万物简史 第631期:神秘的两足动物(9)

（单词翻译）

Some continue to observe the two hominid genera suggested by Howell in 1960, but others place some of the australopithecines in a separate genus called Paranthropus , and still others add an earlier group called Ardipithecus. Some put praegens into Australopithecus and some into a new classification, Homo antiquus, but most don't recognize praegens as a separate species at all. There is no central authority that rules on these things. The only way a name becomes accepted is by consensus¹, and there is often very little of that.

有的专家继续按照豪威尔于1960年提出的两大属人科动物来进行研究，但是有的将某些南方古猿单独列属，并冠以傍人属的名称，还有的又增加了一个年代更早的地猿。有的人将praegens归于南方古猿，有的人将其归人新的古人种。但是大多数人根本不承认praegens是一个单独的种。没有任何一个众望所归的权威来统一大家的意见，一个名称为大家所接受的惟一途径是所有人都不持异议，可是这往往很难得以实现。

A big part of the problem, paradoxically, is a shortage of evidence. Since the dawn of time, several billion human (or humanlike) beings have lived, each contributing a little genetic² variability to the total human stock. Out of this vast number, the whole of our understanding of human prehistory is based on the remains³, often exceedingly fragmentary, of perhaps five thousand individuals. "You could fit it all into the back of a pickup⁴ truck if you didn't mind how much you jumbled⁵ everything up," Ian Tattersall, the bearded and friendly curator of anthropology⁶ at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, replied when I asked him the size of the total world archive of hominid and early human bones.

然而在更大的程度上，问题的症结还在于证据的缺乏。这是自相矛盾的。自从人类起源以来，有几十亿人（或类人动物）曾经生活过，每一个都把一点儿不同的基因遗传给整个人类。在数量如此巨大的人类当中，我们对于史前人类的了解凭借的仅仅是5000人左右的往往是极其支离破碎的遗骸。当我问纽约美国自然史博物馆馆员伊恩·塔特萨尔，全世界已发现的有关人科动物和早期人类的化石总量是多少时，这位留着一脸大胡子，待人亲切和善的馆员这样说：“如果你不怕弄得一团槽，你可以把它们通通装在一辆小卡车的后部。”