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Jade is extremely hard, and difficult to work, so much effort must have gone into the shaping of it.
玉石的质地极为坚硬，难以加工，为它塑形一定耗费了不少功夫。
It's likely that it was first of all roughly sculpted in northern Italy, and then carried hundreds of miles across Europe to north-west France.
有可能一开始，它先在意大利北部经过了初步加工，然后被带到几百英里之外的法国西北部，
It was probably polished there, because it's like a number of other ones found in southern Brittany, where there seems to have been a fashion for acquiring exotic treasures like this.
在那里进行打磨，因为我们在布列塔尼发现了数把类似的斧头，拥有这种远方的奇珍似乎曾是当地潮流。
They even carved impressions of the axes into the walls of their vast stone tombs.
布列塔尼人甚至在他们巨大的石头墓室的墙壁上雕刻出斧头的图案。
In Britain, six thousand years ago, the rarity, the beautiful working and the distant origins of this foreign material would have given our axe a very high value, and it would have been an exceptional gift-the equivalent of a luxury watch perhaps, or an expensive piece of jewellery.
6000年前的英国, 这件稀世罕有，做工精美并且源远流长的异物会使得我们的斧头具有很高的价值,在那时肯定是一件特殊的礼物—相当于一款高档手表,或者一件昂贵的首饰。
We can only speculate how the hierarchies of prehistoric British society might have regarded this rare and beautiful thing, or what they might have done with it.
我们只能推测史前英国社会的等级制度如何评价这件罕见的稀世珍宝,或者他们可能会对它做过些什么。
Similar axes in less valuable stones have also been found unworn, and their equally pristine condition implies that they may have served special, perhaps ritual, purposes.
类似更有价值的斧头也被完好无损的发现,而它们同样的状况意味着自身可能的特别之处,也许是用于仪式的目的。
Mark Edmonds again:
马克埃德蒙兹认为其中的含义是：
"Beyond the practical tasks that you can use one of these things for, axes had a further significance-a significance that came from where they were found, who you got them from, where and when they were made, the sort of stories that were attached to them.
斧头除了实际用途之外还有进一步的意义。这种意义来自它们是在什么地方被发现的，从谁那里得到的，是在何时何地制作的等等这些它们身上附带的故事。
Sometimes they were tools to be used and carried and forgotten about in the process, at other times they would come into focus as important symbols to be held aloft, to be used as reminders in stories about the broader world,
有时它们只是人类使用的工具，被遗忘在带出去使用的过程中。有时它们是放在高处的重要象征，提醒我们别忘了更广阔的世界。
and sometimes to be handed on-in an exchange with a neighbour, with an ally, with somebody you'd fallen out with, and perhaps in exceptional circumstances, on someone's death, the axe was something that had to be dealt with.
有时你要把它们交给别人，邻居、同盟或和你有纠纷的人。在特别的情况下，斧子在葬礼上也有用途，它需要像尸体一样被分解，或是像尸体一样被埋葬。
