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城市地质学 URBAN GEOLOGY
由 mylingo 周二 九月 30, 2014 9:51 pm
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/features/helen-gordon/urban-geology
URBAN GEOLOGY
城市地质学
You don't need to set off on a field trip to find stones that are older than the human race. Helen Gordon goes walking with geologists in London and Naples and adjusts her watch to deep time
你不需要去实地考察，寻找比人类还古老的石头。海伦·戈登与伦敦和那不勒斯的地质学家一同行走，将手表调整到“深时”。
EVERY WEEKEND, AS the buses rumble down Regent Street, people pile into the Apple Store to spend their savings on the thrill of the new. If they were to look down on their way in, they would feel the shock of the old. The pavement is made of grey sandstone, engraved with fine bands of curving lines—the ripples from the current of a river that flowed through what is now the Pennines, then a region of swamps, dense vegetation, high mountains and wide-open flood plains. The ripples are from 300m years ago.
每到周末，伴随着公共汽车驶过摄政街的隆隆声，人们挤进苹果商店，掏出积蓄，激动地买入新款手机。如果他们看一眼脚下的路，也许将感觉到来自远古的震颤。路面由灰色砂岩铺就而成，一道道刻痕历历在目，那是一条大河的波澜涟漪，它曾流经奔宁山脉，以及无数沼泽、植被、高山和开阔的泛滥平原。这些遗迹可追溯到3亿年前。
This was during a geological period known as the Carboniferous. Mammals and dinosaurs had yet to evolve. On the land, amphibians moved among tree ferns and horsetails. The unnamed river contained tiny rock particles. As it flowed, these were deposited on the river bed and over time, through processes of compaction and cementation, they formed the sandstone known as Yorkstone—London’s traditional paving material. When you stop and stare down at the sandstone, you have a glimpse of a world that existed long before humanity.
它们的形成年代是石炭地质时期，哺乳动物和恐龙尚未横空出世，在地面上，两栖动物在树蕨类植物和杉叶藻之间移动。这条不知名的河流裹挟着微小的岩石颗粒，随着水流的冲刷，它们沉积在河床，长年累月，经过挤压和粘连的过程，形成一种被称为约克石的砂岩，也就是伦敦传统的铺路材料。当你停下脚步凝视砂岩时，无异于向那个先于人类存在已久的亘古世界匆匆一瞥。
Urban or street geology, by contrast, is young. In the 1970s a geologist at University College London (UCL), Dr Eric Robinson, began exploring the idea that geology could be taught not just on far-flung field trips but through the buildings and streets of our cities. Britons may not often go to Norway, but they can find polished Norwegian Larvikite on shop fronts in their local high street. It’s an igneous rock, meaning that it was formed when magma, molten rock, subsequently cooled. It’s also rather beautiful: dark green-blue with iridescent feldspar crystals. In April I went to Waterloo station to talk to Dr Ruth Siddall, who worked with Robinson. She first met him in 1989, when she was studying for a PhD in plate tectonics at UCL. At the time, Robinson was a lone voice arguing that there was historical and cultural value in the serious study of the building materials that make up our cities. He was also publishing a series of geo-walks around London for students and members of the public.
相对而言，城市或街道地质学则是年轻的。20世纪70年代在伦敦大学学院，地质学家埃里克·罗宾逊博士开始探索一种想法，即地质学课程不应仅限于遥远的实地考察，而要通过我们城市的建筑和街道来传道授业。英国人可能不会经常去往挪威，但他们可以在当地主要街道的店铺门前找到抛光的挪威歪碱正长岩。它是火成岩，是岩浆熔化、冷却后的产物。它又极其美丽，是一种带有蓝色闪光的深绿色长石晶体。今年四月我去滑铁卢车站，与露丝·西多尔聊了聊。以前她与罗宾逊一起工作，两人第一次见面是在1989年，当时她在伦敦大学学院攻读板块构造学博士学位。那个时期，只有罗宾逊一个人认为，认真研究构成城市的建筑材料，有助于挖掘城市历史和文化价值，并为学生和市民出版了一系列伦敦周边的地质漫步丛书。
“The stones of London”, Siddall said, “come from all over the world.” For much of history and in most places, people have tended to build their towns and cities using whichever rocks were closest to hand. This was never possible in London, which rises up out of a natural basin underlain by the chalk that crops out in the Chiltern Hills to the north-west and the North Downs to the south. Bricks were once made locally, but the clays on which the city is built, and the surrounding chalk, are too soft to make satisfactory building stones. Siddall had agreed to take me on a new geo-walk from Waterloo to St Paul’s. In Benugo, the café where we were having coffee, she took a picture of the countertop: “marble,” she said, “a metamorphic rock, possibly from Carrara in Italy.” Metamorphic is one of the three main categories of rock, along with igneous and sedimentary, and it is related to one or the other—its name means an igneous or sedimentary rock that has been altered through processes of heat and pressure.
西多尔说，“伦敦的石头来自世界各地。”在大部分历史时期和大多数地方，人们都倾向于就地取材，建造城镇和城市。在伦敦则绝无可能，因为这座城市耸立在一片天然盆地之中，白垩基底向西北延伸至奇尔特恩丘陵，向南延伸至北部丘陵。当地人曾经烧制砖瓦，但城中的粘土和城基的白垩太软，难以成为令人满意的建筑石料。西多尔同意带我来一次从滑铁卢到圣保罗的新式地质漫步。在我们喝咖啡的拜奴歌咖啡馆，她取出相机，对着台面拍照：“大理石，”她说，“一种变质岩，可能来自意大利卡拉拉。”变质岩是三类岩石中的一种，另外两种是火成岩和沉积岩，变质岩与它们两种皆有联系，从名称上就能看出，火成岩和沉积岩经过加热、加压后可生成变质岩。
Around us the sun shone strongly on the white walls of the station and the towering Victory Arch. Waterloo was constructed between 1900 and 1922, using London’s classic building material: a limestone from Dorset called Portland Stone, a sedimentary rock that formed on the floor of a shallow Jurassic sea around 145m years ago, when Dorset had a climate like present-day Barbados. Siddall showed me how the seemingly smooth su***ce of the rock is actually formed from millions of ooliths—tiny spheres of calcium carbonate moulded by tidal action—and broken-shell sand. Fragments of grey oyster shell are visible. First transported to London by sea, it was used by the architect Inigo Jones in 1619, and then extensively by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor in the construction of their churches. It’s what UCL itself, Whitehall, the British Museum and much else is made of. Its popularity derives from its accessibility, plentiful supply, ability to withstand the weather, and its being what is known in the trade as a freestone—it can be cut in any direction.
在我们周围，阳光强烈地照射着车站的白色墙壁和高耸的凯旋门。滑铁卢车站是1900-1922年间建造的，使用了伦敦经典的建筑材料：来自多赛特郡的石灰石，也叫波特兰石，那是一种可上溯到1.45亿年前的沉积岩，形成地点位于一处浅浅的侏罗纪海洋底部，当时多塞特郡的气候与现今的巴巴多斯好有一比。西多尔向我展示了这种岩石看似光滑的表面，实际上它是由数以百万计的鲕石（因潮汐作用形成的微小碳酸钙球体）和外表破损的砂砾组成的，灰色蚝壳碎片清晰可见。它先是从海上运抵伦敦，1619年被建筑师伊尼戈·琼斯所采用，后来又被克里斯托弗·雷恩和尼古拉斯·霍克斯莫尔广泛用于教堂的建设，伦敦大学学院、白厅、大英博物馆和许多其他建筑都使用了这种石材。它之所以广受欢迎，原因在于原料易于采集，供应充足，对天气变化有很强的适应性，在贸易中它被称为易切砂岩，因为人们可以从任何方向对它进行切割。
As we walked, Siddall took pictures and made notes for a catalogue of London stones she is compiling in cahoots with the Geologists’ Association, and for a series of geo-walks that she publishes online and leads in person. Two teenagers stared as we stopped to snap some granite at the base of an office building. “Doing this,” Siddall said, “you have to adopt a no-shame approach to looking like a complete geek in public.”
我们一边走着，西多尔一边拍照、做笔记，她正在与地质学家协会合作，编制一本伦敦石头目录，同时，还在网上发布一系列地缘漫步资料，并作个人收集之用。当我们在一座办公楼前停下来、抓拍几张花岗岩照片时，两名少年盯着我们看。“要想这样做，”西多尔说，“你必须厚着脸皮，别怕成为公众眼中的十足怪胎。”
She used to work in what might be called geo-archaeology, studying the geology of Greek and Roman building stones. Now she is dean of student welfare at UCL, a position that allows her to pursue her fascination with urban geology, free from the restrictions of the geology department. Eric Robinson’s approach to geology, placing it within human frameworks and timescales, still doesn’t sit comfortably with the subject as it is studied in British academia.
她以前的工作属于地质考古领域，研究希腊和罗马建筑用石的地质情况。现在，她在伦敦大学学院的学生福利处主任，这个职务让她可以探索自己所迷恋的城市地质学，而不受地质系的限制。埃里克·罗宾逊提出的方法（也就是将地质学置于人类框架和时间围度内）依然难容于英国学术界当下正在研究的主题。
On the South Bank, outside the Royal Festival Hall, we saw the oldest rock on our walk: a glassy black gabbro from Pretoria, 2 billion years old, which forms the plinth for the giant bust of Nelson Mandela, erected in 1985. Inside the hall, visitors milled around, banners advertised a performance by the Simón Bolívar Youth Choir of Venezuela, and we looked at slabs of Derbyshire Fossil limestone. It’s a remarkable purplish stone filled with lighter-coloured shapes: discs, rectangles, things that look a little like tuning forks, and other things that look like chrysalises. In their profusion they reminded me of the images of deep space captured by the Hubble telescope. They are, in fact, the fossilised remains of a grove of crinoids or sea lilies, creatures from Carboniferous times, around 50m years before the dinosaurs. “This is the best example of a crinoidal limestone”, Siddall said, “that I’ve seen anywhere in the world.” You can see more of it at Hermès in Bond Street, where the leftovers from the Festival Hall ended up.
在南岸的皇家节日音乐厅外，我们看到了本次漫游中最古老的岩石：比勒陀利亚的玻黑辉长岩，已有20亿年历史了，位于纳尔逊·曼德拉巨型半身像的底座，这座雕像是1985年的作品。在大厅里，游客们往来穿梭，横幅广告上印着委内瑞拉西蒙·玻利瓦尔青年合唱团的演出场景，而我们则在注视着来自德比郡的化石石灰岩地砖。这是一种奇异的紫色石材，上面遍布各种浅色图形：圆形，长方形，这边看起来有点像音叉，那里看起来像蚕蛹。五花八门、不胜枚举，让我不由得想起哈勃太空望远镜在太空中拍摄的图像。事实上，它们是海百合的化石遗迹，那是一种石炭纪时代的生物，生长于5000万年前，比恐龙出现得还早。“这是海百合灰岩的最好实例，”西多尔说，“我已经看过了世界所有地方。”当皇家节日音乐厅的喧嚣散尽后，你还可以在邦德街的爱马仕门店看到更多。
Crossing Blackfriars Bridge, we talked about the American geologist who saw a video of Osama bin Laden preaching in Afghanistan and wrote to the Pentagon, saying he had recognised the rock face in the background and knew, pretty much, where the video had been filmed. Geologists tend to be specialists. Once, on a field trip to a chalk quarry near London, I asked the organiser which was his favourite rock. The group was silent until one of the men turned to me and explained in scandalised tones that I’d just asked the country’s foremost chalk expert to name his favourite rock.
穿过黑衣修士桥，我们谈到一位美国地质学家看到奥萨马·本·拉登在阿富汗的宣讲视频，写信给五角大楼说，他认出背景里的岩石表面，非常清楚地知道视频是在哪里拍摄的。地质学家往往术业有专攻。有一次，在实地考察伦敦附近的白垩采石场时我问组织者，他最喜欢什么岩石？大家都沉默了，最终其中一人转过身来，用令人不舒服的语气说，我竟然向英国最重要的白垩专家询问他最喜欢什么岩石！
I decided to risk asking Siddall the same question. “Granites,” she said. “They’re sort of like ice cream: the same basic recipe but a whole world of flavours.”
我决定冒险向西多尔提出同样问题。“花岗岩，”她说，“它们有点儿像冰淇淋：配方基本相同，但世界各地口味各异。”
For granite, another igneous rock, the ingredients in the recipe are feldspar, quartz and mica. The colour ranges from a kind of oatmeal—the Cornish granite at the base of Waterloo station—to dark red and the polished salmon pink of Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire, which forms the pedestal for the statue of Queen Victoria at the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge. When polished, it can look rather like one of those aspic dishes from a 1970s cookbook.
花岗岩是另一种火成岩，主要成分是长石、石英和云母，颜色范围从燕麦色（例如建造滑铁卢车站基座的康沃尔花岗岩）到暗红色，再到光亮的橙红色（例如来自阿伯丁郡的彼得赫德花岗岩，黑衣修士桥北端的维多利亚女王雕像就是用它制成的。）打磨抛光后，花岗岩看上去相当可人，酷似20世纪70年代食谱中的花色肉冻。
We stopped to watch a boat filled with tourists chugging down the Thames. “You know the other great thing about granite?” Siddall said. “It’s why dry land exists.” About 4 billion years ago, granite, because of its buoyancy, was the material that rose to form the continental crust—the land that Europeans live on. In Britain, it’s the stuff of stone kerbs.
我们停下来，观看一条满载游客的小船沿泰晤士河隆隆而下。 “关于花岗岩，你知道还有另一桩了不起的事吗？”西多尔说，“陆地的成因就在于此。”大约40亿年前，在浮力的作用下花岗岩升起，形成了大陆地壳，也就是欧洲人赖以生存的土地。在英国，花岗岩被用作路缘石。
DURING THE 19TH century, granite and other materials could be more readily carried to London from around the country, thanks to rising wealth and the development of the railways. Nowadays, building stones tend to come from farther afield. On our walk we found stones from Cornwall, Dorset, Aberdeenshire, the Scottish Highlands, Italy, Greece, Norway, Sweden, China, South Africa and Australia. Ever since the Romans, who transported marble to London, certain special stones have always been brought in from overseas. (To see a fine example, go for a drink, as we did, in the art-nouveau interior of the Black Friar pub, with its green, purple and ochre marbles.) But today more everyday materials, such as granite for kerbstones, come from far away too. As Ted Nield shows in a new book, “Underlands”, the low price of oil and of foreign labour (with all that implies regarding the chances of decent working conditions) now makes it much cheaper for a British firm to source granite from China or India than Aberdeenshire. This is something that troubles Nield and Siddall.
在19世纪，由于财富的不断增长和铁路的发展，花岗岩和其他材料可以更轻而易举地从英国各地运到伦敦，如今，石料往往来自更远的地方。在我们漫步途中，看过的石头分别来自康沃尔郡、多塞特郡、阿伯丁郡、苏格兰高地、意大利、希腊、挪威、瑞典、中国、南非和澳大利亚。自从罗马人将大理石运抵伦敦以来，某些特殊的石头便一直从海外远道而来。（要想看到很好的实例，不妨学学我们，去喝点儿酒，因为黑弗莱尔酒吧富有新艺术风格的内部，就是用绿色、紫色和赭色大理石装饰而成的。）但在今天，日常使用的更多建筑材料（如花岗岩路边石）来自遥远他乡。正如泰德·尼尔德在新书《地下世界》中所论述的，出于低廉的油价和国外劳动力（所需成本要将体面的工作环境计算在内）的缘故，如今英国公司已不再从阿伯丁郡采购石材，代之以中国或印度的花岗岩。这种事令尼尔德和西多尔相当头痛。
Partly it is about retaining the character of a building or area: a granite from India is not the same as a granite from Cornwall. More urgently, it’s an environmental issue. The farther we move our building materials, the more fossil fuels we burn. In the midst of a global warming that the vast majority of scientists link to an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this cannot be sensible. To complicate matters, many of Britain’s rocks now lie beneath areas designated as national parks and cannot be easily quarried. The situation turns into a paradox: the beauty of the landscape is preserved in the short term, at the expense of the existence of the landscape, in its current form, in the future.
部分麻烦跟保留建筑物或地区的特色有关：印度花岗岩与康沃尔花岗岩大不一样。更紧迫的是，这牵涉到环境问题。我们采购建筑材料的地点越远，燃烧的化石燃料越多。绝大多数科学家都会把大气中二氧化碳的增加与全球气候变暖联系起来，在当前的大背景下，这样做是不明智的。更复杂的是，英国许多岩石的现存区域已被划为国家公园，不能轻易开采。这种情况演变成一种悖论：景观之美可在短期内得以保存，其代价是，该景观未来将无法以现有形式留存于世。
Earlier this year I went to a talk at the Geological Society, where a former president, Bryan Lovell, spoke about a climate event 55m years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Geologists studying the rocks can tell that massive amounts of carbon were injected into the atmosphere, and there was a sharp increase in global temperature. “The PETM event wiped out a lot of mammals,” Siddall told me. “Mammalian evolution had to start again after that, so we know that it’s not good for us mammals, a heating climate. Yes, the Earth will recalibrate and something else will appear, but it won’t be us, and that’s not a nice thought.”
今年早些时候，我去地质学会听一场演讲，该学会前会长布莱恩·洛弗尔谈到5500万年前的一次气候事件，也就是众所周知的古新世-始新世极热事件。地质学家从岩石研究中发现，大量碳被释放到大气中，导致全球气温急剧上升。“古新世-始新世极热事件造成大批哺乳动物灭绝，”西多尔告诉我。“此后，哺乳动物的进化不得不重新开始，所以我们知道气候变暖对我们哺乳动物十分不利。是的，地球将重新调整，其他东西会出现，但不会是我们，这种想法让人觉得不妙。”
“A BLINDFOLDED GEOLOGIST entering a brand new town, unknown to him, will have information on the local geology just by [looking at] the materials used in the buildings.” So said Francesco Rodolico (1905-88), a mineralogist and petrographer. I came across the quotation in a paper in the Journal of the Virtual Explorer, and was struck by the contrast between a city such as London and Rodolico’s town, built of local materials. Yes, London has its traditional building stones but a geologist set down on the South Bank might struggle to explain the local geology using the Festival Hall. Soon after my walk with Ruth Siddall, I travelled to Italy to meet one of the paper’s authors, Professor Vincenzo Morra, head of the department of earth sciences at the University of Naples Federico II.
“一位地质学家被蒙上眼睛，进到一座崭新的小镇，虽然对这里一无所知，但只有看看建筑物上所用的建材，他就能够了解当地的地质信息，”矿物学家、岩相学家弗朗西斯·罗多里科如是说。我在《实用勘探》杂志的一篇文章里碰巧看到了这句话，伦敦和罗多里科镇两地的建筑材料对比也让我大开眼界。是的，伦敦拥有传统的建筑石料，但一位闲坐在南岸的地质学家可能很难解释皇家节日音乐厅所展示的本地地质状况。与露丝·西多尔一同漫步后不久，我前往意大利，见到了此文的作者文森佐·莫拉教授，他是那不勒斯费德里克二世大学地球科学系的系主任。
Built on a slope, Naples rises up from the harbour towards green hilltops. Dim and narrow streets run between tall buildings, laundry hangs from windows, scooters buzz everywhere and passageways open suddenly onto dusty sunlit squares. Churches with plain façades reveal interiors of rich marble and gleaming gold and silver. The university, founded in 1224 and counting Thomas Aquinas among its alumni, occupies a series of imposing buildings in the historic city centre. It also contains the beautiful Royal Museum of Mineralogy (1801) with its rows of glass-fronted wooden cabinets filled with 25,000 specimens from around the world.
那不勒斯城建在斜坡之上，从海港向上延伸到绿色的山头。高楼林立，昏暗狭窄的街道蜿蜒其间，洗好的衣裳挂在窗口，滑板车的嗡嗡声随处可闻，小巷尽头赫然呈现出一方阳光明媚、尘土飞扬的广场。教堂的外墙稀松平常，内部却全部由大理石镶嵌而成，散发着金色和银色的夺目光芒。这所大学始建于1224年，校友中包括中世纪哲学家和神学家托马斯·阿奎那。整座学院占据了一系列坐落在市中心、历史悠久的恢弘建筑，市中心实施的建筑，还包括美丽的皇家矿物博物馆，成排的玻璃门木柜里装满了来自世界各地的2.5万个标本。
I met Morra in his office, which is white-walled and high-ceilinged. He stubbed out his cigarette in a lumpy grey ashtray: “made of lava”, he said, “from Mount Etna.” Some of his colleagues arrived and located the espresso machine, wedged among the piles of books. Someone mentioned the Rodolico quotation and all the geologists started talking about colours. A city built from local materials will often have a distinctive colour scheme. Rome is white and red—white from the travertine, a form of limestone, and red from the bricks. Florence is white (marble), grey (Pietra Serena, a sandstone) and green (serpentine). Naples is dusty grey and sandy yellow: Vesuvian lava, Piperno and Neapolitan Yellow Tuff.
我在莫拉那间白墙面、高屋顶的办公室里见到了他。他在一只外观疙疙瘩瘩的灰色烟灰缸里掐灭了香烟：“熔岩制成的，”他说，“取自埃特纳火山。”他的一些同事赶到，到处寻找咖啡机，在成堆的书籍间出出进进。有人提到罗多里科的名言，所有地质学家开始谈起颜色。就地取材建造的城镇往往有着鲜明的配色方案。罗马是白色和红色——白色是石灰华（石灰石的一种形式），红色是红砖。佛罗伦萨是白色（大理石）、灰色（彼得拉小威，砂岩）和绿色（蛇纹石），那不勒斯是土灰色和沙黄色——维苏威火山的熔岩、皮佩尔诺和那不勒斯的黄凝灰岩。
Where the traditional stones of London were largely formed under water (Portland Stone, Yorkstone), the stones of Naples come from fire. They are igneous rocks, volcanic in origin. The Neapolitans, like the Romans and the Greeks before them, live in a landscape ruled by volcanic activity. This is fertile country, but unsettled. From the Museum of Mineralogy you can see the towering blue peak of Vesuvius, which last erupted in 1944. To the west, where Morra and his colleague Professor Alessio Langella live, is a largely flat, densely populated volcanic area of craters, hot springs and fumeroles called Campi Flegrei, the Fiery Fields (from the Greek phlego, to burn). “Probably more dangerous than Vesuvius,” Langella explained cheerfully, “because the eruption is not happening in just one place.” He and Morra first met at secondary school in Naples. They were particularly amused by the fact that Langella’s house is situated over a red spot—an area rated as being at risk from volcanic activity. Later, Langella spoke of Italy’s need for more professional geologists. “Because we have landslides, we have earthquakes, we have floods, we have volcanoes—anything you are looking for, you can find here!”
伦敦的传统石材很大程度上是在水下形成的（例如波特兰石、约克石），那不勒斯的石头则来自火中。它们是岩浆岩，即火山岩的前身。那不勒斯人像他们之前的罗马人和希腊人一样，生活在火山活动统治的版图上。这是一个富饶的国度，但变化莫测。从矿物学博物馆，你可以看到维苏威火山，它的最后一次爆发是在1944年。在博物馆西部，也就是莫拉及其同事阿莱西奥·兰杰拉教授生活的地方，是一片地势平坦、人口密集的区域，到处是火山口、温泉和喷气孔，名叫坎比佛莱格瑞，也被称为“愤怒之地”。“大概比维苏威更危险，”兰杰拉乐呵呵地解释说，“因为喷发不会只发生在一个地方。”他和莫拉的第一次见面是在那不勒斯中学。他们觉得特别有趣的一点是，兰杰拉的房子位于可能遭受火山活动侵袭的红点地区。后来，兰杰拉谈到意大利需要更多专业地质学家。“因为我们有山体滑坡，我们有地震，我们有水灾，我们有火山——你正在寻觅的一切，在这里都能找到！”
A volcanic eruption is the release of magma at the Earth’s su***ce. The magma flows from a vent or fissure in the form of fiery sticky liquid, or lava, with a temperature of 700–1,200 degrees Celsius. This may be accompanied by explosive eruptions, which emit particles of solid rock, ranging from tiny fragments of volcanic ash to large blocks of broken rock. When Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the town of Pompeii was buried in a hot ash deposit up to six metres thick, killing most of the inhabitants. Walking with Morra and Langella through the centre of Naples, I kept thinking about how very domesticated all this fire and brimstone was. On a day trip to Pompeii you can see those famous casts of ash-buried bodies, but in the Museum of Mineralogy are a series of jaunty souvenir medallions moulded from the lava of later eruptions, and on the streets of Naples the residents go about their daily business walking over dark grey pitted slabs of Vesuvian lava.
火山喷发在地表释放出岩浆。岩浆以火热的粘稠状液体或熔岩的形式，从排气孔或裂隙中流出，温度可达700-1,200摄氏度。这期间可能伴随着爆炸性爆发，喷射出固体岩石颗粒，从微小的火山灰碎片到大块岩石全部都有。当维苏威火山在公元79年爆发时，庞贝城被掩埋在刘米厚的灼热火山灰中，大部分居民丧生。与莫拉和兰杰拉步行穿过那不勒斯城中心，我一直在思考，人们到底用了什么方法，使所有这些火焰和硫磺变得如此驯服。庞贝古城一日游能让你看到那些掩埋在灰烬中、大大有名的尸体演员，但在矿物学博物馆，却能见到一系列用后来火山喷发出的岩浆浇筑成型的纪念图章，趣味盎然，而在那不勒斯的街道上，居民们则走过维苏威火山熔岩制成的、坑坑洼洼的暗灰色石板上，如常地过日子。
In a quiet courtyard with busts of illustrious men set among palm trees and bright green vegetation, we stopped to examine a weathered grey column of the rock known as Piperno. “This”, said Morra, “is the product of the largest eruption in the Mediterranean for 200,000 years.”
在一处安静的庭院中，几座名人半身塑像伫立在棕榈树和翠绿色植被之间，我们停下来审视一片被称为皮佩尔诺的灰色风化岩石。莫拉说，“这是地中海最大一次火山喷发的产物，距今20万年。”
The Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption took place in the Campi Flegrei area 39,000 years ago. Beside it, the destruction of Pompeii and even Krakatoa pale into insignificance. An area roughly the size of Belgium was covered with a fast-flowing mixture of extremely hot ash, flying rocks and white-hot boulders as big as houses. “Materials from the blast have been found as far away as Russia,” Morra said. The rock it created, the Piperno, is found nowhere else in the world. It is formed from compressed light grey volcanic ash with fragments of black flattened scoriae (basaltic lava ejected from a volcano), also known as fiammae. A hard, heavy rock, it is used occasionally for facing buildings—it gives the Gesù Nuovo church its forbidding, fortress-like air—and more typically for portals and ornamentation. Sometimes, depending on the cut of the stone, the fiammae look like little black flames flickering over the su***ces of the buildings.
3.9万年前在坎比佛莱格瑞地区，发生了坎帕尼亚熔结凝灰岩超级火山爆发。在它旁边，庞贝城、甚至喀拉喀托火山的破坏规模堪称小巫见大巫。这片区域的面积与比利时国土相差无几，被快速流动的极热火山灰、飞溅岩石和房子般大小的白热圆石的混合物所覆盖。“火山喷发的物质最远飞到了俄罗斯，”莫拉说。这场爆发创造了皮佩尔诺岩石，在世界上绝无仅有。它是由浅灰色火山灰和扁平的黑色火山渣（也就是从火山喷出的玄武岩熔岩）共同挤压而成的。因为材质坚硬笨重，偶尔会用在建筑表面，赋予新耶稣教堂一种拒人千里、固若金汤的威严，但是，更常见的用途是制成大门和纹饰。有时候，由于石材切割的角度关系，皮佩尔诺岩石会产生出黑色小火苗在建筑物表面摇曳不定的效果。
In the streets to the north of the university, we passed Roman walls with diamond patterns picked out in pink bricks and yellow stones, and excavated blocks of sandy-coloured Greek masonry. For thousands of years people have been building here, often using the same rock: Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. Compared with the South African gabbro, the tuff is a young rock, a mere 15,000 years old. Like the Piperno, it is unique to this area and composed of compressed volcanic ash, but it is the product of a later, smaller eruption. It’s also much softer, lighter and more easily cut—a good building stone, if protected from weathering—typically with a covering of yellow plaster that echoes the sandy colour of the stone itself. Where the plaster has fallen away, the tuff has a spongy appearance, filled with tiny holes that look like air bubbles. Near the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, I ran a finger lightly across an exposed block and it crumbled like the wall of a sandcastle. Alongside the grand churches and palaces and busy piazzas, you notice broken masonry, graffitied walls, small chapels closed for some indeterminably stalled restoration project. “The most important problem for conservation in Napoli”, Langella said, “is finding the money.”
在通往大学北侧的街道上，我们通过了一处罗马风格的城墙，装饰有钻石图案，用料包括粉红色砖块、黄色石头，以及从希腊挖掘的砂土色岩石。千百年来人们一直在这里建造，往往使用相同石材：那不勒斯黄凝灰岩。与南非辉长岩相比，凝灰岩是一种年轻的岩石，形成年代距今仅有1.5万年。像皮佩尔诺岩石一样，它在此地是独一无二的，也是由火山灰压缩而成，但它源自后来一次规模更小的火山喷发。凝灰岩也更软、更轻、更易切割，可谓一种良好的建筑用石，如果不受风化侵蚀，通常会有一层黄色灰泥覆盖与石材本身的沙土色相呼应。如果这层灰泥消失的话，凝灰岩便会呈现出海绵状外观，布满了貌似气泡的微孔。在圣多梅尼科教堂广场，我用手指轻轻滑过一块裸露的岩石，它像沙堡的城墙一样破碎了。除了宏伟的教堂、宫殿和人流如织的广场，你还会注意到断裂的砖石、涂鸦墙、暂时停工亟待修复的小教堂。兰杰拉说，“保护那不勒斯的最重要问题是找到钱。”
PRODUCERS OF WINE talk about terroir, the idea that the soil, topography and climate of the land imparts certain qualities to the grapes grown there. Ruth Siddall believes in a terroir for stones, and it seems to fit the architecture of Naples. Whereas London builders had to send away for stones, the Neapolitans simply dug downwards, taking the tuff from underneath their city and piling it back up above ground in the form of houses, shops and public buildings. They left behind an immense network of passageways and around 2,000 caverns, a second city deep within the tuff. Later, these underground spaces became, among other things, water tanks and rubbish tips.
红酒制造商谈起风土，也就是影响当地葡萄质量的土壤、地形、气候等自然因素。露丝·西多尔认为，石材也受风土影响，这似乎与那不勒斯的建筑相互吻合。伦敦建筑商从外地运来石料，那不勒斯人则不必如此大费周章，他们只需向下挖，取走城市底下的凝灰岩，将它们堆到地面，建成房屋、商店和公共建筑便大功告成。在他们身后，留下了一片庞大的地下网络，约有2,000座溶洞，成为深深隐藏在凝灰岩中的第二座城市。后来，这些地下空间被派上诸多用途，例如充当水箱和垃圾场。
Morra took me to meet a former student of his, Gianluca Minin, who is developing a partly abandoned complex of passages, the Galleria Borbonica. In the 1950s it was a city car pound, but Minin has opened the space to the public as a sort of fantastical museum, artwork, concert hall and adventure playground. As we walked through the tunnels, abandoned Alfa Romeos and crumpled Vespas loomed out of the darkness, all coated in a layer of fine powder, like something out of J.G. Ballard—a vision of the death of modernity. “In 2005 the government sent me to survey the caves here,” Minin said, “and I fell in love, as it is possible to fall in love with a woman.” He gestured towards a space where Neapolitans had sheltered from Allied bombing raids during the second world war. “I wanted to save them, to preserve the history.”
莫拉带着我去见他以前的学生赞布罗塔·米宁，后者目前正在开发一条部分被废弃的复杂通道——博尔博奈卡长廊。在20世纪50年代，这是城里一处废旧车场，但米尼已经将其改造成一座梦幻般的博物馆、艺术品、音乐厅和冒险乐园，向公众开放。当我们穿过隧道时，废弃的阿尔法罗密欧汽车和快要散架的韦士柏摩托车在黑暗隐现，一切都被涂上一层细粉，仿佛是从巴拉德的科幻小说中走出来的、现代社会消亡时的一幕。“在2005年，政府派我到这里调查这些洞穴，”米宁说，“我爱上了它，就像爱上了一个女人。”他指着一块地方，二战期间，那不勒斯人曾在那里躲避盟军的空袭。“我想拯救它们、保存历史。”
In their paper in the Journal of the Virtual Explorer, Morra and Langella wrote with concern about the declining use of traditional local building materials such as the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. It’s a familiar story. If the landscape near Naples was to be preserved, the quarrying near Naples had to cease. Morra and Langella favour a limited return to quarrying in the region, using modern, less invasive techniques, to provide materials for restoring and building significant architectural structures. In London Siddall had worried about materials being shipped from China. Near the Piazza Miraglia, Langella pointed out a new-looking grey column. “Lava, but it’s not local,” he said disapprovingly. “It’s from Mount Etna.”
在《实用勘探》杂志的文章中，莫拉和兰杰拉写到，他们为那不勒斯黄凝灰岩等传统性本地建材的使用量下降而感到忧虑。这种故事以前也有耳闻。如果要保护那不勒斯周围的景观，那不勒斯附近的采石活动必须停止。莫拉和兰杰拉赞成有限地采掘本地区的石料，方法是采用侵入性更小的现代技术，为景观修复和建设重要建筑结构提供材料。在伦敦，西多尔曾为来自中国的石材忧心忡忡。在米拉利亚广场附近，兰杰拉指着一排外观崭新的灰色圆柱。“熔岩，但不是本地的，”他不以为然地说。“这是来自意大利西西里岛埃特纳火山的。”
Before leaving Naples, I walked back to the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, passing a church with small, pinkish flowers growing high up near the bell tower. In the piazza, students with heavy boots and metal piercings sat on the paving stones, talking and smoking. The lava had a glassy aspect, polished by generations of pedestrians. How many generations? How many years? And how many more years since the limestone of Waterloo station had formed, or the gabbro of the Mandela plinth? My brain rebelled. I couldn’t even comprehend 39,000, not really. With a lifespan of 80 years, how can we grasp the concept of 300m in any meaningful sense?
离开那不勒斯前，我走回圣多米尼克教堂广场，路过一座小教堂，墙上长着粉红色花朵，已经攀得比附近的钟楼还高。在广场上，学生们穿着厚重的靴子、带着金属环，坐在铺路石上聊天、抽烟。经过几代行人的摩擦，熔岩表面像玻璃一样铮明瓦亮。多少代？多少年？自从滑铁卢车站的石灰岩或曼德拉雕像底座的辉长岩形成以来，还要度过多少年？我的大脑罢工了。我甚至无法理解3.9万年，真的不能。凭借区区80年的寿命，我们怎么了解3亿年到底是一个什么概念？
Geologists talk about the concept of deep time, meaning geological time, the amount that has passed since the beginning of the Earth, around 4.6 billion years ago. If we use the 24-hour clock analogy, whereby a single day represents the passage of deep time, land plants don’t arrive until 9.30pm, and the dinosaurs turn up at 10.40pm. Our ancestors split off from the rest of the hominids at two minutes to midnight. At this point it’s easy to feel derailed. A sense of paralysis seems a reasonable response to the immensity of the world, the smallness of the individual, the relentless crumbling of bricks.
地质学家谈论的深时理念（指的是地质年代）是指地球形成之初，大约距今46亿年前。如果我们用24小时来做个比喻，把一整天时间作为深时，那么，陆生植物要到晚上9:30才会生长出来，恐龙的现身时间是下午10:40。在午夜前两分钟，我们的祖先与原始人类的其余部分分离开来。照这样想下去，很容易让人大脑脱线。面对浩瀚的世界、渺小的人类、无情瓦解的砖石建筑，麻木一点似乎也说得过去。
In Naples, sitting outside at a café on the piazza, I looked over my notes. “It was Rodolico who first talked about the relationship between geology and building stones,” one of Morra’s colleagues had said. “Here in Napoli now, we are building very strong relationships with architects and engineers to try to solve the problems of decay, of conservation.” Slowly I became aware of some people in white overalls, entering the piazza in twos and threes. They gathered in the centre and unfurled hand-painted banners. Someone brought out a video camera. I went over to ask what was happening. A woman explained that in 2013 the European Union had awarded a large sum to restore Naples’ historic centre. (€75m, I later read.) The crowd, mostly out-of-work art and architectural restorers, wanted to draw public attention to the project. They were excited but anxious. There were rumours of delays, bureaucratic incompetence, perhaps malpractice. “There is so much work to do,” the woman said, gesturing around.
在那不勒斯，坐在广场上的咖啡厅外面，我翻看着自己我的笔记。“是罗多里科首先谈到了地质学和建筑石料之间的关系，”莫拉的一位同事说。“如今在那不勒斯这儿，我们正在建筑师和工程师之间构筑一种非常牢固的关系，试图解决被保护性建筑的腐烂问题，”慢慢地，我感觉到有人穿着白色工作服，三三两两进到广场。他们聚集在中心地带，展开手绘横幅，有人拿来出一台摄像机。我走过去询问发生了什么事。一位女士解释说，2013年欧盟已拨付了一大笔款项，用于那不勒斯历史中心的修复。（后来我了解到是7500万欧元。）这些人大部分是失业的艺术和建筑修复专家，希望引起公众对该项目的关注。他们十分兴奋，但很焦急，到处有人抱怨工期延迟、官僚无能，也许还有弊端传闻。“有一大堆工作要做，”这位女士指着周围说。
MY WALK WITH Ruth Siddall ended on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. Above us was that calm white famous façade, made of Portland Stone. The main landing on the cathedral steps is white Carrara marble with inner panels of red and grey Swedish travertine. If you crouch down to study the travertine, you can make out ghostly white markings, a segmented, cone-like shape. This is an orthocone from Ordovician times, a marine creature related to the squid.
我与露丝·西多尔的漫步在圣保罗大教堂的台阶上告一段落。在我们之上，教堂外观由波特兰石构成，通体洁白宁静，闻名遐迩。大教堂台阶的正面铺着白色的卡拉拉大理石，内部嵌板是红色和灰色的瑞典石灰华。如果你蹲下身来研究一下石灰华，就能认出幽灵般的白色斑纹，类似断裂的圆锥体。这是奥陶纪时代的巨型鹦鹉螺，一种类似鱿鱼的海洋生物。
Only a tiny proportion of life ever becomes a fossil, and only a tiny proportion of fossils are ever seen by humans. The odds are vastly stacked against it. That a creature should have died with its body intact. That an exceptional event such as a violent storm covered it with sufficient layers of sediment. That the sedimentary rock was not squeezed and changed by pressures deep in the earth so as to destroy the fossil. That the sediment formed a particular sort of rock that humans later decided was a good one to quarry. And so I thought about how strange it was, and how unlikely, that this 440m-year-old had survived, lying quietly in a piece of rock that would be selected by someone in 17th-century Sweden to ship to London to form the steps of a new cathedral. That it would be part of Nelson’s funeral in 1806 and Churchill’s in 1965, of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981, of the Occupy protests in 2012.
从古至今，只有极少一部分生命才能变为化石，而在这些化石中，又有极小一部分可以呈现在人类面前。不为人知的几率实在太高了。某个生物死亡时，躯体要完好无损。要有一次特殊性事件，例如猛烈的风暴雨，将它掩盖在足够深的地层中。沉积下来的岩石不能因地球深处的压力被挤压和改变，否则，化石将遭到破坏。这种沉积物必须形成某种特定的岩石，以满足人类的需要，因此才能被开采出来。于是我想，这块经过4.4亿年的沧桑巨变而幸存下来的岩石，静静地躺在一堆同伴中间，在17世纪的瑞典被某个人选中，运到了伦敦，变成了新教堂的一级台阶，这个过程是多么奇妙、多么匪夷所思啊！它可能见证过1806年纳尔逊的葬礼和1965年丘吉尔的追悼仪式，还亲历过1981年查尔斯和戴安娜的婚礼，以及2012年的“占领”抗议活动。
In Thomas Hardy’s novel “A Pair of Blue Eyes” (1873) Henry Knight, trapped on the side of a cliff, confronts the fossil of a trilobite. “The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him…It was the single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had ever been alive and had had a body to save, as he himself had now.” Thinking about geology can mean grappling with the shocking sweep, the impersonal vastness of geological time. A fossil delivers a different sort of shock. The shock of the small, the personal: the story of a single creature somehow like ourselves, with a body to save.
在哈代的小说《一双蓝眼睛》中，亨利·奈特被困在悬崖边，面对一块三叶虫化石。 “眼睛，死气沉沉，变成了石头，现在正盯着他......一瞬间在他的脑海中浮现出一个曾经鲜活的形象，一个需要被拯救的躯体，正如此刻的他。”从地质学的角度思考，意味着深入探索存在于人类世界之外浩瀚无垠的地质年代。化石带给人们的震撼则截然不同，那是更小的、个人的感受：一个生物的故事，在某种程度上它就像我们自己，有着亟待被拯救的身体。
As we studied the orthocone in the afternoon sun, tourists posed for photos on the steps. I thought of Knight gazing at the trilobite. “Time closed up like a fan before him. He saw himself at one extremity of the years, face to face with the beginning and all the intermediate centuries simultaneously.”
当我们在午后的阳光研究巨型鹦鹉螺时，游客们纷纷涌上台阶合影拍照。我想起奈特凝视三叶虫的情景。“时间像折扇一样合起来。他看见自己站在岁月的尽头，同时面对着开端，以及中间的数百年。”
URBAN GEOLOGY
城市地质学
You don't need to set off on a field trip to find stones that are older than the human race. Helen Gordon goes walking with geologists in London and Naples and adjusts her watch to deep time
你不需要去实地考察，寻找比人类还古老的石头。海伦·戈登与伦敦和那不勒斯的地质学家一同行走，将手表调整到“深时”。
EVERY WEEKEND, AS the buses rumble down Regent Street, people pile into the Apple Store to spend their savings on the thrill of the new. If they were to look down on their way in, they would feel the shock of the old. The pavement is made of grey sandstone, engraved with fine bands of curving lines—the ripples from the current of a river that flowed through what is now the Pennines, then a region of swamps, dense vegetation, high mountains and wide-open flood plains. The ripples are from 300m years ago.
每到周末，伴随着公共汽车驶过摄政街的隆隆声，人们挤进苹果商店，掏出积蓄，激动地买入新款手机。如果他们看一眼脚下的路，也许将感觉到来自远古的震颤。路面由灰色砂岩铺就而成，一道道刻痕历历在目，那是一条大河的波澜涟漪，它曾流经奔宁山脉，以及无数沼泽、植被、高山和开阔的泛滥平原。这些遗迹可追溯到3亿年前。
This was during a geological period known as the Carboniferous. Mammals and dinosaurs had yet to evolve. On the land, amphibians moved among tree ferns and horsetails. The unnamed river contained tiny rock particles. As it flowed, these were deposited on the river bed and over time, through processes of compaction and cementation, they formed the sandstone known as Yorkstone—London’s traditional paving material. When you stop and stare down at the sandstone, you have a glimpse of a world that existed long before humanity.
它们的形成年代是石炭地质时期，哺乳动物和恐龙尚未横空出世，在地面上，两栖动物在树蕨类植物和杉叶藻之间移动。这条不知名的河流裹挟着微小的岩石颗粒，随着水流的冲刷，它们沉积在河床，长年累月，经过挤压和粘连的过程，形成一种被称为约克石的砂岩，也就是伦敦传统的铺路材料。当你停下脚步凝视砂岩时，无异于向那个先于人类存在已久的亘古世界匆匆一瞥。
Urban or street geology, by contrast, is young. In the 1970s a geologist at University College London (UCL), Dr Eric Robinson, began exploring the idea that geology could be taught not just on far-flung field trips but through the buildings and streets of our cities. Britons may not often go to Norway, but they can find polished Norwegian Larvikite on shop fronts in their local high street. It’s an igneous rock, meaning that it was formed when magma, molten rock, subsequently cooled. It’s also rather beautiful: dark green-blue with iridescent feldspar crystals. In April I went to Waterloo station to talk to Dr Ruth Siddall, who worked with Robinson. She first met him in 1989, when she was studying for a PhD in plate tectonics at UCL. At the time, Robinson was a lone voice arguing that there was historical and cultural value in the serious study of the building materials that make up our cities. He was also publishing a series of geo-walks around London for students and members of the public.
相对而言，城市或街道地质学则是年轻的。20世纪70年代在伦敦大学学院，地质学家埃里克·罗宾逊博士开始探索一种想法，即地质学课程不应仅限于遥远的实地考察，而要通过我们城市的建筑和街道来传道授业。英国人可能不会经常去往挪威，但他们可以在当地主要街道的店铺门前找到抛光的挪威歪碱正长岩。它是火成岩，是岩浆熔化、冷却后的产物。它又极其美丽，是一种带有蓝色闪光的深绿色长石晶体。今年四月我去滑铁卢车站，与露丝·西多尔聊了聊。以前她与罗宾逊一起工作，两人第一次见面是在1989年，当时她在伦敦大学学院攻读板块构造学博士学位。那个时期，只有罗宾逊一个人认为，认真研究构成城市的建筑材料，有助于挖掘城市历史和文化价值，并为学生和市民出版了一系列伦敦周边的地质漫步丛书。
“The stones of London”, Siddall said, “come from all over the world.” For much of history and in most places, people have tended to build their towns and cities using whichever rocks were closest to hand. This was never possible in London, which rises up out of a natural basin underlain by the chalk that crops out in the Chiltern Hills to the north-west and the North Downs to the south. Bricks were once made locally, but the clays on which the city is built, and the surrounding chalk, are too soft to make satisfactory building stones. Siddall had agreed to take me on a new geo-walk from Waterloo to St Paul’s. In Benugo, the café where we were having coffee, she took a picture of the countertop: “marble,” she said, “a metamorphic rock, possibly from Carrara in Italy.” Metamorphic is one of the three main categories of rock, along with igneous and sedimentary, and it is related to one or the other—its name means an igneous or sedimentary rock that has been altered through processes of heat and pressure.
西多尔说，“伦敦的石头来自世界各地。”在大部分历史时期和大多数地方，人们都倾向于就地取材，建造城镇和城市。在伦敦则绝无可能，因为这座城市耸立在一片天然盆地之中，白垩基底向西北延伸至奇尔特恩丘陵，向南延伸至北部丘陵。当地人曾经烧制砖瓦，但城中的粘土和城基的白垩太软，难以成为令人满意的建筑石料。西多尔同意带我来一次从滑铁卢到圣保罗的新式地质漫步。在我们喝咖啡的拜奴歌咖啡馆，她取出相机，对着台面拍照：“大理石，”她说，“一种变质岩，可能来自意大利卡拉拉。”变质岩是三类岩石中的一种，另外两种是火成岩和沉积岩，变质岩与它们两种皆有联系，从名称上就能看出，火成岩和沉积岩经过加热、加压后可生成变质岩。
Around us the sun shone strongly on the white walls of the station and the towering Victory Arch. Waterloo was constructed between 1900 and 1922, using London’s classic building material: a limestone from Dorset called Portland Stone, a sedimentary rock that formed on the floor of a shallow Jurassic sea around 145m years ago, when Dorset had a climate like present-day Barbados. Siddall showed me how the seemingly smooth su***ce of the rock is actually formed from millions of ooliths—tiny spheres of calcium carbonate moulded by tidal action—and broken-shell sand. Fragments of grey oyster shell are visible. First transported to London by sea, it was used by the architect Inigo Jones in 1619, and then extensively by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor in the construction of their churches. It’s what UCL itself, Whitehall, the British Museum and much else is made of. Its popularity derives from its accessibility, plentiful supply, ability to withstand the weather, and its being what is known in the trade as a freestone—it can be cut in any direction.
在我们周围，阳光强烈地照射着车站的白色墙壁和高耸的凯旋门。滑铁卢车站是1900-1922年间建造的，使用了伦敦经典的建筑材料：来自多赛特郡的石灰石，也叫波特兰石，那是一种可上溯到1.45亿年前的沉积岩，形成地点位于一处浅浅的侏罗纪海洋底部，当时多塞特郡的气候与现今的巴巴多斯好有一比。西多尔向我展示了这种岩石看似光滑的表面，实际上它是由数以百万计的鲕石（因潮汐作用形成的微小碳酸钙球体）和外表破损的砂砾组成的，灰色蚝壳碎片清晰可见。它先是从海上运抵伦敦，1619年被建筑师伊尼戈·琼斯所采用，后来又被克里斯托弗·雷恩和尼古拉斯·霍克斯莫尔广泛用于教堂的建设，伦敦大学学院、白厅、大英博物馆和许多其他建筑都使用了这种石材。它之所以广受欢迎，原因在于原料易于采集，供应充足，对天气变化有很强的适应性，在贸易中它被称为易切砂岩，因为人们可以从任何方向对它进行切割。
As we walked, Siddall took pictures and made notes for a catalogue of London stones she is compiling in cahoots with the Geologists’ Association, and for a series of geo-walks that she publishes online and leads in person. Two teenagers stared as we stopped to snap some granite at the base of an office building. “Doing this,” Siddall said, “you have to adopt a no-shame approach to looking like a complete geek in public.”
我们一边走着，西多尔一边拍照、做笔记，她正在与地质学家协会合作，编制一本伦敦石头目录，同时，还在网上发布一系列地缘漫步资料，并作个人收集之用。当我们在一座办公楼前停下来、抓拍几张花岗岩照片时，两名少年盯着我们看。“要想这样做，”西多尔说，“你必须厚着脸皮，别怕成为公众眼中的十足怪胎。”
She used to work in what might be called geo-archaeology, studying the geology of Greek and Roman building stones. Now she is dean of student welfare at UCL, a position that allows her to pursue her fascination with urban geology, free from the restrictions of the geology department. Eric Robinson’s approach to geology, placing it within human frameworks and timescales, still doesn’t sit comfortably with the subject as it is studied in British academia.
她以前的工作属于地质考古领域，研究希腊和罗马建筑用石的地质情况。现在，她在伦敦大学学院的学生福利处主任，这个职务让她可以探索自己所迷恋的城市地质学，而不受地质系的限制。埃里克·罗宾逊提出的方法（也就是将地质学置于人类框架和时间围度内）依然难容于英国学术界当下正在研究的主题。
On the South Bank, outside the Royal Festival Hall, we saw the oldest rock on our walk: a glassy black gabbro from Pretoria, 2 billion years old, which forms the plinth for the giant bust of Nelson Mandela, erected in 1985. Inside the hall, visitors milled around, banners advertised a performance by the Simón Bolívar Youth Choir of Venezuela, and we looked at slabs of Derbyshire Fossil limestone. It’s a remarkable purplish stone filled with lighter-coloured shapes: discs, rectangles, things that look a little like tuning forks, and other things that look like chrysalises. In their profusion they reminded me of the images of deep space captured by the Hubble telescope. They are, in fact, the fossilised remains of a grove of crinoids or sea lilies, creatures from Carboniferous times, around 50m years before the dinosaurs. “This is the best example of a crinoidal limestone”, Siddall said, “that I’ve seen anywhere in the world.” You can see more of it at Hermès in Bond Street, where the leftovers from the Festival Hall ended up.
在南岸的皇家节日音乐厅外，我们看到了本次漫游中最古老的岩石：比勒陀利亚的玻黑辉长岩，已有20亿年历史了，位于纳尔逊·曼德拉巨型半身像的底座，这座雕像是1985年的作品。在大厅里，游客们往来穿梭，横幅广告上印着委内瑞拉西蒙·玻利瓦尔青年合唱团的演出场景，而我们则在注视着来自德比郡的化石石灰岩地砖。这是一种奇异的紫色石材，上面遍布各种浅色图形：圆形，长方形，这边看起来有点像音叉，那里看起来像蚕蛹。五花八门、不胜枚举，让我不由得想起哈勃太空望远镜在太空中拍摄的图像。事实上，它们是海百合的化石遗迹，那是一种石炭纪时代的生物，生长于5000万年前，比恐龙出现得还早。“这是海百合灰岩的最好实例，”西多尔说，“我已经看过了世界所有地方。”当皇家节日音乐厅的喧嚣散尽后，你还可以在邦德街的爱马仕门店看到更多。
Crossing Blackfriars Bridge, we talked about the American geologist who saw a video of Osama bin Laden preaching in Afghanistan and wrote to the Pentagon, saying he had recognised the rock face in the background and knew, pretty much, where the video had been filmed. Geologists tend to be specialists. Once, on a field trip to a chalk quarry near London, I asked the organiser which was his favourite rock. The group was silent until one of the men turned to me and explained in scandalised tones that I’d just asked the country’s foremost chalk expert to name his favourite rock.
穿过黑衣修士桥，我们谈到一位美国地质学家看到奥萨马·本·拉登在阿富汗的宣讲视频，写信给五角大楼说，他认出背景里的岩石表面，非常清楚地知道视频是在哪里拍摄的。地质学家往往术业有专攻。有一次，在实地考察伦敦附近的白垩采石场时我问组织者，他最喜欢什么岩石？大家都沉默了，最终其中一人转过身来，用令人不舒服的语气说，我竟然向英国最重要的白垩专家询问他最喜欢什么岩石！
I decided to risk asking Siddall the same question. “Granites,” she said. “They’re sort of like ice cream: the same basic recipe but a whole world of flavours.”
我决定冒险向西多尔提出同样问题。“花岗岩，”她说，“它们有点儿像冰淇淋：配方基本相同，但世界各地口味各异。”
For granite, another igneous rock, the ingredients in the recipe are feldspar, quartz and mica. The colour ranges from a kind of oatmeal—the Cornish granite at the base of Waterloo station—to dark red and the polished salmon pink of Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire, which forms the pedestal for the statue of Queen Victoria at the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge. When polished, it can look rather like one of those aspic dishes from a 1970s cookbook.
花岗岩是另一种火成岩，主要成分是长石、石英和云母，颜色范围从燕麦色（例如建造滑铁卢车站基座的康沃尔花岗岩）到暗红色，再到光亮的橙红色（例如来自阿伯丁郡的彼得赫德花岗岩，黑衣修士桥北端的维多利亚女王雕像就是用它制成的。）打磨抛光后，花岗岩看上去相当可人，酷似20世纪70年代食谱中的花色肉冻。
We stopped to watch a boat filled with tourists chugging down the Thames. “You know the other great thing about granite?” Siddall said. “It’s why dry land exists.” About 4 billion years ago, granite, because of its buoyancy, was the material that rose to form the continental crust—the land that Europeans live on. In Britain, it’s the stuff of stone kerbs.
我们停下来，观看一条满载游客的小船沿泰晤士河隆隆而下。 “关于花岗岩，你知道还有另一桩了不起的事吗？”西多尔说，“陆地的成因就在于此。”大约40亿年前，在浮力的作用下花岗岩升起，形成了大陆地壳，也就是欧洲人赖以生存的土地。在英国，花岗岩被用作路缘石。
DURING THE 19TH century, granite and other materials could be more readily carried to London from around the country, thanks to rising wealth and the development of the railways. Nowadays, building stones tend to come from farther afield. On our walk we found stones from Cornwall, Dorset, Aberdeenshire, the Scottish Highlands, Italy, Greece, Norway, Sweden, China, South Africa and Australia. Ever since the Romans, who transported marble to London, certain special stones have always been brought in from overseas. (To see a fine example, go for a drink, as we did, in the art-nouveau interior of the Black Friar pub, with its green, purple and ochre marbles.) But today more everyday materials, such as granite for kerbstones, come from far away too. As Ted Nield shows in a new book, “Underlands”, the low price of oil and of foreign labour (with all that implies regarding the chances of decent working conditions) now makes it much cheaper for a British firm to source granite from China or India than Aberdeenshire. This is something that troubles Nield and Siddall.
在19世纪，由于财富的不断增长和铁路的发展，花岗岩和其他材料可以更轻而易举地从英国各地运到伦敦，如今，石料往往来自更远的地方。在我们漫步途中，看过的石头分别来自康沃尔郡、多塞特郡、阿伯丁郡、苏格兰高地、意大利、希腊、挪威、瑞典、中国、南非和澳大利亚。自从罗马人将大理石运抵伦敦以来，某些特殊的石头便一直从海外远道而来。（要想看到很好的实例，不妨学学我们，去喝点儿酒，因为黑弗莱尔酒吧富有新艺术风格的内部，就是用绿色、紫色和赭色大理石装饰而成的。）但在今天，日常使用的更多建筑材料（如花岗岩路边石）来自遥远他乡。正如泰德·尼尔德在新书《地下世界》中所论述的，出于低廉的油价和国外劳动力（所需成本要将体面的工作环境计算在内）的缘故，如今英国公司已不再从阿伯丁郡采购石材，代之以中国或印度的花岗岩。这种事令尼尔德和西多尔相当头痛。
Partly it is about retaining the character of a building or area: a granite from India is not the same as a granite from Cornwall. More urgently, it’s an environmental issue. The farther we move our building materials, the more fossil fuels we burn. In the midst of a global warming that the vast majority of scientists link to an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, this cannot be sensible. To complicate matters, many of Britain’s rocks now lie beneath areas designated as national parks and cannot be easily quarried. The situation turns into a paradox: the beauty of the landscape is preserved in the short term, at the expense of the existence of the landscape, in its current form, in the future.
部分麻烦跟保留建筑物或地区的特色有关：印度花岗岩与康沃尔花岗岩大不一样。更紧迫的是，这牵涉到环境问题。我们采购建筑材料的地点越远，燃烧的化石燃料越多。绝大多数科学家都会把大气中二氧化碳的增加与全球气候变暖联系起来，在当前的大背景下，这样做是不明智的。更复杂的是，英国许多岩石的现存区域已被划为国家公园，不能轻易开采。这种情况演变成一种悖论：景观之美可在短期内得以保存，其代价是，该景观未来将无法以现有形式留存于世。
Earlier this year I went to a talk at the Geological Society, where a former president, Bryan Lovell, spoke about a climate event 55m years ago, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Geologists studying the rocks can tell that massive amounts of carbon were injected into the atmosphere, and there was a sharp increase in global temperature. “The PETM event wiped out a lot of mammals,” Siddall told me. “Mammalian evolution had to start again after that, so we know that it’s not good for us mammals, a heating climate. Yes, the Earth will recalibrate and something else will appear, but it won’t be us, and that’s not a nice thought.”
今年早些时候，我去地质学会听一场演讲，该学会前会长布莱恩·洛弗尔谈到5500万年前的一次气候事件，也就是众所周知的古新世-始新世极热事件。地质学家从岩石研究中发现，大量碳被释放到大气中，导致全球气温急剧上升。“古新世-始新世极热事件造成大批哺乳动物灭绝，”西多尔告诉我。“此后，哺乳动物的进化不得不重新开始，所以我们知道气候变暖对我们哺乳动物十分不利。是的，地球将重新调整，其他东西会出现，但不会是我们，这种想法让人觉得不妙。”
“A BLINDFOLDED GEOLOGIST entering a brand new town, unknown to him, will have information on the local geology just by [looking at] the materials used in the buildings.” So said Francesco Rodolico (1905-88), a mineralogist and petrographer. I came across the quotation in a paper in the Journal of the Virtual Explorer, and was struck by the contrast between a city such as London and Rodolico’s town, built of local materials. Yes, London has its traditional building stones but a geologist set down on the South Bank might struggle to explain the local geology using the Festival Hall. Soon after my walk with Ruth Siddall, I travelled to Italy to meet one of the paper’s authors, Professor Vincenzo Morra, head of the department of earth sciences at the University of Naples Federico II.
“一位地质学家被蒙上眼睛，进到一座崭新的小镇，虽然对这里一无所知，但只有看看建筑物上所用的建材，他就能够了解当地的地质信息，”矿物学家、岩相学家弗朗西斯·罗多里科如是说。我在《实用勘探》杂志的一篇文章里碰巧看到了这句话，伦敦和罗多里科镇两地的建筑材料对比也让我大开眼界。是的，伦敦拥有传统的建筑石料，但一位闲坐在南岸的地质学家可能很难解释皇家节日音乐厅所展示的本地地质状况。与露丝·西多尔一同漫步后不久，我前往意大利，见到了此文的作者文森佐·莫拉教授，他是那不勒斯费德里克二世大学地球科学系的系主任。
Built on a slope, Naples rises up from the harbour towards green hilltops. Dim and narrow streets run between tall buildings, laundry hangs from windows, scooters buzz everywhere and passageways open suddenly onto dusty sunlit squares. Churches with plain façades reveal interiors of rich marble and gleaming gold and silver. The university, founded in 1224 and counting Thomas Aquinas among its alumni, occupies a series of imposing buildings in the historic city centre. It also contains the beautiful Royal Museum of Mineralogy (1801) with its rows of glass-fronted wooden cabinets filled with 25,000 specimens from around the world.
那不勒斯城建在斜坡之上，从海港向上延伸到绿色的山头。高楼林立，昏暗狭窄的街道蜿蜒其间，洗好的衣裳挂在窗口，滑板车的嗡嗡声随处可闻，小巷尽头赫然呈现出一方阳光明媚、尘土飞扬的广场。教堂的外墙稀松平常，内部却全部由大理石镶嵌而成，散发着金色和银色的夺目光芒。这所大学始建于1224年，校友中包括中世纪哲学家和神学家托马斯·阿奎那。整座学院占据了一系列坐落在市中心、历史悠久的恢弘建筑，市中心实施的建筑，还包括美丽的皇家矿物博物馆，成排的玻璃门木柜里装满了来自世界各地的2.5万个标本。
I met Morra in his office, which is white-walled and high-ceilinged. He stubbed out his cigarette in a lumpy grey ashtray: “made of lava”, he said, “from Mount Etna.” Some of his colleagues arrived and located the espresso machine, wedged among the piles of books. Someone mentioned the Rodolico quotation and all the geologists started talking about colours. A city built from local materials will often have a distinctive colour scheme. Rome is white and red—white from the travertine, a form of limestone, and red from the bricks. Florence is white (marble), grey (Pietra Serena, a sandstone) and green (serpentine). Naples is dusty grey and sandy yellow: Vesuvian lava, Piperno and Neapolitan Yellow Tuff.
我在莫拉那间白墙面、高屋顶的办公室里见到了他。他在一只外观疙疙瘩瘩的灰色烟灰缸里掐灭了香烟：“熔岩制成的，”他说，“取自埃特纳火山。”他的一些同事赶到，到处寻找咖啡机，在成堆的书籍间出出进进。有人提到罗多里科的名言，所有地质学家开始谈起颜色。就地取材建造的城镇往往有着鲜明的配色方案。罗马是白色和红色——白色是石灰华（石灰石的一种形式），红色是红砖。佛罗伦萨是白色（大理石）、灰色（彼得拉小威，砂岩）和绿色（蛇纹石），那不勒斯是土灰色和沙黄色——维苏威火山的熔岩、皮佩尔诺和那不勒斯的黄凝灰岩。
Where the traditional stones of London were largely formed under water (Portland Stone, Yorkstone), the stones of Naples come from fire. They are igneous rocks, volcanic in origin. The Neapolitans, like the Romans and the Greeks before them, live in a landscape ruled by volcanic activity. This is fertile country, but unsettled. From the Museum of Mineralogy you can see the towering blue peak of Vesuvius, which last erupted in 1944. To the west, where Morra and his colleague Professor Alessio Langella live, is a largely flat, densely populated volcanic area of craters, hot springs and fumeroles called Campi Flegrei, the Fiery Fields (from the Greek phlego, to burn). “Probably more dangerous than Vesuvius,” Langella explained cheerfully, “because the eruption is not happening in just one place.” He and Morra first met at secondary school in Naples. They were particularly amused by the fact that Langella’s house is situated over a red spot—an area rated as being at risk from volcanic activity. Later, Langella spoke of Italy’s need for more professional geologists. “Because we have landslides, we have earthquakes, we have floods, we have volcanoes—anything you are looking for, you can find here!”
伦敦的传统石材很大程度上是在水下形成的（例如波特兰石、约克石），那不勒斯的石头则来自火中。它们是岩浆岩，即火山岩的前身。那不勒斯人像他们之前的罗马人和希腊人一样，生活在火山活动统治的版图上。这是一个富饶的国度，但变化莫测。从矿物学博物馆，你可以看到维苏威火山，它的最后一次爆发是在1944年。在博物馆西部，也就是莫拉及其同事阿莱西奥·兰杰拉教授生活的地方，是一片地势平坦、人口密集的区域，到处是火山口、温泉和喷气孔，名叫坎比佛莱格瑞，也被称为“愤怒之地”。“大概比维苏威更危险，”兰杰拉乐呵呵地解释说，“因为喷发不会只发生在一个地方。”他和莫拉的第一次见面是在那不勒斯中学。他们觉得特别有趣的一点是，兰杰拉的房子位于可能遭受火山活动侵袭的红点地区。后来，兰杰拉谈到意大利需要更多专业地质学家。“因为我们有山体滑坡，我们有地震，我们有水灾，我们有火山——你正在寻觅的一切，在这里都能找到！”
A volcanic eruption is the release of magma at the Earth’s su***ce. The magma flows from a vent or fissure in the form of fiery sticky liquid, or lava, with a temperature of 700–1,200 degrees Celsius. This may be accompanied by explosive eruptions, which emit particles of solid rock, ranging from tiny fragments of volcanic ash to large blocks of broken rock. When Vesuvius erupted in AD79, the town of Pompeii was buried in a hot ash deposit up to six metres thick, killing most of the inhabitants. Walking with Morra and Langella through the centre of Naples, I kept thinking about how very domesticated all this fire and brimstone was. On a day trip to Pompeii you can see those famous casts of ash-buried bodies, but in the Museum of Mineralogy are a series of jaunty souvenir medallions moulded from the lava of later eruptions, and on the streets of Naples the residents go about their daily business walking over dark grey pitted slabs of Vesuvian lava.
火山喷发在地表释放出岩浆。岩浆以火热的粘稠状液体或熔岩的形式，从排气孔或裂隙中流出，温度可达700-1,200摄氏度。这期间可能伴随着爆炸性爆发，喷射出固体岩石颗粒，从微小的火山灰碎片到大块岩石全部都有。当维苏威火山在公元79年爆发时，庞贝城被掩埋在刘米厚的灼热火山灰中，大部分居民丧生。与莫拉和兰杰拉步行穿过那不勒斯城中心，我一直在思考，人们到底用了什么方法，使所有这些火焰和硫磺变得如此驯服。庞贝古城一日游能让你看到那些掩埋在灰烬中、大大有名的尸体演员，但在矿物学博物馆，却能见到一系列用后来火山喷发出的岩浆浇筑成型的纪念图章，趣味盎然，而在那不勒斯的街道上，居民们则走过维苏威火山熔岩制成的、坑坑洼洼的暗灰色石板上，如常地过日子。
In a quiet courtyard with busts of illustrious men set among palm trees and bright green vegetation, we stopped to examine a weathered grey column of the rock known as Piperno. “This”, said Morra, “is the product of the largest eruption in the Mediterranean for 200,000 years.”
在一处安静的庭院中，几座名人半身塑像伫立在棕榈树和翠绿色植被之间，我们停下来审视一片被称为皮佩尔诺的灰色风化岩石。莫拉说，“这是地中海最大一次火山喷发的产物，距今20万年。”
The Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption took place in the Campi Flegrei area 39,000 years ago. Beside it, the destruction of Pompeii and even Krakatoa pale into insignificance. An area roughly the size of Belgium was covered with a fast-flowing mixture of extremely hot ash, flying rocks and white-hot boulders as big as houses. “Materials from the blast have been found as far away as Russia,” Morra said. The rock it created, the Piperno, is found nowhere else in the world. It is formed from compressed light grey volcanic ash with fragments of black flattened scoriae (basaltic lava ejected from a volcano), also known as fiammae. A hard, heavy rock, it is used occasionally for facing buildings—it gives the Gesù Nuovo church its forbidding, fortress-like air—and more typically for portals and ornamentation. Sometimes, depending on the cut of the stone, the fiammae look like little black flames flickering over the su***ces of the buildings.
3.9万年前在坎比佛莱格瑞地区，发生了坎帕尼亚熔结凝灰岩超级火山爆发。在它旁边，庞贝城、甚至喀拉喀托火山的破坏规模堪称小巫见大巫。这片区域的面积与比利时国土相差无几，被快速流动的极热火山灰、飞溅岩石和房子般大小的白热圆石的混合物所覆盖。“火山喷发的物质最远飞到了俄罗斯，”莫拉说。这场爆发创造了皮佩尔诺岩石，在世界上绝无仅有。它是由浅灰色火山灰和扁平的黑色火山渣（也就是从火山喷出的玄武岩熔岩）共同挤压而成的。因为材质坚硬笨重，偶尔会用在建筑表面，赋予新耶稣教堂一种拒人千里、固若金汤的威严，但是，更常见的用途是制成大门和纹饰。有时候，由于石材切割的角度关系，皮佩尔诺岩石会产生出黑色小火苗在建筑物表面摇曳不定的效果。
In the streets to the north of the university, we passed Roman walls with diamond patterns picked out in pink bricks and yellow stones, and excavated blocks of sandy-coloured Greek masonry. For thousands of years people have been building here, often using the same rock: Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. Compared with the South African gabbro, the tuff is a young rock, a mere 15,000 years old. Like the Piperno, it is unique to this area and composed of compressed volcanic ash, but it is the product of a later, smaller eruption. It’s also much softer, lighter and more easily cut—a good building stone, if protected from weathering—typically with a covering of yellow plaster that echoes the sandy colour of the stone itself. Where the plaster has fallen away, the tuff has a spongy appearance, filled with tiny holes that look like air bubbles. Near the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, I ran a finger lightly across an exposed block and it crumbled like the wall of a sandcastle. Alongside the grand churches and palaces and busy piazzas, you notice broken masonry, graffitied walls, small chapels closed for some indeterminably stalled restoration project. “The most important problem for conservation in Napoli”, Langella said, “is finding the money.”
在通往大学北侧的街道上，我们通过了一处罗马风格的城墙，装饰有钻石图案，用料包括粉红色砖块、黄色石头，以及从希腊挖掘的砂土色岩石。千百年来人们一直在这里建造，往往使用相同石材：那不勒斯黄凝灰岩。与南非辉长岩相比，凝灰岩是一种年轻的岩石，形成年代距今仅有1.5万年。像皮佩尔诺岩石一样，它在此地是独一无二的，也是由火山灰压缩而成，但它源自后来一次规模更小的火山喷发。凝灰岩也更软、更轻、更易切割，可谓一种良好的建筑用石，如果不受风化侵蚀，通常会有一层黄色灰泥覆盖与石材本身的沙土色相呼应。如果这层灰泥消失的话，凝灰岩便会呈现出海绵状外观，布满了貌似气泡的微孔。在圣多梅尼科教堂广场，我用手指轻轻滑过一块裸露的岩石，它像沙堡的城墙一样破碎了。除了宏伟的教堂、宫殿和人流如织的广场，你还会注意到断裂的砖石、涂鸦墙、暂时停工亟待修复的小教堂。兰杰拉说，“保护那不勒斯的最重要问题是找到钱。”
PRODUCERS OF WINE talk about terroir, the idea that the soil, topography and climate of the land imparts certain qualities to the grapes grown there. Ruth Siddall believes in a terroir for stones, and it seems to fit the architecture of Naples. Whereas London builders had to send away for stones, the Neapolitans simply dug downwards, taking the tuff from underneath their city and piling it back up above ground in the form of houses, shops and public buildings. They left behind an immense network of passageways and around 2,000 caverns, a second city deep within the tuff. Later, these underground spaces became, among other things, water tanks and rubbish tips.
红酒制造商谈起风土，也就是影响当地葡萄质量的土壤、地形、气候等自然因素。露丝·西多尔认为，石材也受风土影响，这似乎与那不勒斯的建筑相互吻合。伦敦建筑商从外地运来石料，那不勒斯人则不必如此大费周章，他们只需向下挖，取走城市底下的凝灰岩，将它们堆到地面，建成房屋、商店和公共建筑便大功告成。在他们身后，留下了一片庞大的地下网络，约有2,000座溶洞，成为深深隐藏在凝灰岩中的第二座城市。后来，这些地下空间被派上诸多用途，例如充当水箱和垃圾场。
Morra took me to meet a former student of his, Gianluca Minin, who is developing a partly abandoned complex of passages, the Galleria Borbonica. In the 1950s it was a city car pound, but Minin has opened the space to the public as a sort of fantastical museum, artwork, concert hall and adventure playground. As we walked through the tunnels, abandoned Alfa Romeos and crumpled Vespas loomed out of the darkness, all coated in a layer of fine powder, like something out of J.G. Ballard—a vision of the death of modernity. “In 2005 the government sent me to survey the caves here,” Minin said, “and I fell in love, as it is possible to fall in love with a woman.” He gestured towards a space where Neapolitans had sheltered from Allied bombing raids during the second world war. “I wanted to save them, to preserve the history.”
莫拉带着我去见他以前的学生赞布罗塔·米宁，后者目前正在开发一条部分被废弃的复杂通道——博尔博奈卡长廊。在20世纪50年代，这是城里一处废旧车场，但米尼已经将其改造成一座梦幻般的博物馆、艺术品、音乐厅和冒险乐园，向公众开放。当我们穿过隧道时，废弃的阿尔法罗密欧汽车和快要散架的韦士柏摩托车在黑暗隐现，一切都被涂上一层细粉，仿佛是从巴拉德的科幻小说中走出来的、现代社会消亡时的一幕。“在2005年，政府派我到这里调查这些洞穴，”米宁说，“我爱上了它，就像爱上了一个女人。”他指着一块地方，二战期间，那不勒斯人曾在那里躲避盟军的空袭。“我想拯救它们、保存历史。”
In their paper in the Journal of the Virtual Explorer, Morra and Langella wrote with concern about the declining use of traditional local building materials such as the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. It’s a familiar story. If the landscape near Naples was to be preserved, the quarrying near Naples had to cease. Morra and Langella favour a limited return to quarrying in the region, using modern, less invasive techniques, to provide materials for restoring and building significant architectural structures. In London Siddall had worried about materials being shipped from China. Near the Piazza Miraglia, Langella pointed out a new-looking grey column. “Lava, but it’s not local,” he said disapprovingly. “It’s from Mount Etna.”
在《实用勘探》杂志的文章中，莫拉和兰杰拉写到，他们为那不勒斯黄凝灰岩等传统性本地建材的使用量下降而感到忧虑。这种故事以前也有耳闻。如果要保护那不勒斯周围的景观，那不勒斯附近的采石活动必须停止。莫拉和兰杰拉赞成有限地采掘本地区的石料，方法是采用侵入性更小的现代技术，为景观修复和建设重要建筑结构提供材料。在伦敦，西多尔曾为来自中国的石材忧心忡忡。在米拉利亚广场附近，兰杰拉指着一排外观崭新的灰色圆柱。“熔岩，但不是本地的，”他不以为然地说。“这是来自意大利西西里岛埃特纳火山的。”
Before leaving Naples, I walked back to the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, passing a church with small, pinkish flowers growing high up near the bell tower. In the piazza, students with heavy boots and metal piercings sat on the paving stones, talking and smoking. The lava had a glassy aspect, polished by generations of pedestrians. How many generations? How many years? And how many more years since the limestone of Waterloo station had formed, or the gabbro of the Mandela plinth? My brain rebelled. I couldn’t even comprehend 39,000, not really. With a lifespan of 80 years, how can we grasp the concept of 300m in any meaningful sense?
离开那不勒斯前，我走回圣多米尼克教堂广场，路过一座小教堂，墙上长着粉红色花朵，已经攀得比附近的钟楼还高。在广场上，学生们穿着厚重的靴子、带着金属环，坐在铺路石上聊天、抽烟。经过几代行人的摩擦，熔岩表面像玻璃一样铮明瓦亮。多少代？多少年？自从滑铁卢车站的石灰岩或曼德拉雕像底座的辉长岩形成以来，还要度过多少年？我的大脑罢工了。我甚至无法理解3.9万年，真的不能。凭借区区80年的寿命，我们怎么了解3亿年到底是一个什么概念？
Geologists talk about the concept of deep time, meaning geological time, the amount that has passed since the beginning of the Earth, around 4.6 billion years ago. If we use the 24-hour clock analogy, whereby a single day represents the passage of deep time, land plants don’t arrive until 9.30pm, and the dinosaurs turn up at 10.40pm. Our ancestors split off from the rest of the hominids at two minutes to midnight. At this point it’s easy to feel derailed. A sense of paralysis seems a reasonable response to the immensity of the world, the smallness of the individual, the relentless crumbling of bricks.
地质学家谈论的深时理念（指的是地质年代）是指地球形成之初，大约距今46亿年前。如果我们用24小时来做个比喻，把一整天时间作为深时，那么，陆生植物要到晚上9:30才会生长出来，恐龙的现身时间是下午10:40。在午夜前两分钟，我们的祖先与原始人类的其余部分分离开来。照这样想下去，很容易让人大脑脱线。面对浩瀚的世界、渺小的人类、无情瓦解的砖石建筑，麻木一点似乎也说得过去。
In Naples, sitting outside at a café on the piazza, I looked over my notes. “It was Rodolico who first talked about the relationship between geology and building stones,” one of Morra’s colleagues had said. “Here in Napoli now, we are building very strong relationships with architects and engineers to try to solve the problems of decay, of conservation.” Slowly I became aware of some people in white overalls, entering the piazza in twos and threes. They gathered in the centre and unfurled hand-painted banners. Someone brought out a video camera. I went over to ask what was happening. A woman explained that in 2013 the European Union had awarded a large sum to restore Naples’ historic centre. (€75m, I later read.) The crowd, mostly out-of-work art and architectural restorers, wanted to draw public attention to the project. They were excited but anxious. There were rumours of delays, bureaucratic incompetence, perhaps malpractice. “There is so much work to do,” the woman said, gesturing around.
在那不勒斯，坐在广场上的咖啡厅外面，我翻看着自己我的笔记。“是罗多里科首先谈到了地质学和建筑石料之间的关系，”莫拉的一位同事说。“如今在那不勒斯这儿，我们正在建筑师和工程师之间构筑一种非常牢固的关系，试图解决被保护性建筑的腐烂问题，”慢慢地，我感觉到有人穿着白色工作服，三三两两进到广场。他们聚集在中心地带，展开手绘横幅，有人拿来出一台摄像机。我走过去询问发生了什么事。一位女士解释说，2013年欧盟已拨付了一大笔款项，用于那不勒斯历史中心的修复。（后来我了解到是7500万欧元。）这些人大部分是失业的艺术和建筑修复专家，希望引起公众对该项目的关注。他们十分兴奋，但很焦急，到处有人抱怨工期延迟、官僚无能，也许还有弊端传闻。“有一大堆工作要做，”这位女士指着周围说。
MY WALK WITH Ruth Siddall ended on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. Above us was that calm white famous façade, made of Portland Stone. The main landing on the cathedral steps is white Carrara marble with inner panels of red and grey Swedish travertine. If you crouch down to study the travertine, you can make out ghostly white markings, a segmented, cone-like shape. This is an orthocone from Ordovician times, a marine creature related to the squid.
我与露丝·西多尔的漫步在圣保罗大教堂的台阶上告一段落。在我们之上，教堂外观由波特兰石构成，通体洁白宁静，闻名遐迩。大教堂台阶的正面铺着白色的卡拉拉大理石，内部嵌板是红色和灰色的瑞典石灰华。如果你蹲下身来研究一下石灰华，就能认出幽灵般的白色斑纹，类似断裂的圆锥体。这是奥陶纪时代的巨型鹦鹉螺，一种类似鱿鱼的海洋生物。
Only a tiny proportion of life ever becomes a fossil, and only a tiny proportion of fossils are ever seen by humans. The odds are vastly stacked against it. That a creature should have died with its body intact. That an exceptional event such as a violent storm covered it with sufficient layers of sediment. That the sedimentary rock was not squeezed and changed by pressures deep in the earth so as to destroy the fossil. That the sediment formed a particular sort of rock that humans later decided was a good one to quarry. And so I thought about how strange it was, and how unlikely, that this 440m-year-old had survived, lying quietly in a piece of rock that would be selected by someone in 17th-century Sweden to ship to London to form the steps of a new cathedral. That it would be part of Nelson’s funeral in 1806 and Churchill’s in 1965, of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981, of the Occupy protests in 2012.
从古至今，只有极少一部分生命才能变为化石，而在这些化石中，又有极小一部分可以呈现在人类面前。不为人知的几率实在太高了。某个生物死亡时，躯体要完好无损。要有一次特殊性事件，例如猛烈的风暴雨，将它掩盖在足够深的地层中。沉积下来的岩石不能因地球深处的压力被挤压和改变，否则，化石将遭到破坏。这种沉积物必须形成某种特定的岩石，以满足人类的需要，因此才能被开采出来。于是我想，这块经过4.4亿年的沧桑巨变而幸存下来的岩石，静静地躺在一堆同伴中间，在17世纪的瑞典被某个人选中，运到了伦敦，变成了新教堂的一级台阶，这个过程是多么奇妙、多么匪夷所思啊！它可能见证过1806年纳尔逊的葬礼和1965年丘吉尔的追悼仪式，还亲历过1981年查尔斯和戴安娜的婚礼，以及2012年的“占领”抗议活动。
In Thomas Hardy’s novel “A Pair of Blue Eyes” (1873) Henry Knight, trapped on the side of a cliff, confronts the fossil of a trilobite. “The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him…It was the single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had ever been alive and had had a body to save, as he himself had now.” Thinking about geology can mean grappling with the shocking sweep, the impersonal vastness of geological time. A fossil delivers a different sort of shock. The shock of the small, the personal: the story of a single creature somehow like ourselves, with a body to save.
在哈代的小说《一双蓝眼睛》中，亨利·奈特被困在悬崖边，面对一块三叶虫化石。 “眼睛，死气沉沉，变成了石头，现在正盯着他......一瞬间在他的脑海中浮现出一个曾经鲜活的形象，一个需要被拯救的躯体，正如此刻的他。”从地质学的角度思考，意味着深入探索存在于人类世界之外浩瀚无垠的地质年代。化石带给人们的震撼则截然不同，那是更小的、个人的感受：一个生物的故事，在某种程度上它就像我们自己，有着亟待被拯救的身体。
As we studied the orthocone in the afternoon sun, tourists posed for photos on the steps. I thought of Knight gazing at the trilobite. “Time closed up like a fan before him. He saw himself at one extremity of the years, face to face with the beginning and all the intermediate centuries simultaneously.”
当我们在午后的阳光研究巨型鹦鹉螺时，游客们纷纷涌上台阶合影拍照。我想起奈特凝视三叶虫的情景。“时间像折扇一样合起来。他看见自己站在岁月的尽头，同时面对着开端，以及中间的数百年。”
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