IN APRIL 2010, as part of a scheme to beautify the rundown port near the centre of Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic games, workers were replacing the drainage system in a shabby square when they found some old cans. The city called in archaeologists, wh ose excavations unearthed the ruins of Valongo, once Brazil‟s main landing stage for African slaves2010年4月，里约热内卢的工人们正在翻新一个破旧广场的下水道系统。这是为迎接2016年奥运会的城市美化工程的一部分。当时工人们发现了一些老旧的罐头。市政府召集了一群考古学家，而他们的的挖掘成果显示这下面是Valongo的废墟——以前是巴西境内主要的黑奴码头。call in召集；召来call in:收回| 召来| 请进.From 1811 to 1843 around 500,000 slaves arrived there, according to Tânia Andrade Lima, the head archaeologist. Valongo was a complex, including warehouses where slaves were sold and a cemetery. Hundreds of plastic bags, stored in shipping containers parked on a corner of the site, hold personal objects lost or hidden by the slaves, or taken from them. They include delicate bracelets and rings woven from vegetable fibre; lumps of amethyst and stones used in African worship; and cowrie shells, a common currency in Africa.考古学家的领头人利马说，从1811年到1843年，大约有50万名奴隶被运到这里。Valongo 的功能很多，包括许多贩卖奴隶的货栈和一个公墓。废墟的一处角落里有几个集装箱，里面有数百件当时的奴隶们丢失或是藏起来，又或是从他们那里拿走的东西，全部都用塑料袋包好。这些东西包括易碎的手镯和用植物编成的戒指；成堆的紫水晶和非洲文化中用于敬拜神灵的石头；以及玛瑙贝，一种在非洲常见的货币。Bracelet n. 手镯；手链cowrie ['kauri]n. 宝贝；玛瑙贝；货贝It is a poignant reminder of the scale and duration of the slave trade to Brazil. Of the 10.7m African slaves shipped across the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries, 4.9m landed there. Fewer than 400,000 went to the United States. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888.这一废墟的出土再次尖锐地提醒世人巴西历史上奴隶贸易的规模之大，持续之久。从17世纪到20世纪里有1079万非洲奴隶从大洋彼岸被运到美洲，其中有490万运到了巴西。被运往美国的还不到40万。巴西是美洲最后一个废除奴隶制的国家，直到1888年才废除。Brazil has long seemed to want to forget this history. In 1843 Valongo was paved over by a grander dock to welcome a Bourbon princess who came to marry Pedro II,< 佩德罗>the country‟s 19th-century emperor. The stone column rising from the square commemorates the empress, not the slaves. Now the city plans to make Valongo an open-air museum of slavery and the African diaspora. “Our work is to give greater visibility to the black community and its ancestors,” says Ms Andrade Lima.
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