1. We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.

　　2.The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas -- legends handed down from one generation of story tales to another.

　　3.Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from.

　　4.Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.

　　5.But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas,if they had any, are forgotten.

　　參考翻譯：

　　1.我們從書籍中可讀到5,000 年前近東發(fā)生的事情，那里的人最早學會了寫字。

　　2.他們保存歷史的唯一辦法是將歷史當作傳說講述，由講述人一代接一代地將史實描述為傳奇故事口傳下來。

　　3.人類學家過去不清楚如今生活在太平洋諸島上的波利尼西亞人的祖先來自何方。

　　4.石頭是不會腐爛的。因此，盡管制造這些工具的人的骨頭早已蕩然無存，但遠古時代的石頭工具卻保存了下來。

　　5.但是，和我們相似的原始人生活的年代太久遠了，因此，有關(guān)他們的傳說既使有如今也失傳了。