日本語訳を! 2-(1)
お願いします。
If you had an important story to tell, but most of your audience couldn't read, you might tell the story by drawing it in pictures. If you wanted the story to last a very long time, you might draw those pictures in stone. That's what an Egyptian storyteller did, and his work has lasted more than 5,000 years. It's the story of the first king of Egypt. And the stone is called the Palette of Narmer.
Long before the first king, before there were people of great power, before there were towns to lead, before there were villages with headsmen, the people of Egypt lived like all prehistoric peoples. They lived in small groups on the move. They followed the food.
Ten thousand years ago the area around the Nile hadn't dried up into desert yet. Rain fell more often and fields of grass grew. Elephants plodded about, flapping their ears in the heat. Giraffes nibbled on thorny trees. Vultures rode the warm air currents in search of something dead to eat. The people of Egypt hunted gazelle and dug root vegetables.
By 6,000 years ago, the people of Egypt had begun to herd cattle. When the Nile swelled and flowed over its banks, the people would follow their cattle away from the river. Extended families sometimes joined other groups while the cattle munched in the grasslands. By the end of summer, the heat and the lack of rain shriveled the grass, and the herderr brought the cattle back to the edge of the floodplain―back to the Nile. They planted seeds and grew an early form of wheat called emmer. They grew peas, barley, and melons.
Small villages began to crop up along the Nile, just out of reach of the floodwaters. When the people argued, someone from the group would step in to solve the problem. Pretty soon they would look to that person to solve all of the problems. Power was born.
