(单词翻译:单击)
The other most frequent topics from early Mesopotamian tablets pertain to population.
美索不达米亚早期的石碑上另外一个最常见的话题是人口。
Here, too, Scott shows how grain might've influenced societal priorities.
在这一点上，斯科特也说明了谷物可能对社会优先事项产生的影响。
While acknowledging that slavery and war predate the early grain-based states, Scott sees highly organized farming and the rise of states as an incentive for both.
虽然斯科特承认奴隶制和战争的出现早于早期以谷物为基础的国家，但他认为高度有组织的农业和国家的崛起是奴隶制和战争出现的刺激因素。
In a society based around agriculture, an increase in population can provide a more or less direct increase in food production.
在一个以农业为基础的社会中，人口的增加或多或少与粮食产量的增加直接相关。
Early legal codes are filled with injunctions discouraging and punishing people fleeing the state, and warfare of the time seems less interested in conquering territory than in increasing the population to produce for the state.
早期的法典有很多防止人们逃离国家和惩罚逃离的人的禁令，当时的战争似乎也更专注于增加人口，为国家生产更多粮食，而不是获得更多领土。
Scott sees the emergence of city walls as the twofold result of a society based around agriculture.
斯科特认为，在以农业为基础的社会中，城墙的出现是双重因素作用的结果。
On the one hand, large quantities of stored grains would need to be protected from the so-called "barbarians" just outside the city walls.
一方面，国家需要保护大量储存的粮食不受城墙外所谓“野蛮人”的侵扰。
Just as importantly, though, the walls kept the productive laborers of a city in.
此外，同样重要的是，城墙把一个国家的劳动生产者框在了墙内。
When Scott uses the term "barbarian," he does so with tongue in cheek, aware that hunter-gatherer societies generally existed alongside early agricultural states, interacting and trading with them and enjoying a quality of life that was not necessarily any worse, in his estimation.
斯科特使用“野蛮人”这个词是一个玩笑，他发现狩猎-采集社会通常与早期农业国家并存，这些人与农业国家的人们产生互动，进行贸易，在斯科特看来，他们的生活质量并不一定比国家中的人差。
Scott views the frequent collapse of early states not necessarily as a tragedy, but at times perhaps even an emancipation from the control of elite rulers within the state.
斯科特认为，早期国家的频繁崩溃在那时并不一定是悲剧，甚至可能是人们从国家精英统治者的控制中解放出来的方式。
Beyond the hours of labor required to maintain a state store of grain and the drawbacks of being forced to give up a portion of your wheat, these early states likely contributed to the spread of so-called "crowding diseases" like cholera, smallpox, and measles.
除了每天劳动数个小时以维持国家粮食储备，以及被迫上交自己的一部分小麦的缺点之外，这些早期的国家很可能是霍乱、天花和麻疹等所谓“拥挤性疾病”传播的元凶。
Scott points to a confluence of factors arising from domesticated grain cultivation that would carry greater risk of disease: increased population density (and the greater concentration of feces that it entails); an increase of potentially disease-carrying domesticated animals; and a relatively monocultural diet, whose effects we can see in comparing early farmers' skeletal remains with their hunter-gatherer contemporaries (according to one study, for example, adult height decreased during the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture).
斯科特指出，栽培谷物的种植会带来更大的疾病风险，影响因素包括：人口密度增加（以及由此造成的排泄物密度更高）；可能携带疾病的家畜增加；以及饮食的相对单一，我们可以将早期农民的骨骼遗骸与同时代狩猎采集者的骨骼进行比较，观察其带来的影响（例如，根据一项研究，成年人的平均身高在从狩猎采集转变到农业生产的过程中降低）。
Of course, today we know that there's no serious risk posed by zoonotic diseases in a highly-connected society.
当然，我们知道，在如今高度联系的社会中，人畜共患疾病并不是什么大的风险。
Given all these drawbacks, why would people allow themselves to be "civilized" in the first place?
考虑到所有这些缺点，人们一开始为什么要“开化”呢？
Scott points to climate change occurring around 3500 to 2500 BCE as one explanation.
斯科特指出，原因可能是公元前3500到2500年左右发生的气候变化。
As the Mesopotamian region dried up, relatively low-labor "flood retreat" agriculture, making use of annual river flooding, was no longer a viable method of farming.
随着美索不达米亚地区的干涸，人们无法再利用每年一次的河流洪水，在洪水退去后用相对较少的人力进行耕作。
There were fewer animals to hunt, and fewer crops to forage.
可供狩猎的动物变少了，可供采集的农作物也变少了。
Water now had to be carried or transported through dug canals, incentivizing people to live closer to the source, and by extension to one another.
现在，必须要开挖的运河才能获得或输送水资源，这鼓励人们生活在离水源更近的地方，进而相互靠近。
As people relied increasingly on grain and the security it could afford, it became a nearly self-fulfilling prophecy for the state to tax their production, use the proceeds to help develop new methods to increase productivity, and continually grow the state until its eventual collapse due to disease, drought, warfare or natural disaster.
随着人们生存越来越依赖粮食及其能够负担的安全保障，国家对其人民的生产征税，并利用税收开发提高生产率的新方法，实现国家的不断发展，直到国家最终因疾病、干旱、战争或自然灾害而崩溃，这个循环几乎成为了一种自证预言。
Man humanity is weird!
天呐人类真的很怪！
