万物简史 第644期:永不安分的类人猿(18)

（单词翻译）

Each was about ten kilometers, or six miles, away—a long way to carry an armload of stone.

两座山都在大约10公里以外——要用手臂抱着把石头搬到这里，实在是一段不近的距离。

Why the early Olorgesailie people went to such trouble we can only guess, of course.

当然，远古的奥洛戛萨里人为什么要找这样的麻烦，我们当然不得而知。

Not only did they lug¹ hefty stones considerable distances to the lakeside, but, perhaps even more remarkably², they then organized the site.

他们不但大老远地把笨重的石头搬运到湖滨，而且也许更令人不可思议的是他们在这个地方的组织工作。

The Leakeys' excavations³ revealed that there were areas where axes were fashioned and others where blunt axes were brought to be resharpened.

利基夫妇的挖掘表明，这里有制作手斧的区域，还有把手斧磨快的区域。

Olorgesailie was, in short, a kind of factory; one that stayed in business for a million years.

一句话，从某种意义上说，奥洛戛萨里是一个工厂，一个在100万年时间里没有停业过的工厂。

Various replications have shown that the axes were tricky⁵ and labor-intensive objects to make—even with practice,

各种各样的复制品表明，手斧是一种相当精巧，同时制作起来又要花费大量劳动力的工具

an axe⁴ would take hours to fashion—and yet, curiously⁶, they were not particularly good for cutting or chopping or scraping or any of the other tasks to which they were presumably put.

即使技术熟练的人只做一把手斧。也要花费几个小时的时间——然而，奇怪的是，对于手斧估计要派的用场，如切呀，砍呀，刮呀等等，并不十分适用。

So we are left with the position that for a million years—far, far longer than our own species has even been in existence,

因此我们认为，在100万年时间里——在远比我们现代人类存在的时间还要长的时间里，

much less engaged in continuous cooperative efforts—early people came in considerable numbers to this particular site to make extravagantly⁷ large numbers of tools that appear to have been rather curiously pointless.

在更不会连续协同工作的情况下——相当数量的早期人类来到这样一个特定的地点，制作了数量众多的工具，似实在有些不可思议。

And who were these people? We have no idea actually.

而这些人究竟是谁？我们实在无从知道。

We assume they were Homo erectus because there are no other known candidates,

我们假定他们是直立人，因为不知道还有其他更合适的人。

which means that at their peak—their peak —the Olorgesailie workers would have had the brains of a modern infant.

这就是说，在他们的鼎盛时期——在他们的脑袋里——奥洛戛萨里的工人们可能已经具有类似于现代人婴儿的大脑，

But there is no physical evidence on which to base a conclusion.

但是却没有实物证据支持这样的结论。

Despite over sixty years of searching, no human bone has ever been found in or around the vicinity of Olorgesailie.

尽管已进行了60余年的挖掘，奥洛戛萨里及其周围地区从未发现过人类化石。

However much time they spent there shaping rocks, it appears they went elsewhere to die.

不管他们花费了多少时间在那里制作石器，在他们临死时，他们去了别的地方。

"It's all a mystery," Jillani Ngalli told me, beaming happily.

“所有这些都是一个谜。”吉拉尼.安哥里笑容可掬地对我说。

The Olorgesailie people disappeared from the scene about 200,000 years ago when the lake dried up and the Rift⁸ Valley started to become the hot and challenging place it is today.

奥洛戛萨里人大约在20万年前消失，当时湖泊已经干涸，大裂谷地区开始变得像今天这样炎热和艰苦。

But by this time their days as a species were already numbered.

到了这个时候，奥洛戛萨里人作为一个种属存在的日子已经屈指可数。

The world was about to get its first real master race, Homo sapiens. Things would never be the same again.

世界就要出现其第一个真正的主宰人种——智人。事情再也不会像从前的样子了。