光是想就觉得无聊到要哭了。
So I returned home to Colorado, and I poked my head through a colleague's door. "Dude, there's gotta be a better way."
于是我回到了科罗拉多，我探头到同事的门里，对他说：“老兄，一定有更好的办法。”
He asked if I had heard of this new technology called LiDAR -- Light Detection And Ranging.
他问我是否听说过名为激光雷达的新技术--光探测和测距。
I looked it up. LiDAR involves shooting a dense grid of laser pulses from an airplane to the ground's surface.
我查了一下。激光雷达是从飞机射出密集的激光脉冲到地面。
What you end up with is a high-resolution scan of the earth's surface and everything on it.
得到的结果是地表和其上的所有东西的高分辨率扫描图。
It's not an image, but instead it's a dense, three-dimensional plot of points. We had enough money in the scan, so we did just that.
它不是照片，而是一个密集的点构成的立体图。我们的扫描计划有足够的钱，所以我们就那么做了。
The company went to Mexico, they flew the LiDAR and they sent back the data.
公司派人去了墨西哥，让激光雷达飞过场址，然后传回数据。
Over the next several months, I learned to practice digital deforestation,
在接下来的几个月里，我学会了在计算机上去掉森林，
filtering away trees, brush and other vegetation to reveal the ancient cultural landscape below.
过滤掉树木、刷子和其他植被，以揭示下面的古文明景观。
When I looked at my first visualization, I began to cry, which I know comes as quite a shock to you, given how manly I must seem.
当我看着我做出来的第一个影像，我哭了，我知道你一定觉得不可思议，因为我这么有男子气概，怎么会哭。
In just 45 minutes of flying, the LiDAR had collected the same amount of data as what would have taken decades by hand:
在45分钟的飞行中，激光雷达收集的数据量和我们花几十年人工收集的一样多：
every house foundation, building, road and pyramid, incredible detail,
每一个房子的地基、建筑物、道路和金字塔，辨识出令人难以置信的细节，
representing the lives of thousands of people who lived and loved and died in these spaces.
代表了成千上万在这些空间里生、爱、死的人的生活。
And what's more, the quality of the data wasn't comparable to traditional archaeological research. It was much, much better.
更重要的是，数据的质量不是传统考古研究可相提并论的。好很多很多。
I knew that this technology would change the entire field of archaeology in the coming years, and it did.
我当时就知道这项技术将改变整个考古学领域的未来，果真如此。
Our work came to the attention of a group of filmmakers who were searching for a legendary lost city in Honduras.
我们的作品引起了一群电影制作人的注意，他们正在寻找洪都拉斯一个传奇的失落城市。
They failed in their quest, but they instead documented an unknown culture, now buried under a pristine wilderness rain forest, using LiDAR.
他们失败了，但他们却用激光雷达记录了一种未知的文明，埋藏在一座原始雨林。
I agreed to help interpret their data, which is how I found myself deep in that Mosquitia jungle, plastic-free and filled with curious animals.
我同意帮助他们解读数据，这就是为何我发现自己深陷莫斯基蒂亚丛林，这里没有塑料的踪迹，而且充满了好奇的动物。

Our goal was to verify that the archaeological features we identified in our LiDAR were actually there on the ground, and they were.
我们的目标是验证我们在激光雷达中识别的考古遗迹确实在地面上，而它们真的在那里。
Eleven months later, I returned with a crack team of archaeologists sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Honduran government.
十一个月后，我带着国家地理学会和洪都拉斯政府赞助的一组考古学家回来了。
In a month, we excavated over 400 objects from what we now call the City of the Jaguar.
在一个月内，我们从我们现在所说的美洲豹之城挖掘出400多件文物。
We felt a moral and ethical responsibility to protect this site as it was,
我们觉得自己有道德和伦理责任来保护这个遗迹的原貌，
but in the short time that we were there, things inevitably changed.
但我们在那里的那段狠的短的时间内，事情不可避免地改变了。
The tiny gravel bar where we first landed our helicopter was gone.
我们第一次降落直升机的石砾小浅滩不见了。
The brush had been cleared away and the trees removed to create a large landing zone for several helicopters at once.
灌木丛被清除，树木被移走，来建造一个可同时让数架直升机降落的停机坪。
Without it, after just one rainy season, the ancient canals that we had seen in our LiDAR scan were damaged or destroyed.
没有它，只过了一个雨季，我们在激光雷达扫描中看到的古运河就已经损坏或摧毁了。
And the Eden I described soon had a large clearing, central camp, lights and an outdoor chapel.
我描述的伊甸园很快就有一个大的空地、中央营地、灯光和一个室外教堂。
In other words, despite our best efforts to protect the site as it was, things changed.
换句话说，尽管我们尽了最大的努力来保护遗迹的原貌，事情还是变了。
Our initial LiDAR scan of this City of the Jaguar is the only record of this place as it existed just a few years ago.
我们最初对美洲豹之城的激光雷达扫描是这个地方唯一的记录，几年前它还存在。
And broadly speaking, this is a problem for archaeologists.
广义而言，这对考古学家来说是个问题。
We can't study an area without changing it somehow, and regardless, the earth is changing.
我们不能研究一个地区而完全不改变它，不管怎样，地球也在改变。
Archaeological sites are destroyed. History is lost.
考古遗址被摧毁。历史消失了。
Just this year, we watched in horror as the Notre Dame Cathedral went up in flames.
就在今年，我们惊恐地看着圣母院大教堂起火。
The iconic spire collapsed, and the roof was all but destroyed.
标志性的教堂塔尖倒塌了，屋顶整个毁坏了。
Miraculously, the art historian Andrew Tallon and colleagues scanned the cathedral in 2010 using LiDAR.
奇迹似的，艺术史学家安德鲁·塔隆和他的同事在2010年使用激光雷达扫描了大教堂。
At the time, their goal was to understand how the building was constructed.
当时，他们的目标是要了解建筑是如何建造的。
Now, their LiDAR scan is the most comprehensive record of the cathedral, and it'll prove invaluable in the reconstruction.
现在，他们的激光雷达扫描图是大教堂面貌最完整的记录，它将在教堂重建时最具参考价值。
They couldn't have anticipated the fire or how their scan would be used, but we're lucky to have it.
他们不可能预料到火灾或当初的扫描会有什么用处，但我们很幸运有它。
We take for granted that our cultural and ecological patrimony will be around forever. It won't.
我们理所当然地认为我们的文化和生态遗产将永远存在。不会的。
Organizations like SCI-Arc and Virtual Wonders are doing incredible work to record the world's historic monuments,
像SCI-Arc和虚拟奇观这样的组织正在进行不可思议的工作来记录世界历史古迹，
but nothing similar exists for the earth's landscapes.
但是地球景观却没有什么类似的。
We've lost 50 percent of our rain forests. We lose 18 million acres of forest every year.
我们失去了50%的雨林。我们每年损失1800万英亩的森林。
And rising sea levels will make cities, countries and continents completely unrecognizable.
海平面上升将使城市、国家和大洲全无法辨认。
Unless we have a record of these places, no one in the future will know they existed.
除非我们有这些地方的记录，否则将来没有人会知道这些地方曾经存在。
If the earth is the Titanic, we've struck the iceberg, everyone's on deck and the orchestra is playing.
如果地球是泰坦尼克号，我们已经撞上冰山，每个人都在甲板上，管弦乐队还在演奏。
The climate crisis threatens to destroy our cultural and ecological patrimony within decades.
气候危机有可能在几十年内摧毁我们的文化和生态遗产。
But sitting on our hands and doing nothing is not an option. Shouldn't we save everything we can on the lifeboats?
但什么也不做是不行的。难道我们不该在救生艇上保存一切吗？
Looking at my scans from Honduras and Mexico, it's clear that we need to scan, scan, scan now as much as possible, while we still can.
看看我在洪都拉斯和墨西哥的扫描，很明显，我们现在需要尽可能不停扫描、扫描、扫描，趁我们还做得到的时候尽量扫描。
That's what inspired the Earth Archive,
这就是启发“地球档案馆”的灵感来源，
an unprecedented scientific effort to LiDAR-scan the entire planet, starting with areas that are most threatened. Its purpose is threefold.
这是一次史无前例的科学努力，从威胁最严重的地区开始，对整个地球进行激光雷达扫描。目的有三个。
Number one: create a baseline record of the earth as it exists today to more effectively mitigate the climate crisis.
第一、建立地球今天存在的基线记录，以更有效地缓解气候危机。
To measure change, you need two sets of data: a before and an after.
要测量变化，您需要两组数据：测量前和测量后的数据。
Right now, we don't have a high-resolution before data set for much of the planet, so we can't measure change,
现在，地球大部分测量前收集的数据，还没有所谓的高分辨率，因此我们无法衡量变化，
and we can't evaluate which of our current efforts to combat the climate crisis are making a positive impact.
也无法评估我们目前为对抗气候危机而做出的努力中，哪些正在产生积极的影响。
Number two: create a virtual planet so that any number of scientists can study our earth today.
第二、建造一个虚拟行星，以便让任何科学家都能研究今天的地球。
Archaeologists like me can look for undocumented settlements.
像我这样的考古学家就可以寻找未知的部落。
Ecologists can study tree size, forest composition and age.
生态学家可以研究树的大小、森林的组成和年龄。
Geologists can study hydrology, faults, disturbance. The possibilities are endless.
地质学家可以研究水文、断层、地壳的扰动。可能性是无穷无尽的。
Number three: preserve a record of the planet for our grandchildren's grandchildren,
第三、为我们的子子孙孙保存地球的记录，
so they can reconstruct and study lost cultural patrimony in the future.
这样他们将来就可以重建和学习失去的文化遗产。
As science and technology advance, they'll apply new tools, algorithms, even AI to LiDAR scans done today,
随着科学技术的进步，他们将应用新的工具、算法，甚至人工智能，到现在的激光雷达扫描，
and ask questions that we can't currently conceive of.
并提出我们目前还想不到的问题。
Like Notre Dame, we can't imagine how these records will be used. But we know that they'll be critically important.
和巴黎圣母院一样，我们无法想象这些记录会如何被运用。但是我们知道，它们将至关重要。
The Earth Archive is the ultimate gift to future generations,
地球档案馆是给后代子孙的终极礼物，
because the truth be told, I won't live long enough to see its full impact, and neither will you.
因为说实话，我活得不够久，看不到它的全部影响，你也看不到。
That's exactly why it's worth doing. The Earth Archive is a bet on the future of humanity.
这正是值得做的原因。地球档案馆是对人类未来的赌注。
It's a bet that together, collectively, as people and as scientists,
身为人类和科学家，我们是地球生命共同体。
that we'll face the climate crisis and that we'll choose to do the right thing, not just for us today
当我们共同面对气候危机时，要选择做对的事情，为的不只是今天的我们自己，
but to honor those who came before us and to pay it forward to future generations who will carry on our legacy. Thank you.
也是为了荣耀那些先驱，并让后代子孙世世代代延续这项遗产。谢谢。