万物简史 第644期:永不安分的类人猿(1)

（单词翻译）

29 THE RESTLESS APE

第二十九章 永不安分的类人猿

SOMETIME ABOUT A million and a half years ago, some forgotten genius of the hominid world did an unexpected thing. He (or very possibly she) took one stone and carefully used it to shape another. The result was a simple teardrop-shaped hand axe¹, but it was the world's first piece of advanced technology.

大约150万年前的某个时候，人科动物世界某一位不知名的天才做了一件意想不到的事。他（或者很可能是她）捡起一块石头，用来小心翼翼地改变另一块石头的形状，结果制作成了一把泪珠状手斧，尽管它非常简陋，却是世界上第一件先进的工具。

It was so superior to existing tools that soon others were following the inventor's lead and making hand axes of their own. Eventually whole societies existed that seemed to do little else. "They made them in the thousands," says Ian Tattersall. "There are some places in Africa where you literally² can't move without stepping on them. It's strange because they are quite intensive objects to make. It was as if they made them for the sheer pleasure of it"

它优越于现存的工具，其他人很快群起而效之，纷纷制作了他们自己的手斧。最后，整个人科动物世界似乎就不干别的事了。“他们制作了几千把这样的手斧，“伊恩·塔特萨尔说，“在非洲有些地方，实际上你无论走到哪里，都会踩着这样的斧子。那是很怪的，因为制作那些斧子很花工夫。他们制作斧子，仿佛纯粹是因为好玩。”

From a shelf in his sunny workroom Tattersall took down an enormous cast, perhaps a foot and a half long and eight inches wide at its widest point, and handed it to me. It was shaped like a spearhead, but one the size of a stepping-stone. As a fiberglass cast it weighed only a few ounces, but the original, which was found in Tanzania, weighed twenty-five pounds. "It was completely useless as a tool," Tattersall said. "It would have taken two people to lift it adequately, and even then it would have been exhausting to try to pound anything with it."

在他明亮的工作室里，塔特萨尔从架子上取下一个巨大的模型递给了我。那东西大约有半米长，最宽的地方有20厘米。它的形状像矛头，但有踏脚石那么大小。这是一个用玻璃纤维制成的模型，只有约150克重，可是原物却重达11千克，是在坦粟尼亚发现的。“作为一件工具，它完全没有用，”塔特萨尔说，“得有两个人才能把它抬起来，即使在当时，要想用它来击打任何东西，都是很费力的一件事。”

"What was it used for then?"

“那它有什么用呢？”

Tattersall gave a genial³ shrug⁴, pleased at the mystery of it. "No idea. It must have had some symbolic⁵ importance, but we can only guess what."

塔特萨尔微微耸了耸肩，显然为它的神秘性感动很得意：“不知道，它也许具有某种象征意义，我们只能猜猜而已。”

The axes became known as Acheulean tools, after St. Acheul, a suburb of Amiens in northern France, where the first examples were found in the nineteenth century, and contrast with the older, simpler tools known as Oldowan, originally found at Olduvai Gorge⁶ in Tanzania. In older textbooks, Oldowan tools are usually shown as blunt, rounded, hand-sized stones. In fact, paleoanthropologists now tend to believe that the tool part of Oldowan rocks were the pieces flaked⁷ off these larger stones, which could then be used for cutting.

那些手斧后来被称为阿舍利工具，以19世纪第一批样本的发瑰地——法国北部亚眠郊外的圣阿舍利而命名，以区别于更古老，同时趣更简单的奥都成工具。后者最初发现于坦桑尼亚的奥都成峡谷，故名。在以前的教科书里，奥都成石器通常被描绘为钝钝的、圆圆的、手能握住的石块。实际上，今天古人类学家认为，奥都咸石器是从更大块的石头上敲下来的，当时可以用来切割东西。

Now here's the mystery. When early modern humans—the ones who would eventually become us—started to move out of Africa something over a hundred thousand years ago, Acheulean tools were the technology of choice. These early Homo sapiens loved their Acheulean tools, too. They carried them vast distances. Sometimes they even took unshaped rocks with them to make into tools later on. They were, in a word, devoted⁸ to the technology. But although Acheulean tools have been found throughout Africa, Europe, and western and central Asia, they have almost never been found in the Far East. This is deeply puzzling.

问题在于，当早期现代人类—— 最终进化成我们的人类——大约在10万多年前开始离开非洲时，阿舍利工具是最佳的随身携带品。这些早期的智人也非常喜爱阿舍利工具。他们携带这些工具出远门，有时他们甚至携带着不成形的石块，以便在日后把它们制作成工具。一句话，他们非常痴迷于这种工具制作。不过，尽管在非洲、欧洲、西亚和中亚都发现了阿舍利工具，但在远东却几乎从未发现。这真是一个谜。