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The result was as profound a transformation for human beings as any revolution in history. This process of settling down did, of course, make you more vulnerable to a crop failure, pests, diseases, above all to the weather, but while things were good, society boomed.
这种结果与人类历史上任何一次革命性转变一样，产生的影响是极其深刻的。定居生活的过程中，确实使人类更加容易遭受各种威胁——谷物失收、虫灾、疾病等，几乎都由气候变化决定；然而遇上风调雨顺的好年头，人类社会就会蓬勃发展。
A guaranteed abundant food source fuelled a sustained population explosion, and people began to live in large villages of between two or three hundred - the highest concentration of people the world had yet seen. When your larder is stocked, the pressure is off and you've got time to think, and these rapidly growing, settled communities had the leisure to work out new social relationships and to contemplate the changing pattern of their lives.
这种很有保障的丰富食物来源成就了持续性的人口大爆炸，人们开始生活在两三百人组成的大村落里，这样的规模是史无前例的。当你家里的储藏架上填得满满的，压力便降低了，你开始有闲心进行思考；再加上生活在这快速发展、落户安居的村落里，人们也开始有闲心来培养出新的社会关系，并且认真地考虑关于他们生活模式的各种转变。
Our little sculpture of the entwined lovers may be a response to this new way of living - a different way of thinking about ourselves. What does it mean to depict the sexual act in this way, at this time? Archaeologist Ian Hodder has done a lot of work on this period and he sees here a process he calls the 'domestication of the mind':
我们这件缠绕紧拥的恋人小雕塑也许恰恰代表了这种崭新的生活方式，一种看顾人类自身的不同思维。在历史上这个时期，采用这种表现手法来描绘性爱行为，这究竟意味着什么呢？斯坦福大学的考古学家伊恩·霍德对这段历史时期研究颇深，他将这里观察到的现象称之为“心灵的驯化”过程：
'The Natufian culture is really before fully domesticated plants and animals, but you already have a sedentary society. And so, I think that this particular object, because of its focus on humans and human sexuality in such a clear way, is part of that general shift towards a greater concern with domesticating the mind, domesticating humans, domesticating human society, being more concerned with human relationships rather than on the relationships between humans and wild animals, and on the relationships between wild animals themselves.'
Natufian文化其实存在于人类完全驯化植物与动物之前，然而当时已经产生了一个定居社会。因此，我觉得因为这件特殊物品如此清晰地集中刻画出人类性行为，也反映人类心灵上驯化、身体上驯化、社会上驯化、过程中思维变迁的一种巨大转折；人们变得更加关注人与人之间的关系，而不是像以前一样，只关心那些人与野兽，野兽与野兽之间的关系。
As you hold the Ain Sakhri pebble and turn it round, what's striking is not just that there are clearly two human figures rather than one, but that it's impossible, because of the way the stone has been carved, to say which is male and which is female could that generalised treatment, that ambiguity, have been a deliberate intention on the part of the maker?
当你把玩着这枚Ain Sakhri卵石，转过来转过去地观察，让人感叹的不仅仅是这是一件双人而非单人雕像，更重要的是从这石头雕刻的方式，根本就区分不清哪个是男，哪个是女。这种模糊处理，这种模棱两可性，当年雕塑家是否是有意而为之的呢？
We just don't know, but we don't know either how this little statue would have been used. Some scholars think it might have been connected with fertility, but Ian Hodder takes a different view:
我们无从知晓，同时我们也无法弄清这件小小雕像当年的真正用途。有些学者认为可能与生育有关，但伊恩·霍德采取不同的看法：
'This object is one that could be read in many ways, and I think that earlier on, one would have often thought that these notions of sexual coupling, and sexuality itself, were linked to ideas of the mother goddess, because it's been assumed that when you have the first farmers their main concern is the fertility of the crops.
“这物品显然可以有不同的诠释方式，而且我觉得在人类早期，很容易就可以把性爱及性行为本身与母系女神本身联系起来，因为大家都在觉得，当最早期的农耕人类出现了，自然而然的他们主要关心的使是农作物的生育能力。”
