瀚林雅筑二手房:自然史话：全球化的真实故事（图）

　　在宽阔的马尼拉湾热带港湾里，两群人正在小心翼翼地互相靠近，手里都紧张地端着自己的武器。他们是眼神冷峻、全球奔波的商人，他们来自地球两端的西班牙和中国。

The Spaniards have a big cache of silver, mined in the Americas by Indian and African slaves; the Chinese bring a selection of fine silk and porcelain, materials created by advanced processes unknown in Europe. It is the summer of 1571, and this swap of silk for silver—the beginning of an exchange in Manila that would last for almost 250 years—marks the opening salvo in what we now call globalization. It was the first time that Europe, Asia and the Americas were bound together in a single economic network. 

　　西班牙人带来了大量由在美洲的印第安人和非裔奴隶开采的白银；中国人带来了品类繁多、由不为欧洲人所知的先进工艺生产的材料制作的精美丝绸和瓷器。时间定格在1571年的夏天，以丝绸交换白银的过程标志着我们现在所谓的全球化拉开了序幕。在马尼拉开始的这种易货贸易持续了几乎250年的时间。这是第一次欧洲、亚洲和美洲以一种单一经济网络的形式绑定在一起。

54,000: Tons of silver shipped from the Americas to Europe in the 1700s, up from 17,000 tons in the 1500s

54000：白银从美洲运到欧洲的数量从十六世纪的17000吨增加到十八世纪54000吨

The silk would cause a sensation in Spain, as the silver would in China. But the crowds that greeted the returning ships had no idea what they were truly carrying. We usually describe globalization in purely economic terms, but it is also a biological phenomenon. Researchers increasingly think that the most important cargo on these early transoceanic voyages was not silk and silver but an unruly menagerie of plants and animals, many of them accidental stowaways. In the sweep of history, it is this biological side of globalization that may well have the greater impact on the fate of the world's people and nations. 

　　就像白银会在中国引起轰动一样，丝绸在西班牙也会引发抢购潮。但是欢迎商船凯旋的人群对于商人们真正带回来什么东西并没有特别想法。我们通常以纯粹的经济学词汇描述全球化，但是全球化也是一个生物学现象。研究人员正在成形的想法是：在这些早期的跨海航行的中最重要的货物不是丝绸和白银，而是一个难以控制的植物和动物组成的小型动物园，它们中的许多物种都是很偶然的随船漂洋过海的。纵观历史，正是这种全球化的生物学属性才对这个世界上我们人类的命运产生了极大的影响。

Some 250 million years ago, the Earth contained a single landmass known as Pangaea. Geological forces broke up this vast expanse, forever splitting Eurasia and the Americas. Over time the two halves of Pangaea developed wildly different suites of plants and animals.

　　大约2.5亿年前，地球只有一块大陆，称作原始大陆。地质作用力使这块非常广袤的区域发生断裂，永远地分割成了欧亚大陆和美洲大陆。随着时间的推移，由原始大陆分裂形成的两块大陆疯狂地进化出了不同的植物和动物物种。

Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, only a few venturesome land creatures, mostly insects and birds, had crossed the oceans and established themselves. Otherwise, the world was sliced into separate ecological domains. Columbus's signal accomplishment was, in the phrase of the historian Alfred W. Crosby, to reknit the seams of Pangaea. 

　　在哥伦布横跨大西洋航行之前，只有少数胆大的陆地动物（大部分是昆虫和鸟类）飞跃大洋，在美洲大陆建立了自己的领地。除此之外，这个世界被分割成了各自的生态域。按照历史学家阿尔弗雷德·W·克罗斯比的说法就是，哥伦布最非凡的成就在于将原始大陆的缝隙重新弥合。

A growing number of scholars believe that the ecological transformation set off by Columbus's voyages was one of the establishing events of the modern world.

越来越多的学者相信由哥伦布航海引发的生态变化是现代社会形成的标志性事件之一

After 1492, the world's ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as Mr. Crosby called it, is why we came to have tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolate in Switzerland and chili peppers in Thailand. 

　　1492年之后，在欧洲的轮船携带数千物种跨越大洋到达新家之时，这个世界的生态系统发生了碰撞并融合。克罗斯比先生所称的“哥伦布交换”让我们在意大利吃到了西红柿、在佛罗里达吃到了柑桔、在瑞士吃到了巧克力，并在泰国吃到了辣椒。

orange slice

柑桔

$1.4 BILLION: Value of Italy's 2008 crop of tomatoes, a plant native to South America

14亿美元：2008年，原产南美的西红柿在意大利的年产值达到14亿美元

A growing number of scholars believe that the ecological transformation set off by Columbus's voyages was one of the establishing events of the modern world. Why did Europe rise to predominance? Why did China, once the richest, most advanced society on earth, fall to its knees? Why did chattel slavery take hold in the Americas? Why was it the United Kingdom that launched the Industrial Revolution? All of these questions are tied in crucial ways to the Columbian Exchange.

　　越来越多的学者相信由哥伦布航海引发的生态变化是现代世界标志性事件之一。为什么欧洲会崛起并主宰世界？为什么曾经最富有的、社会结构最先进的中国会一落千丈？为什么奴役制度在美洲能大行其道？为什么是在英国发生工业革命？所有这些疑问都以关键的方式与哥伦布交换相关联。

Where to start? Perhaps with the worms. Earthworms, to be precise—especially the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm, creatures that did not exist in North America before 1492. 

　　从哪里说起呢？也许先说虫子合适。蚯蚓，说得准确一点特指那种常见的地龙（译注：欧洲本土的蚯蚓及欧洲人对蚯蚓的称呼）和红色的沼泽地蠕虫（译注：红色的蚯蚓）。在1492年之前，这种生物在北美大陆是不存在的。

Well before the start of the silk-and-silver trade across the Pacific, Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors were sailing the Atlantic in search of precious metals. Ultimately, they exported huge supplies of gold and silver from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, vastly increasing Europe's money supply. But those homebound ships contained something else of equal importance: the Amazonian plant known today as tobacco.

　　恰恰在跨太平洋的丝绸-白银贸易开始之前，西班牙和葡萄牙的征服者正在横渡大西洋寻找贵金属。最终，他们从玻利维亚、巴西、哥伦比亚和墨西哥出口了巨量的黄金和白银。但是那些返航的船只还包括了同样重要的其它东西：亚马逊河植物，也就是我们今天熟悉的烟草。

36,000%: Increase in tobacco exports from the Chesapeake colonies from 1640 to 1700

36000%：从1640年到1700年，从切萨皮克殖民地出口的烟草增加了36000%

Intoxicating and addictive, tobacco became the subject of the first truly global commodity craze. By 1607, when England founded its first colony in Virginia, London already had more than 7,000 tobacco "houses"—cafe-like places where the city's growing throng of nicotine junkies could buy and smoke tobacco. To feed the demand, English ships tied up to Virginia docks and took in barrels of rolled-up tobacco leaves. Typically 4 feet tall and 2½ feet across, each barrel weighed half a ton or more. Sailors balanced out the weight by leaving behind their ships' ballast: stones, gravel and soil. They swapped English dirt for Virginia tobacco.

　　伴随吸烟时的陶醉感和成瘾性，烟草成为了第一种真正的全球性时尚商品。到1607年，在英格兰在弗吉尼亚建立自己的第一块殖民地之时，伦敦已经拥有超过7000家“烟馆”。烟馆是类似咖啡馆的地方，城市新贵们之中的尼古丁瘾君子们可以在这里购买并吸烟。 为了满足需要，英国的商船停靠在弗吉尼亚的码头装上捆扎好的成桶的烟叶。通常这种桶有4英尺高、2.5英尺粗，每只桶都有多半吨重。水手们为了平衡重量会把船上像石头、沙砾和土壤之类的压舱物抛下船。他们用英国的脏土换取了弗吉尼亚的烟草。

That dirt very likely contained the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm. So, almost certainly, did the rootballs of plants that the colonists imported. Before Europeans arrived, the upper Midwest, New England and all of Canada had no earthworms—they had been wiped out in the last Ice Age.

　　那种脏土非常可能带有地龙和红蚯蚓。因此几乎可以肯定的是，正是殖民者引进的植物的球根带来了蚯蚓。在欧洲人到来之前，美国中西部地区的北部区域、新英格兰和加拿大的全部地区都没有蚯蚓存在---它们都在上次冰河时期被消灭了。

0: Earthworms in North America before 1492

0：1492年之前，蚯蚓在北美大陆的数量为0

In worm-free woodlands, leaves pile up in drifts on the forest floor. Trees and shrubs in wormless places depend on litter for food. When earthworms arrive, they quickly consume the leaf litter, packing the nutrients deep in the soil in the form of castings (worm excrement). Suddenly, the plants can no longer feed themselves; their fine, surface-level root systems are in the wrong place. Wild sarsaparilla, wild oats, Solomon's seal and a host of understory plants die off; grass-like species such as Pennsylvania sedge take over. Sugar maples almost stop growing, and ash seedlings start to thrive. 

　　在没有蚯蚓的林地里，落叶成堆地堆积在森林的地表，树木和灌木丛依靠枯枝落叶层生长。蚯蚓到来后，迅速耗尽腐败落叶，以蚯蚓粪的（蚯蚓的排泄物）形式把营养素堆积在深土中。猛然间，植物不能自给自足了；它们纤细的表层根系的生存环境恶化。野生撒尔沙、野生燕麦、玉竹和大量的林下叶层植物相继死光；宾夕法尼亚莎草之类的草类物种接管了领地。糖槭树几乎不在生长，但白蜡树苗却存活下来。

Spread today by farmers, gardeners and anglers, earthworms are obsessive underground engineers, and they are now remaking swathes of Minnesota, Alberta and Ontario. Nobody knows what will happen next in what ecologists see as a gigantic, unplanned, centuries-long experiment.

　　现在经由农民、花农和垂钓者的传播，蚯蚓俨然成了地下工程师，它们正在改良明尼苏达州、亚伯达省和安大略湖地区的成片土壤。这种被生态学家视为一个庞大的、无计划的、几个世纪之久的实验，没人知道接下来会发生什么。

Before Columbus, the parasites that cause malaria were rampant in Eurasia and Africa but unknown in the Americas. Transported in the bodies of sailors, malaria may have crossed the ocean as early as Columbus's second voyage. Yellow fever, malaria's frequent companion, soon followed.

　　在哥伦布踏上北美大陆之前，导致疟疾在欧亚大陆和非洲大陆横行泛滥的寄生虫在美洲大陆并未现身。也许早在哥伦布第二次航行的时候，疟疾便经由水手身体的传播跨越了大西洋。疟疾的亲密伙伴-黄热病也接踵而至。

By the 17th century, the zone where these diseases held sway—coastal areas roughly from Washington, D.C., to the Brazil-Ecuador border—was dangerous territory for European migrants, many of whom died within months of arrival. By contrast, most West Africans had built-in defenses, acquired or genetic, against the diseases.

　　到17世纪的时候，已经被疾病所控制的地区（大致从华盛顿特区到巴西-厄瓜多尔边境的沿海地区）对于欧洲的移民来说是危险的区域，他们中的许多人在到达之后几个月内便死亡了。与此相对照的是，大部分的西非人体内都有获得性的或遗传性的抗体抵御这种疾病。

1829: Peak year of the slave trade

1829年：奴隶贸易达到顶峰

Initially, American planters preferred to pay to import European laborers—they spoke the same language and knew European farming methods. They also cost less than slaves bought from Africa, but they were far less hardy and thus a riskier investment. In purely economic terms, the historian Philip Curtin has calculated, the diseases of the Columbian Exchange made the enslaved worker "preferable at anything up to three times the price of the European."

　　最初，美洲的种植园主宁愿花钱接收欧洲来的劳工。这些劳工说同样的语言而且还知道欧洲的农耕方式。雇佣他们比从非洲买来的奴隶要省钱，但是他们吃苦耐劳的能力要差很多，因此也是一种比较冒风险的投资。历史学家菲利·普柯廷已经计算过，从纯粹的经济学的角度来说，这种和哥伦布交换有关的疾病使得役工“比欧洲劳工高三倍的身价还很受欢迎。”

Did the Columbian Exchange cause chattel slavery in the Americas? No. People are moral agents who weigh many considerations. But anyone who knows how markets work will understand the pull exerted by slavery's superior profitability.

　　是哥伦布交换导致奴役制度在美洲大陆出现的吗？否，人是讲道德的动物，会衡量多方面的考虑。但是任何知道市场运行规律的人都会明白由奴隶的超级收益率带来的吸引力。

Much more direct was the role of the Columbian Exchange in the creation of Great Britain. In 1698, a visionary huckster named William Paterson persuaded wealthy Scots to invest as much as half the nation's available capital in a scheme to colonize Panama, hoping to control the chokepoint for trade between the Pacific and the Atlantic. As the historian J.R. McNeill recounted in "Mosquito Empires," malaria and yellow fever quickly slew almost 90% of the 2,500 colonists. The debacle caused a financial meltdown.

　　在大不列颠王国创立过程中，哥伦布交换扮演的的角色更直接。1698年，一名叫威廉·佩特森的商贩富有远见地劝说富有的苏格兰人将国家可变现资本的一半用于巴拿马殖民计划，藉此控制这个太平洋和大西洋之间往来贸易的要塞。历史学家J·R·麦克尼尔在其《蚊子帝国》（Mosquito Empires）一书中做了重新统计，2500名殖民者中有90%迅速死于疟疾和黄热病。这种行动上的大溃败导致（苏格兰）财政垮台。

At the time, England and Scotland shared a monarch but remained separate nations. England, the bigger partner, had been pushing a complete merger for decades. Scots had resisted, fearing a London-dominated economy, but now England promised to reimburse investors in the failed Panama project as part of a union agreement. As Mr. McNeill wrote, "Thus Great Britain was born, with assistance from the fevers of Panama."

　　在当时，英格兰和苏格兰归一个君主统治，但仍保持两个分立的国家。几十年来,稍大些的英格兰一直在推动两国完全合并。由于害怕伦敦方面主宰经济，苏格兰一直在拒绝，但现在英格兰保证（替苏格兰）向投资人偿还失败的巴拿马项目的投资作为联邦协议的一部分。正像麦克尼尔先生写到的，“在巴拿马流行病的帮助下，大不列颠就这样诞生了。”

But Scots could hardly complain about the consequences of the Columbian Exchange. By the time they were absorbed into Britain, their daily bread, so to speak, was a South American tuber now familiar as the domestic potato.

　　但苏格兰人抱怨不得哥伦布交换带来的后果。在他们被吸收进英国时，他们日常吃的食物（就算是吧）是一种南美块茎，就是现在人们吃的马铃薯。

12 WEEKS: Time it took for the potato blight to spread from Flanders to Ireland in 1845

12周：1845年，马铃薯枯萎病用了12周时间从佛兰德斯蔓延到爱尔兰

Compared with grains, tubers are inherently more productive. If the head of a wheat or rice plant grows too big, the plant will fall over, killing it. There are no structural worries with tubers, which grow underground. Eighteenth-century farmers who planted potatoes reaped about four times as much dry food matter as they did from wheat or barley.

　　与谷类相比，块茎天生高产。如果小麦或稻谷的穗部长得太大，植株就会倒伏并死掉。块茎长在地下，根本不用担心头重脚轻的问题。在十八世纪，种植马铃薯的农民就像小麦或大麦一样收获四次干燥的粮食。

Hunger was then a familiar presence in Europe. France had 40 nationwide food calamities between 1500 and 1800, more than one every decade, according to the French historian Fernand Braudel. England had still more. The continent simply could not sustain itself.

　　饥荒在那时的欧洲司空见惯。根据法国历史学家费尔南德·布罗代尔的统计，在1500-1800年期间，法国发生了40次全国范围的粮灾，每十年都不止一次。英格兰的饥荒就更频繁了。原因很简单，欧洲大陆自身都无法维持生存，更不用说向英格兰输出粮食了。

The potato allowed most of Europe—a 2,000-mile band between Ireland and the Ukraine—to feed itself. (Corn, another American crop, played a similar role in Italy and Romania.) Political stability, higher incomes and a population boom were the result. Imported from Peru, the potato became the fuel for the rise of Europe.

　　马铃薯让欧洲的大部分地区，即从爱尔兰到乌克兰绵延2000英里的地带做到了自给自足。（美洲大陆的另一种庄稼玉米，在意大利和罗马尼亚扮演了类似的角色。）政治稳定、收入增加，人口增加是必然的结果。这种引种自秘鲁的马铃薯成为了欧洲崛起的推动力。

The sweet potato played a similar role in China. Introduced (along with corn) from South America via the Pacific silver trade in the 1590s, it suddenly provided a way for Chinese farmers to cultivate upland areas that had been unusable for rice paddies. The nutritious new crop encouraged the fertility boom of the Qing dynasty, but the experiment soon went badly wrong.

　　在中国，甘薯扮演了类似的角色。甘薯（还有玉米）于十六世纪九十年代随着白银贸易自南美引入中国后，为中国农民立刻提供了在无法种植稻谷的高原地区实施的一种（新）种植方式。这种营养丰富的新庄稼促成了清代粮食生产的大丰收。但不久这个引种实验就犯了大错误。

Because Chinese farmers had never cultivated their dry uplands, they made beginners' mistakes. An increase in erosion led to extraordinary levels of flooding, which in turn fed popular unrest and destabilized the government. The new crops that had helped to strengthen Europe were a key factor in weakening China.

　　这是因为中国农民从来没有养护过他们的高原田地，他们犯了初学者的错误。水土流失的增加导致了洪水的过度泛滥，由此引发了公众的骚乱和政府的不稳定。在欧洲富国强民的新庄稼却成为中国逐渐衰败的一个关键因素。

The Columbian Exchange carried other costs as well. When Spanish colonists in Hispaniola imported African plantains in 1516, the Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson has proposed, they also brought over some of the plant's parasites: scale insects, which suck the juices from banana roots.

　　哥伦布交换也招致其它代价。哈佛大学昆虫学家爱德华·O·威尔逊指出：1516年，西班牙殖民者在海地引种大蕉时，也带过来一些植物的寄生虫，就是介壳虫，它吸食香蕉根的汁液。

In Hispaniola, Mr. Wilson argues, these insects had no natural enemies. Their numbers must have exploded—a phenomenon known as "ecological release." The spread of scale insects would have delighted one of the region's native species: the tropical fire ant, which is fond of dining on the sugary excrement of scale insects. A big increase in scale insects would have led to a big increase in fire ants.

　　威尔逊先生证明，这些昆虫在海地是没有天敌的。它们的数量呈爆炸式增长---一种称作“生态释放”的现象。介壳虫的蔓延会让一种该地区的本土物种感到高兴：热带火蚂蚁。这种蚂蚁喜食介壳虫含糖的排泄物。介壳虫种群大增将会导致火蚂蚁数量的大增。

This is only informed speculation. What happened in 1518 and 1519 is not. According to an account by a priest who witnessed those years, Spanish homes and plantations in Hispaniola were invaded by "an infinite number of ants," their stings causing "greater pains than wasps that bite and hurt men." Overwhelmed by the onslaught, Spaniards abandoned their homes to the insects, depopulating Santo Domingo. It was the first modern eco-catastrophe.

　　这只是有根据的推测。1518年和1519年的实际情况并非如此。根据一位见证那些年历史的牧师记载，西班牙人在海地的住宅和种植园遭到了“数不胜数的蚂蚁”的入侵，它们的叮咬给人造成的痛楚“比叮咬并伤人的黄蜂还重”。西班牙人被蚂蚁的猛攻打败了，他们放弃了自己的家园，让给了这种昆虫。圣多明各城人口骤减。这是第一次现代生态灾难。

1518: The year an 'infinite number of ants' drove residents from the city of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola

1518年：“数不胜数的蚂蚁”把海地居民赶出圣多明各城

A second, much more consequential disaster occurred two centuries later, when European ships accidentally imported the fungus-like organism, native to Peru, that causes the potato disease known as late blight. First appearing in Flanders in June 1845, it was carried by winds to potato farms around Paris in August. Weeks later it wiped out fields in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and England. Blight appeared in Ireland on Sept. 13.

　　两个世纪之后，发生了第二起更大的灾难。彼时欧洲的商船很偶然地带回了原产秘鲁的真菌类生物体，并造成马铃薯染上了晚疫病。1845年6月，晚疫病首先出现在佛兰德斯，此后在8月份被风带到了巴黎周围的马铃薯田。几周以后它彻底横扫了荷兰、德国、丹麦和英格兰的田野。9月13日，晚疫病出现在了爱尔兰。

The Irish were more dependent on potatoes than any other Western nation. Within two years, more than a million died. Millions more fled. The nation never regained its footing. Today Ireland has the melancholy distinction of being the only nation in Europe, and perhaps the world, to have fewer people within the same boundaries than it did more than 150 years ago.

　　爱尔兰人比任何其它西方国家都更依赖马铃薯。两年之内，有超过一百万人死亡，数百万人逃离爱尔兰。这个国家自此便再也没有兴盛过。在欧洲，也许是在世界上，今日的爱尔兰依然是唯一具有忧郁特征的国家，与150年前相比，生活在同一地域范围内的爱尔兰人是少之又少。

The Columbian Exchange continues to this day. The Pará rubber tree, originally from Brazil, now occupies huge swathes of southeast Asia, providing the latex necessary to make the tires, belts, O-rings and gaskets that invisibly maintain industrial civilization. (Synthetic rubber of equal quality still cannot be practicably manufactured.)

　　哥伦布交换在现代继续发挥作用。帕拉(Pará)橡胶树，原产自巴西，现在已经占据了东南亚的广大地域，并提供橡胶。橡胶是生产在幕后支撑工业文明的轮胎、胶带、O型圈和垫片等产品的必不可少的原料。（与天然橡胶同等质量的合成橡胶仍然不能实际生产。）

Asian rubber plantations owe their existence to a British swashbuckler named Henry Wickham, who in 1876 smuggled 70,000 rubber seeds from Brazil to London's Kew Gardens. Rubber-tree plantations are next to impossible in the tree's Amazonian home, because they are wiped out by an aggressive native fungus, Microcyclus ulei. Much as the potato blight crossed the Atlantic, M. ulei will surely make its way across the Pacific one day, with consequences as disastrous as they are predictable.

　　亚洲能够出现橡胶种植园应当归功于一名叫亨利·威克姆的英国流氓。他在1876年从巴西偷运了7万颗橡胶树种子到伦敦的英国皇家植物园。由于橡胶树在其亚马逊老家被具有侵略性的本土真菌-南美叶疫病菌所消灭，所以继续种植橡胶树几乎不可能了。南美叶疫病菌与跨越大西洋的马铃薯枯萎病非常类似，总有一天它会跨越太平洋，其后果也会和预测的一样是灾难性的。

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In Southeast Asia, rubber trees now occupy huge swathes of land; plantations are nearly impossible in the tree's Amazonian home because of a native fungus. A rubber tapper extracts latex in Brazil, above.

在东南亚，橡胶树占据了大块土地；橡胶树的亚马逊老家因为本土真菌的原因，橡胶种植园几近绝迹。图为割胶工人正在巴西提取树胶undefined

Species have always moved around, taking advantage of happenstance or favorable circumstances. But the Columbian Exchange, like a biological Internet, has put every part of the natural world in contact with every other, refashioning it, for better or worse, at a staggering rate. 

　　生物物种总是会利用偶然的机会或者是适宜的环境四处散布。但是哥伦布交换就像一张生物互联网一样，不管结果好坏，都会以一种难以置信的速度让自然世界的每一部分与其它的部分接触并获得新生。undefined

The consequences are as hard to predict as those of globalization itself. Even as plantations of Brazilian rubber take over tropical forests in Southeast Asia, plantations of soybeans, a Chinese legume, are replacing almost 80,000 square miles of the southern Amazon, an area almost the size of Britain. In dry northeastern Brazil, Australian eucalyptus covers more than 15,000 square miles. Returning the favor, entrepreneurs in Australia are now attempting to establish plantations of açaí, a Brazilian palm tree whose fruit has been endorsed by celebrities as being super-healthful.

　　由此带来的后果就像那些全球化过程本身一样难以预测。甚至当巴西橡胶树种植园主宰了东南亚的热带森林的时候，大豆（一种中国的豆类植物）的种植园也正在占据南亚马逊（几乎相当于英国的大小的一片区域）几乎8万平方英里的地域。在干旱的巴西东北部，澳大利亚桉树覆盖了1.5万多平方英里的土地。巴西也投桃报李，澳大利亚的企业家正在尝试建立一种叫作阿萨伊（açaí）的巴西棕榈树的种植园。这种树的果实已经被社会名流赞誉为超级健康的果实。
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All of these developments will yield positive economic results—soy exports, for instance, are making Brazil into an agricultural powerhouse, lifting the fortunes of countless poor farmers in remote places. But the downside of the ongoing Columbian Exchange is equally stark. Forests in the U.S. are being devastated by a host of foreign pests, including sudden oak death, a cousin of potato blight that is probably from southern China; the emerald ash borer, an insect from northern China that probably arrived in ship pallets; and white pine blister rust, a native of Siberia first seen in the Pacific Northwest in 1920. 

　　所有这些新的事件都将产生积极的经济效果，比如大豆的出口正在使巴西成为农业粮仓，也使偏远地区无数贫苦的农民增加了财富。但是，正在继续进行的哥伦布交换的负面问题也同样尖锐。美国的森林正在被大量外来虫害毁坏，包括橡树的突然死亡等，这是一种可能来自中国南方的与马铃薯枯萎病同属的虫害；白蜡窄吉丁虫，这种来自中国北方的昆虫可能是随着轮船上的货盘到的美国；还有白松疱锈病菌，是西伯利亚本土物种，1920年在太平洋西北部首次发现。undefined

Forests full of dead trees are prone to catastrophic fires, a convulsive agent of change. New species will rush in to replace those that are lost, with effects that cannot be known in advance. We will simply have to wait to see what kind of landscape our children will inherit. 

　　满是死树的森林容易招致惨重的大火，这是一种具有骤发性动因的改变。新的物种会猛冲进来取代灭绝的老物种，其影响是人们不会提前知道的。我们就等着看我们的孩子会继承什么样的风景吧。undefined

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American forests are being devastated by foreign pests—and forests full of dead trees are prone to catastrophic fires. A fire in Washington State, above.

美洲的森林被外来害虫毁坏---满是死树的森林容易招致惨重的大火。上图为华盛顿州的山火undefined

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Today our news is dominated by stories of debt deals and novel computer applications and strife in the Middle East. But centuries from now, historians may well see our own era as we have started to see the rise of the modern West: as yet another chapter in the unfolding tumult of the Columbian Exchange.

　　今天我们的新闻里充斥债务危机的报道、神奇的计算机应用和中东的冲突。但从现在开始的几个世纪里，就像我们已经开始审视了现代西方世界的崛起一样，历史学家会好好地观察我们自己的时代：下一章节：揭开到现在为止的哥伦布交换的混沌状态。undefined

—Mr. Mann is the author of "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created," which will be published next week. 

　　—本文作者曼恩先生也是《1493：哥伦布新世界揭秘》（1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created）的作者。该书将于下周出版。
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