Level 4 Reading 9A

Reading 9A

阅读9A

VIRTUALLY IMMORTAL After the long, dusty drive from the city, the first surprises that visitors encounter are the shade trees and the beautiful green lawn. Then they notice the birds and monkeys swooping in and out of the trees. After passing through the entrance gate, a long stone pathway leads to a place where the ground begins to open up. There, on the far side of the grass, is what seems to be a magnificent temple built in a huge hole in the ground. However, it is not a temple, but a well. This is Rani ki Vav—the Queen's Stepwell. The weather is dry most of the year in northwestern India. Then, during the summer, rain arrives suddenly and seeps down through the sandy soil. Centuries ago, people dug holes to get at the water, and then built stone stairways down where the water collected. These stepwells were simple at first, but some later became architectural works of art. Rani ki Vav is among the most magnificent. Located near the Saraswati River in Gujarat, Rani ki Vav was built late in the 11th century by Queen Udayamati as a memorial to her dead king. It was rarely used, and by 1300, seasonal floods had filled it with sand. Not until the 1960s did Indian archeologists begin digging it out. Witnesses were stunned by what was hidden beneath all that sand. Preserving the Past "We've seen photographs, but nothing compares with seeing it firsthand," says Lyn Wilson, an archeological scientist from Glasgow. With the latest in digital scanning technology, she and her colleagues from the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation aim to reduce the chances that Rani ki Vav—or at least the data describing it—will ever be lost again. Of all the projects they have undertaken—from the Standing Stones of Stenness to Mount Rushmore— this is among the most difficult. By 12:30 p.m., their equipment arrives. As team members open the boxes, they meet their first challenge: two buses full of Indian schoolboys on a class trip. They crowd around Wilson as though she's a Bollywood star. A guard gently directs them to move back with a long stick. For the next two weeks, the team will have to fight the heat and cope with curious crowds while they aim laser beams at every surface of the stepwell in order to record the entire structure digitally. Should Rani ki Vav be lost again—through floods, war, earthquakes, or just the passage of time— there will be a precise 3-D copy available on the Internet.

几乎不朽 从城市出发，经过漫长而尘土飞扬的车程，游客遇到的第一个惊喜是树荫和美丽的绿色草坪。 然后他们注意到鸟儿和猴子在树上飞来飞去。 穿过入口大门后，一条长长的石路通向一个地面开始开阔的地方。 在草地的另一边，似乎有一座宏伟的寺庙建在地上的一个大洞里。 然而，它不是一座寺庙，而是一口井。 这是拉尼·基·瓦夫，女王的斯特普韦尔。 印度西北部一年中大部分时间天气干燥。 然后，在夏天，雨水突然降临，渗入沙质土壤。 几个世纪前，人们挖洞取水，然后在积水处修建石阶。 这些阶梯井起初很简单，但后来有些成为了建筑艺术品。 Rani ki Vav是其中最壮观的。 位于古吉拉特邦萨拉斯瓦蒂河附近， Rani ki Vav是由Udayamati女王于11世纪末建造的，作为对已故国王的纪念。 它很少被使用，到1300年，季节性洪水已经把它填满了沙子。 直到20世纪60年代，印度考古学家才开始挖掘它。 目击者被沙子下面隐藏的东西惊呆了。 保存过去 林恩·威尔逊说：“我们看过照片，但没有什么能比得上亲眼目睹。”， 来自格拉斯哥的考古科学家。 借助最新的数字扫描技术，她和来自数字文档和可视化中心的同事们 旨在减少Rani-ki-Vav（或至少是描述它的数据）再次丢失的可能性。 在他们所承担的所有项目中，从斯坦内斯的立石到拉什莫尔山-- 这是最困难的。 下午12:30，他们的设备到达。 当团队成员打开盒子时，他们遇到了他们的第一个挑战：两辆满载印度男生的巴士在一次班级旅行中。 他们围着威尔逊，好像她是宝莱坞明星。 一名警卫用一根长棍轻轻地指挥他们往回走。 在接下来的两周里，球队将不得不与高温作斗争，并应对好奇的人群 同时，它们将激光束对准阶梯井的每个表面，以数字方式记录整个结构。 Rani ki Vav是否会再次丢失——是洪水、战争、地震，还是只是时间的流逝-- 互联网上将有一个精确的3D副本。

Inside the Vav A tour of the well reveals some of the extremely complex carvings the team must record. On a lower level, seven sculptures of the four-armed god Vishnu decorate the walls. Lord Kalki sits tall on a horse, one foot about to crush an enemy's head. Then there's Varaha, a god with the head of a boar. A tiny goddess standing on his shoulder lovingly rubs his nose. "It reminds me of the wonderful Hollywood movie King Kong," remarks K.C. Nauriyal, an Indian archeologist working at the site. Also immortalized in stone are the Hindu gods Brahma and Shiva. Scattered among the gods slither snakes and creatures called Naga Kanya that are half-snake, half-woman. There are also apsaras— female spirits of the clouds and water—putting on lipstick or earrings, gazing at mirrors, or drying their hair. One of them playfully strikes a monkey as it pulls down her garment. Another pulls on the beard of an admiring beggar. "The spice of life," Nauriyal calls them. But one wrong blow with a hammer and their beauty would be destroyed forever. A stairway leads to the lowest levels, and a dark passage into the well itself. Near the bottom of the well are two statues of the god Vishnu. One is sleeping on the back of a large snake, and the other is sitting straight up. There was a belief that if there were two statues of Lord Vishnu in this form, the water would never dry up—but it did. Agricultural development and a warmer climate are two likely causes. And, like the water, the sculptures may one day disappear, surviving perhaps only as a virtual model online. A Digital Copy Inside a tent at the edge of the stepwell, archeologist Justin Barton assembles the first pieces of the 3-D digital image of Rani ki Vav. Weirdly colored columns and lintels appear on the screen. The colors—greenish in the brightest areas, grading to oranges and yellows— indicate reflectivity, or how readily the laser comes bouncing back. Barton grabs the images with the cursor, swinging them around like a child's building blocks, fitting each into the larger model of Rani ki Vav. Back in Glasgow, the digital copy will be completed, ultimately joining more than a hundred others already in a computer database. But that's barely the beginning. "So much heritage is being lost on a daily basis," says Barton, "through war and human aggression, environmental changes, and the wear and tear of time." Barton and his colleagues are in a race to digitally preserve for future generations as many of the world's threatened archeological treasures as they can—before they disappear forever. THE SCOTTISH TEN The expedition to Rani ki Vav is part of the Scottish Ten— a digital preservation project, initiated by the government in Scotland, which aims to produce 3-D digital copies of 10 cultural sites. The Scottish Ten includes the following UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Rani ki Vav (India) Mount Rushmore (U.S.A.) Eastern Qing Tombs (China) Sydney Opera House (Australia) Nagasaki Giant Cantilever Crane (Japan) New Lanark, Neolithic Orkney, St. Kilda, Edinburgh, and Antonine Wall (all in Scotland)

Vav内部 参观这口井可以发现团队必须记录的一些极其复杂的雕刻。 在较低的楼层，墙上装饰着七尊四臂神毗湿奴的雕塑。 卡尔基勋爵高高地坐在一匹马上，一只脚就要压碎敌人的头。 然后是瓦拉哈，一个长着野猪头的神。 一位站在他肩膀上的小女神慈爱地揉着他的鼻子。 “这让我想起了精彩的好莱坞电影《金刚》。” 在该遗址工作的印度考古学家K.C.Nauriyal评论道。 印度教的梵天和湿婆神也被刻在石头上。 散布在众神之间的是蛇和名为Naga Kanya的生物，它们一半是蛇，一半是女人。 还有apsaras-- 云和水的女性灵魂涂上口红或戴上耳环，凝视镜子，或擦干头发。 其中一个开玩笑地打了一只猴子，猴子扯下了她的衣服。 另一个人扯着一个仰慕的乞丐的胡子。 Nauriyal称之为“生活的调味品”。 但只要用锤子敲错一拳，它们的美丽就会永远被摧毁。 楼梯通往最底层，还有一条通往井内的黑暗通道。 井底附近有两尊毗湿奴神的雕像。 一个睡在一条大蛇的背上，另一个坐直了。 有一种观点认为，如果有两尊这样的毗湿奴主雕像，水永远不会干涸，但它确实干涸了。 农业发展和气候变暖是两个可能的原因。 而且，就像水一样，这些雕塑可能有一天会消失，也许只能作为在线虚拟模型幸存下来。 数字拷贝 在阶梯井边缘的帐篷里，考古学家贾斯汀·巴顿组装了拉尼基·瓦夫的第一张3D数字图像。 屏幕上出现了色彩奇特的柱子和过梁。 颜色——最亮的区域呈绿色，渐变为橙色和黄色-- 指示反射率或激光反弹的容易程度。 巴顿用光标抓取图像，像孩子的积木一样摆动它们， 将每一个都装入Rani ki Vav的较大模型中。 回到格拉斯哥，数字副本将完成， 最终加入了计算机数据库中已有的100多个其他数据库。 但这仅仅是个开始。 巴顿说：“如此多的遗产每天都在流失。”， “通过战争和人类的侵略，环境的变化，以及时间的磨损。” 巴顿和他的同事们正在为子孙后代进行数字保存的竞赛 尽可能多地保护世界上受威胁的考古宝藏，以免它们永远消失。 苏格兰十人 前往拉尼基瓦夫的探险队是苏格兰十人团的一部分-- 苏格兰政府发起的一项数字保护项目，旨在制作10个文化遗址的3D数字副本。 苏格兰十大遗产包括以下联合国教科文组织世界遗产： 拉尼·基·瓦夫（印度） Mount Rushmore（美国） 清东陵（中国） 悉尼歌剧院（澳大利亚） 长崎巨型悬臂起重机（日本） 新拉纳克、新石器时代奥克尼、圣基尔达、爱丁堡和安东尼墙（均在苏格兰）

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