美国国家公共电台 NPR 315,000-Year-Old Fossils From Morocco Could Be Earliest Recorded Homo Sapiens

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The fossil remains¹ of five individuals who lived about 315,000 years ago in North Africa could belong to the very first population of modern humans, or they might be just another relative of ours who died out. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on the latest controversial claim in the hunt for the first humans.

CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE²: The big prize in the world of human origins is finding the first Homo sapiens, our own species. It's generally thought that we evolved in East Africa probably about 200,000 years ago. Now a European and Moroccan team says, no, it was Morocco 315,000 years ago. Jean-Jacques Hublin is with Germany's Max Planck Institute. He led the team that found the skull³ bones and stone tools.

JEAN-JACQUES HUBLIN: These material represent the very root of our species, the oldest Homo sapiens ever found in Africa or elsewhere.

JOYCE: This pushes back the date of the first anatomically modern humans by over a hundred thousand years, a big claim which Hublin made in the journal Nature. Others disagree, among them Rick Potts, who runs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. He says some of the skull's features, especially its elongated⁴ cranium, suggest it could be a more primitive⁵ ancestor of modern humans.

RICK POTTS: The new finds from Morocco are kind of a snapshot in that whole process of transition from archaic⁶ to us.

JOYCE: A snapshot taken, he says, probably just before modern humans evolved. This is a common argument in anthropology⁷. Where does a newly discovered fossil fit in the bushy family tree of human ancestry⁸? Chris Stringer, an anthropologist⁹ at London's Museum of Natural History, says even if the Moroccan skull is a mash-up of modern and archaic features, it's still one of us.

CHRIS STRINGER: As evolution happens, as we go back in time, they kind of look less like modern humans. They have faces which are really like bigger versions of our faces.

JOYCE: What is clear is that forms of early humans were popping up all over Africa. They evolved in East Africa, Southern Africa and now apparently¹⁰ North Africa. And it's increasingly evident that early humans and their ancestors moved all over the continent, swapping¹¹ tool technology as well as genes¹² until eventually the final version evolved somewhere yet to be determined¹³. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.

1 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

4 elongated   

v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Modigliani's women have strangely elongated faces. 莫迪里阿尼画中的妇女都长着奇长无比的脸。
• A piece of rubber can be elongated by streching. 一块橡皮可以拉长。 来自《用法词典》

5 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

6 archaic   

adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的

参考例句：

• The company does some things in archaic ways,such as not using computers for bookkeeping.这个公司有些做法陈旧，如记账不使用电脑。
• Shaanxi is one of the Chinese archaic civilized origins which has a long history.陕西省是中国古代文明发祥之一，有悠久的历史。

7 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

8 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

9 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

10 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

11 swapping   

交换，交换技术

参考例句：

• The slow swapping and buying of horses went on. 马匹的买卖和交换就是这样慢慢地进行着。
• He was quite keen on swapping books with friends. 他非常热衷于和朋友们交换书籍。

12 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

13 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。