They may look like flight paths around North America and Europe. Or perhaps nighttime satellite photos, with cities lit up like starry constellations.

這些線條也許看上去很像北美和歐洲之間的航線，或是夜間衛(wèi)星圖，城市像星座一樣被點亮。

But look again.

但請再瞧一瞧。

These animations chart the movement of Western culture over the past 2,000 years, researchers report Friday in the journal Science.

根據(jù)一研究團隊在周五《科學》雜志上的報告，這些動畫其實紀錄了過去2000年間西方文化的遷移。

To make these movies, art historian Maximilian Schich and his colleagues mapped the births and deaths of more than 150,000 notable artists and cultural leaders, such as famous painters, actors, architects, politicians, priests and even antiquarians (people who collect antiques).

為了制作出這些影像，藝術史學家馬克西米蘭·舒尺和他的團隊在地圖上標出了15多萬位藝術名人和文化領袖的出生和死亡地點，其中不乏著名的畫家、演員、建筑師、政治家、牧師，甚至是古文物收藏家。

A shimmering blue dot lights up each new birth, while red dots represent each death.

地圖上閃閃發(fā)亮的藍點代表出生地點，紅點則代表死亡地點。

We can watch as artists flock from rural areas to urban centers like London, Paris, Rome and Berlin after the Renaissance. Then in the late 17th century, people start to catapultfrom Europe into the eastern U.S. and then eventually leapfrog over to the West Coast.

我們可以看到，藝術家在文藝復興之后紛紛從鄉(xiāng)村遷往倫敦、巴黎、羅馬和柏林等中心城市。而到了17世紀后葉，他們很快從歐洲遷往美國東部，最后爭相遷往西海岸。

"We're interested in the shape of the coral reef of culture," says Schich, of the University of Texas. "We are taking a systems biology approach to art history."

舒尺來自德克薩斯大學，他表示，“我們對文化所呈現(xiàn)的外形很感興趣。我們采用了一種系統(tǒng)生物學的方法來研究藝術史。”

After mapping the births and deaths, Schich and his team analyzed demographic data to build a model for how people and their cultural achievements ebb and flow across continents.

標出出生和死亡地點后，舒尺和他的團隊對人口數(shù)據(jù)進行了分析建模，借此反映藝術家及他們的文化成就是如何在大陸間變遷。

Right now the team has only maps for the U.S. and Europe. But Schich hopes to extend these visualizations beyond the Western world.

目前團隊僅繪制了美國和歐洲地區(qū)的地圖。但舒尺希望繼續(xù)利用這種可視化方式呈現(xiàn)西方世界以外的地區(qū)。

And the model isn't just fun to look at. The data also reveal trends and patterns in human migration over the past two millennia.

該模型不只是看上去有意思而已，其數(shù)據(jù)反映了人類在過去2000年間的遷移趨勢和模式。

The models are the latest application of a rapidly growing field, called network science — which uses visualizations to find the underlying patterns and trends in complex data sets.

該模型是網(wǎng)絡科學的最新應用成果。網(wǎng)絡科學利用可視化技術反映復雜數(shù)據(jù)集的潛在模式和趨勢，目前該領域的發(fā)展速度很快。