Nowadays Jomon pots are used as cultural ambassadors for Japan in major exhibitions around the world.

如今绳纹陶器已经充当起日本文化大使的角色，在世界各地的大型展览与人们见面。

Over the years of the Jomon period we can see over four hundred local types or regional styles.

通过观察整个绳纹文化时代，我们已经发现了四百多种地方类型或者区域风格。

As well as making attractive and stylised storage pots, the Jomon must have been also thrilled at the leak-proof, heat-proof properties of their new kitchenware.

除了能创造出好看美观的储物罐，那些绳纹人肯定也十分得意于他们这种新型器皿的防漏性与隔热性。

For Jomon people the decorations are derived from what they saw around them in the natural world-the motifs were inspired by trees, plants, shells, animal bones.

对于绳纹人，这些装饰花纹的灵感源于他们周遭的大自然界，这些主题都是受到树木、植物、贝壳、兽骨等等的启发。

After seven thousand years of existence, our Jomon pot then began a new life-as a mizusashi, or water jar, for that quintessentially Japanese ritual, the Tea Ceremony.

经过七千多年的历史尘封，几百年前我们这绳纹钵被重新赐于了第二生命，变成一个水罐子，运用于最典型的日本文化礼仪之一的茶道。

I don't think that its maker would have minded. We know there were all sorts of rituals and ceremonies involving pots in the time of the Jomon.

我并不觉得它最初的制造者会介意这点。现在我们知道在绳纹时期，已经存在了各种与陶器相关的礼仪与仪式。

The first pots known from the Middle East and North Africa were made a few thousand years after the earliest Jomon pots, and in the Americas it was a few thousands of years after that.

比最早期绳纹盆晚了几千年，在中东与北非出现了当地第一批陶器，而在美洲，那是还要再晚几千年的事。