Many of us have plenty of leisuretime to devote to trying out the latest Wii game or even watching others play pokeron TV. But this focus on play is nothing new, says a researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

　　很多人閑來無事都會在電視機上玩玩新出的Wii游戲，閑到看人家玩撲克的也有。瑞典哥德堡大學的一名研究人員稱，人們雖然相當熱衷于游戲，但這可不是什么新鮮事兒。

　　For her doctoral thesis, Elke Rogersdotter studied a 4,000-year-old city called Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley, in what is now Pakistan. ["Gaming in Mohenjo-daro—an Archaeology of Unities"] It was the largest Bronze Age urban settlement in the region, thriving at the same time as the ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom.

　　為完成博士論文，艾爾克·羅杰斯多特考察了印度河流域有著4000年歷史的古城摩亨佐-達羅，它位于現在的巴基斯坦境內。摩亨佐-達羅是銅器時代印度河流域最大的城市，當時也正是古埃及中王國興盛時期。

　　Play is not generally studied for its significance to ancient peoples. Rogersdotter says that archaeologistsdo often find game-related relics at dig sites, but they’re usually discounted as unimportant or considered a ritualobject. But at this site, almost every tenth find was related to leisure—dice or gaming pieces.

　　游戲對于祖先的重要性往往被研究人員所忽視。羅杰斯多特說，考古學家確實挖掘出了一些和游戲相關的文物，但他們通常認為這些物品沒什么價值，或者認為它們是祭祀用品。但在這個遺址，幾乎每十項發現中的一項就和游戲有關——色子或是棋子。

　　And they’re not uniformly scattered. The artifacts are clustered together in what might have been ancient, say, gaming halls or courtyards. Rogersdotter says that these games may have had real social significance and might be used to give us a better view of the lives of these Bronze Age individuals. Who very well might have hoped to roll double-sixes four millenniaago.

　　它們不是均勻分散的，而是集中分布在一個古代游戲廳里。羅杰斯多特說這些游戲可能具有相當的社會價值，并可能為我們研究這些銅器時代祖先的生活提供一個良好的視角。祖先們可是在4000年前就盼著擲出個雙六來了~

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