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.

　　参考翻译：

　　1.我们从书籍中可读到5,000 年前近东发生的事情，那里的人最早学会了写字。

　　2.他们保存历史的唯一办法是将历史当作传说讲述，由讲述人一代接一代地将史实描述为传奇故事口传下来。

　　3.人类学家过去不清楚如今生活在太平洋诸岛上的波利尼西亚人的祖先来自何方。

　　4.石头是不会腐烂的。因此，尽管制造这些工具的人的骨头早已荡然无存，但远古时代的石头工具却保存了下来。

　　5.但是，和我们相似的原始人生活的年代太久远了，因此，有关他们的传说既使有如今也失传了。