图片来源：视觉中国
时光总是匆匆而逝，但书籍和博物馆却保留了岁月的痕迹。这样想来，巴西近来发生的一场悲剧就更加令人痛心了。
On Sept 2, a big fire ripped through the National Museum of Brazil, the oldest scientific institution in the country, in Rio de Janeiro. “Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge were lost,” Brazilian President Michel Temer wrote on social networking platform Twitter after the fire. “It’s a sad day for all Brazilians.”
9月2日，一场大火吞噬了位于里约热内卢的巴西国家博物馆，这也是巴西最古老的科研机构。“两百年来的努力、研究以及知识都毁于一旦，”大火之后，巴西总统米歇尔·特梅尔在社交媒体平台推特上写道。“这是令所有巴西人悲伤的一天。”
Most of the 20 million pieces of history are believed to have been destroyed. Only as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived, Time reported. Among all the items, there were Egyptian mummies, the bones of uniquely Brazilian creatures such as the long-necked dinosaur Maxakalisaurus, and a 11,500-year-old skull called Luzia, which was considered one of South America’s oldest human fossils.
据《时代周刊》报道，承载着2000万年历史的文物大部分都被烧毁，只剩下10%的藏品幸免于难。在烧毁的这些藏品中，有埃及木乃伊、巴西特有的长颈恐龙马萨卡利神龙的骸骨以及被视作南美洲最古老的人骨化石——11.5万年前的人类头骨化石“露西亚”。
Besides these, Brazil’s indigenous knowledge also suffered. The museum housed world-renowned collections of indigenous objects, as well as many audio recordings of local languages from all over Brazil. Some of these recordings, now lost, were of languages that are no longer spoken.
除此之外，巴西本土的智慧成果也惨遭焚毁。博物馆中藏有闻名全球的巴西当地文物以及巴西各地语言的大量音频档案。如今被烧毁的一些音频中还录有已经失传的语言。
“The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide. A crime against our past and future generations,” Bernard Mello Franco, one of Brazil’s best-known columnists, wrote on the O Globo newspaper site.
“本周日发生的这场悲剧可以说是场民族的自我毁灭，是对我们的祖先以及后人犯下的罪过，”巴西著名专栏作家伯纳德·梅洛·弗兰科在巴西《环球报》网站上写道。
The cause of the fire is still unknown, as BBC News reported on Sept 3. After the fire burned out, crowds protested outside the museum to show their anger at the loss of the irreplaceable items of historical value.
据英国广播公司新闻9月3日报道，火灾原因尚未查明。火灾过后，人群聚集在博物馆外抗议，表达他们对于失去这些无可替代的珍贵历史文物的愤怒。
According to Emilio Bruna, an ecologist at the University of Florida, “museums are living, breathing repositories of who we are and where we’ve come from, and the world around us.
佛罗里达大学生态学家埃米利奥•布鲁纳认为：“博物馆是现存于世的鲜活宝库，它能告诉我们，我们是谁，从何而来以及我们周遭的世界。”
“Those insects pinned in a drawer, or those fish in a jar, or a feathered cape you might see in a display case – that represents a little piece of who we are as a people, as humans, as part of a greater world,” he told National Geographic.
“这些被钉在抽屉中的昆虫、放在玻璃罐中的鱼或者是你在展柜中看到的羽毛披风，都代表着我们作为个体、作为人类以及作为大千世界的一部分，”他在接受《国家地理》杂志采访时表示。
Just as underwater grass floats on the surface if it loses its roots, a nation is lost without its memories. The fire at the National Museum of Brazil teaches the world an important lesson: We should never neglect history.
失去了记忆的国家就如同随波逐流的无根之草，巴西国家博物馆大火给全世界带了一个重要教训：我们绝不应忽视历史。
