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When we began considering the question at the heart of this video, one of the first places my mind went was the spice trade.
当我们开始思考这段视频的核心问题时，我首先想到的一个内容是香料贸易。
The search for spices like pepper (which is a dried berry, incidentally) has undoubtedly had a huge impact on human development and exploration.
对胡椒（顺便说一句，这是一种干浆果）等香料的探索无疑对人类的发展和发现产生了巨大的影响。
It's arguably responsible for permanently connecting Europe to its neighbors in the east and west.
可以说，是它将欧洲与其东西方邻国永久联系在了一起。
Here, just give a small taste (pun very much intended) of the ways the spice trade shaped the world: The Dutch famously traded Manhattan to the British for an Indonesian island with some nutmeg trees on it.
略微品尝一下（故意开始双关）香料贸易塑造世界的方式：众所周知，荷兰人用曼哈顿与英国人交换了印度尼西亚一个长着肉豆蔻树的岛屿。
That's admittedly an oversimplification, but it speaks to the enormous value placed on spices at this time.
诚然，这种解释过于简单化了，但它说明了香料在那个时候的巨大价值。
There are equally fascinating stories we could tell about cumin or pepper - I mean we'll just gonna have to devote a whole video to the spice trade at some point - but it's hard to say that one spice jumps out far above the others in importance.
孜然或胡椒同样有着引人入胜的故事——我们需要在之后用一整段视频来讲述香料交易——但很难说其中有哪一种香料的重要性远远超过其他香料。
Salt could also make a super-convincing case for one of the most important foods ever, but its impact on the world is so far-ranging and constant throughout history that it's a bit hard to tell a single story of its role in human development.
如果说盐是有史以来最重要的食物之一也是很令人信服的，但它在整个历史过程中长期且持续地对世界产生影响，由此很难说明它在人类发展中的作用。
We can't live without it, but is there one pivotal change it's responsible for?
我们离不开盐，但它有没有对人类的某种关键变化起作用呢？
It's hard to say.
很难说。
Like salt, sugar is both an ingredient we can buy in the store and a naturally occurring chemical compound.
和盐一样，糖既是一种我们可以在商店里买到的原料，也是一种可能自然生成的化合物。
If we want to be really annoying, we could crown sugar our most important food champion hands-down simply for the vital role photosynthesis plays in the food chain.
如果真的想抖个机灵，我们可以仅凭光合作用在食物链中的重要性而将糖加冕为我们“最重要的食物”冠军。
Super-simplified 6th grade science version, OK: plants take in sunlight, create sugar, provide oxygen.
超级简化版的六年级科学：植物吸收阳光，产生糖，提供氧气。
Animals eat plants, life thrives, Keanu Reeves is born.
动物吃植物，生命欣欣向荣，基努·里维斯诞生。
Everybody's happy.
大家都很开心。
As biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi described it, "What drives life is thus a little electric current, kept up by the sunshine."
正如生物化学家阿尔伯特·森特-乔尔吉所描述的那样，“驱动生命的是一股由阳光维持的微小电流。”
But if anything drove me to discuss sugar, it's actually an oversight we made in a previous episode.
但我想在这一期谈到糖，实际上是因为我们在之前一集中有些疏漏。
When we discussed chocolate, we stuck mostly to its earliest history and the cool technological advances that eventually gave us things like Hershey's bars.
我们在谈到巧克力的时候，主要关注的是它最早期的历史和神奇的技术进步，正是这些进步最终给我们带来了好时巧克力等甜品。
But I think a fair criticism we read in the comments was that we ignored the role that slavery played in chocolate, from its early production in Europe's Central and South American colonies all the way up to today.
但评论中有一条很客观的批评，说我们忽视了奴隶制在巧克力的发展中所起的作用，包括欧洲中南美洲殖民地的早期生产，一直到现在奴隶制对其产生的影响。
And if this series is mostly about celebrating the fun and interesting aspects of the intersection of food and history, I don't think that means it can't also acknowledge the truly horrific ways food can impact humanity.
虽然这个系列主要是为了讲述食物和历史产生的交集和其中有趣的故事，但我认为，这并不意味着我们不能承认食物可以以一种很恐怖的方式影响人类。
Perhaps no food better represents these awful contradictions than sugar.
也许没有什么食物比糖更能代表这些可怕的矛盾了。
Sidney Mintz became the "father of food anthropology" largely through his seminal work on sugar, "Sweetness and Power."
西德尼·明茨之所以能成为“食物人类学之父”，主要是因为他在糖这一方面的开创性著作《甜蜜与权力》。
Like the title suggests, Mintz looks at sugar not from a primarily culinary lens, but, in his words, as "an old commodity" "basic to the emergence of a global market."
正如书名所示，明茨不是从烹饪的角度来看待糖，用他的话说，糖是“一种古老的商品”，“是全球市场出现的基础”。
A major part of that global market was the triangle trade connecting Western Europe, Africa, and the so-called "New World" of the Americas.
全球市场的一个主要部分是连接西欧、非洲和所谓的美洲“新世界”的三角贸易。
Sugar was an incredibly valuable resource for centuries, and the riches it produced are inextricable from the labor of enslaved Africans in sugar plantations.
几个世纪以来，糖一直是一种极其宝贵的资源，它创造的财富与被奴役的非洲人在甘蔗种植园的劳动密不可分。
Though evidence of sugarcane domestication dates back as far as 10,000 years ago in New Guinea, it didn't make its way to Europe in a big way until around the time of the Crusades, when Christian soldiers returned home with "sweet salt."
虽然甘蔗种植的出现可以追溯到10000年前的新几内亚，但直到十字军东征前后，基督教士兵带着“甜盐”回国时，甘蔗才大规模进入欧洲。
