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It's made in polished green stone, and it's hollowed out at the back-so in fact it's a miniature mask.
这个石头面具是奥尔梅克人制造的。这副面具由抛光的青石制成，与石雕头像不同，它的后半部是空的。
The dark stone is flecked with white, snake-like streaks, which gives it its name, 'serpentine'-and when you look more closely, you can see the face has been pierced, and has been ritually scarred.
暗色石上如同蛇皮的白色花纹便是“蛇纹石”这个名称的由来。如果你凑近看，还会发现面具上有穿孔的痕迹，应该在仪式上佩戴过。
The people of this mask are the Olmec, who ruled in what's now Mexico for around a thousand years, from 1400 to 400 BC. They've been called the mother culture-the 'cultura madre'-of Central America, and it was this Olmec mother culture that produced this unsettling face.
他们在公元前一千四百年到公元前四百年间统治如今的墨西哥地区长达千年，被称为中美洲的母体文化。
So far this week the objects in this world history have taken me along the royal roads of the Persian Empire, into mythical battles in Athens and to some heavy drinking in northern Europe.
之前的几件物品让我们沿着波斯帝国的大道奔驰，走进了雅典的神话战役，也看过了北欧人的狂饮。
Each object has shown how the people who made it defined themselves and the world around them about two and a half thousand years ago.
每一件物品都展示了两千五百年前的 制作者如何看待自己以及周遭的世界。
In Europe and Asia it's striking that that self-definition was usually in distinction to others-partly by imitation, but usually in opposition.
在亚洲和欧洲，很显然，人们自我定义的方式通常是找出自己与别人的不同：有时也模仿，但更多的时候是与他人对立。
Today I'm on the continent of the Americas-to be precise, in the lowland rainforests of south-east Mexico, and my object, this Olmec face-mask, shows me a culture looking only at itself.
而我们现在看到的这副来自美洲墨西哥东南部低地雨 林的奥尔梅克面具，则向我们展现了一种只审视自己的民族文化。这正是与埃及一样古老，又极具延续性的墨西哥文化的一大特点。
