part 11

100 But for another two thousand years most people went on thinking that the earth was flat like a large plate with the sun and stars journeying round it. How was the idea that the earth is not flat but round like a ball proved true in the end? Sailing men went out in their ships to find a way by water from Europe to India and China. Though some ships from the north of Europe had sailed west to parts of America in the tenth century, most of Europe had no knowledge of the land across the Atlantic. Men like Marco Polo had gone east to India and China, much of the way by land, long before Columbus, in 1492, went sailing west with the idea that he could get round to the Far East by water.

但是在接下来的两千年里，大多数人仍然认为地球是平的，就像一个大盘子，太阳和星星围绕着它运行。 地球不是平的，而是像球一样圆的，这个想法最终是如何被证明是正确的？ 航海者乘船出海，寻找从欧洲到印度和中国的水路。 虽然在10世纪，一些来自北欧的船只曾向西航行到美洲的部分地区，但大多数欧洲人对大西洋对岸的土地一无所知。 早在1492年哥伦布带着水路到达远东的想法向西航行之前，像马可波罗这样的人就已经向东到达了印度和中国，大部分路程都是走陆路。

101 Christopher Columbus has gone down in history as the man who discovered America. He was looking for a way of getting to the East by sailing west. It was hard for him to get help for this journey. He was laughed at by most people when he said he could go this way to India because the earth was round. This is the sort of ship Columbus sailed in. He made use of a half-hour sand glass for measuring time at sea. Through all the long months the glasses on Columbus's three ships had to be turned every half-hour as the sand ran out.

克里斯托弗·哥伦布作为发现美洲的人而载入史册。 他在寻找一条向西航行到达东方的途径。 在这段旅程中，他很难得到帮助。 当他说他可以走这条路去印度，因为地球是圆的时，大多数人都嘲笑他。 这就是哥伦布航行时乘坐的那种船。 他用半小时沙镜在海上测量时间。 在漫长的几个月里，哥伦布的三艘船上的玻璃杯每隔半小时就要换一次，因为沙子用光了。

102 People living in America were named Indians by Columbus because he thought he had got to India when he discovered America. He went back to Spain without knowing that he had found a new continent. He knew nothing of the life that had been going on in North and South America for thousands of years or of the two great peoples, the Aztecs and the Incas, who had been living there—the one in Mexico, the other in Peru—for centuries. It is now thought that in 1500 the population of the Americas was about 30 million, and that the first of these "Indians" had come from Asia themselves. There may have been a land bridge between Asia and Alaska across which they could have come.

住在美洲的人被哥伦布命名为印第安人，因为他认为当他发现美洲的时候他已经到了印度。 他回到西班牙时并不知道他发现了一个新大陆。 他对北美和南美几千年来的生活一无所知，也不知道两个伟大的民族，阿兹特克人和印加人，他们一个在墨西哥，一个在秘鲁生活了几个世纪。 现在人们认为，在1500年，美洲的人口约为3000万，而这些“印第安人”中的第一批来自亚洲。 在亚洲和阿拉斯加之间可能有一座陆桥，他们可以从那里过来。

103 Thirty years after Columbus discovered America, the ship of Magellan, a sailor of Portugal, was the first to make its way south of South America and on round the world through the Indian Ocean and past the Cape of Good Hope back to Europe. Magellan himself died on one of the Philippine Islands on April 27 (in) 1521. When a ship sailed out to the west and came back home from the east three years later people could see that the earth must be round. This proved that the earth was round. It was proof enough for most people.

在哥伦布发现美洲三十年后，葡萄牙水手麦哲伦的船第一次驶出南美洲南部，然后绕地球一圈，穿过印度洋，经过好望角回到欧洲。 麦哲伦本人于1521年4月27日死在菲律宾的一个岛屿上。 当一艘船向西航行，三年后从东方返回时，人们可以看到地球一定是圆的。 这证明了地球是圆的。 对大多数人来说，这是足够的证据。

104 But it was harder to take in the idea that the earth might be moving round the sun, as Copernicus of Poland, 1473–1543, said it was. Very few people had made any sense of the writings of Copernicus by the time he died in 1543, twenty-one years before Galileo and Shakespeare were born. Few people could read or write in those days. It was Galileo who made the first telescope, through which he could watch the stars and look into the ideas that Copernicus and others had been working upon. Through his telescope the stars seemed more than thirty times as near, and he could see not only the mountains of the moon but spots on the face of the sun, and the motion of the moons moving round the planet Jupiter.

但要接受地球可能绕着太阳转的观点就更难了，正如波兰的哥白尼（1473-1543）所说的那样。 哥白尼死于1543年，比伽利略和莎士比亚早了21年，在他去世之前，几乎没有人能理解他的作品。 那时候很少有人会读书写字。 伽利略制造了第一架望远镜，通过它他可以观察星星，并研究哥白尼和其他人一直在研究的想法。 通过他的望远镜，星星似乎比原来近了三十多倍，他不仅能看到月球上的山脉，还能看到太阳表面的斑点，以及卫星围绕木星运行的运动。

105 Galileo could let people look through his telescope but he could not make most of them see the picture of the universe that was becoming clear in his mind. He could not do that any more than Copernicus had been able to do it. People's ideas were changing, but not as quickly as his. Galileo was put in prison for saying that the ideas written down by Ptolemy fifteen hundred years before did not make sense to him.

105 .伽利略可以让人们通过他的望远镜看东西，但他不能让大多数人看到他脑海中逐渐清晰的宇宙图景。 他做不到，就像哥白尼做不到一样。 人们的思想在变化，但没有他的变化快。 伽利略被关进了监狱，因为他说托勒密在1500年前写下的思想对他来说没有意义。