世界小史 第89期:达罗

 Although we know almost nothing about the people who built Mohenjo Daro,

尽管我们几乎一点不知道什么人建造了摩亨佐.达罗，

we do know that different people arrived much later, and that they are ancestors of the people who inhabit¹ northern India and Pakistan today.

但我们知道后来有各部落迁徙过来定居，这些部落是今天还居住在印度和巴基斯坦的人们的祖先。

These people spoke² a language similar not only to those spoken by the Persians and Greeks, but also to those of the Romans and the Teutons.

他们讲一种与波斯人和希腊人也与罗马人和日耳曼人的语言相近的语言。

An example of this is the word for 'father': in ancient Indian it was pitar, the Greek is patèr, the Latin³, páter.

其中一个例子就是单词“父亲”："父亲"一词在古印地语中叫“Pitar”，在希腊语中叫“Patér”，在拉丁语中叫“Páer”。

Since both Indians and Europeans speak these languages, they are known as the Indo-European family of languages.

由于印度人和日耳曼人都讲这种语言，他们被称为说印度-日耳曼语系语言的人。

Whether the fact that the languages are similar means that the people who speak them are actually distant relatives we don't yet know for sure.

但是不是这些民族只是语言相似或者这些民族中的某些是有血缘关系的远亲，对此人们不了解任何确切的情况。

But in any event, the people who spoke an Indo-European language invaded⁴ India much as the Dorians invaded Greece, and may have enslaved the native population just as they did.

总之，这些讲一种印度-日耳曼语系语言的印度人类似多里安人侵入希腊那样侵入了印度，可能和多里安人一样奴役了当地的居民。

1 inhabit   

vt.居住于，（动物）栖居于

参考例句：

• Thoughts inhabit his mind.各种思想占据了他的心灵。
• Wild tribes still inhabit part of the Philippines.菲律宾部分地区仍然居住着一些原始部落。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 Latin   

adj.拉丁的，拉丁语的，拉丁人的；n.拉丁语

参考例句：

• She learned Latin without a master.她无师自通学会了拉丁语。
• Please use only Latin characters.请仅使用拉丁文字符。

4 invaded   

v.侵入，侵略( invade的过去式和过去分词 )；涌入；侵袭；侵犯

参考例句：

• Troops invaded on August 9th that year. 军队是在那年的8月9日入侵的。
• The diseased tissue can be easily invaded by these microorganisms. 有病的组织容易被微生物侵袭。 来自《简明英汉词典》