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VOA慢速英语2017--Lee Berger

时间:2017-11-12 15:43:40

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00:00:02 OPRAH WINFREY: "Hattie Mae, this child is gifted," and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.

00:00:08 ROGER BANNISTER: If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another chance.

00:00:14 LAURYN HILL: It all was so clear. It was just, like, the picture started to form itself.

00:00:19 DESMOND TUTU: There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.

00:00:27 CAROL BURNETT (quoting CARRIE HAMILTON): “Every day I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life. Decide.”

00:00:35 JOHNNY CASH: My advice is, if they're going to break your leg once when you go in that place, stay out of there.

00:00:40 JAMES MICHENER: And then along come these differential experiences that you don't look for, you don't plan for, but boy, you’d better not miss them.

00:00:52 LEE BERGER: These bones that we’re finding are of individuals that lay somewhere in our deep family tree.

00:01:03 ALICE WINKLER: This is What It Takes, a podcast about passion, vision, and perseverance1 from the Academy of Achievement. I’m Alice Winkler, and this is Lee Berger. He hunts for human ancestors, and is transforming our understanding of evolution.

00:01:23 LEE BERGER: Every single person is interested to know who their parents are, who your grandparents are, who your great-grandparents are. Genealogy3 websites and that work are hugely popular. Why? The reason is because every human being on this planet at some point realizes that the people who they descend4 from in the past carry traits and behaviors that are now part of them.

00:01:54 And as we try to understand ourselves as humans, something only humans can do, we explore our inner selves. We are looking for causality, reason. We want to know not only why we look physically5 like this, but often, the more important, why we behave like this. Well, people like me just do that in the deep depths of time.

00:02:19 ALICE WINKLER: People like Lee Berger are called paleoanthropologists, but it would be hard to argue that there are many paleoanthropologists like Lee Berger. In 2008, he found a new species, an ancient relative of humans called Australopithecus sediba, or just sediba for short, and in September of 2015, Lee Berger made headlines again when he announced he’d found a cave filled with skeletons of another human relative no one had seen before, a species he named Homo naledi.

00:03:00 These two discoveries are forcing a rewrite of the story of evolution. Lee Berger sat down with the Academy of Achievement twice to talk about his pioneering work, once in 2012, and again soon after the Homo naledi news broke. Both times he was wearing the kind of leather jacket you might expect to see on an intrepid6 explorer, à la Indiana Jones. You can occasionally hear the creak of the leather as he talks.

00:03:32 And Berger’s stories are often jaw7-dropping, filled with enough suspense8 and drama to warrant a Hollywood movie. But Berger has also known years of fruitless searching, epic9 dead ends, and academic acrimony. We will cover all of that and more in this episode, but it seemed more fun to start with the tales of action and adventure.

00:04:03 In the autumn of 2013, Berger was hoping to find new bones — well, new very old bones, in what’s known as the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, in South Africa. It’s where he’d found sediba several years before. This time he sent a team of cave explorers underground.

00:04:26 LEE BERGER: And on September 13, they went into one of the best-known cave systems in the entire region, if not all of South Africa, the Rising Star system. They went off the map, though, and they found a place at the top of a collapse11 we call Dragon's Back, and there they looked down a seven-and-a-half-inch slot. Now imagine, they're already a hundred feet underground. They're looking into this slot and, of course, what do they do?

00:04:51 They go into it, and they go down it about 50 feet and drop into a chamber12, and in that chamber are bones scattered13 across the floor. They're bones that they thought were the kind that I was looking for, and their camera didn't function, so they had to come back out. It was about a four-and-a-half-hour trip at that time. They told me that they thought they'd found something, but I said, you know, "Bring me pictures, and I'm not going to believe you unless I see pictures of this," because I get that kind of thing all the time.

00:05:22 You know, people call you up and say they found a skull14, and it's a plastic baby doll head or something that they got out of their backyard.

00:05:28 ALICE WINKLER: A few weeks went by. Nothing. Berger says he forgot about the whole thing, and then one night at about nine p.m., someone showed up at his door.

00:05:39 LEE BERGER: I answered the intercom, and Pedro, who was a student that I had enlisted16 as sort of the team leader, was on the other end. He said, "You're going to want to let us in," and I almost didn't because it was kind of a creepy voice like that. In they came, lifted up a laptop, and there I saw a picture that I thought I'd never see. There, sitting on this photograph, was a jawbone that I could see was a primitive17 hominid, but it was just lying there on the floor. Next picture was a skull.

00:06:07 Next picture, a series of bones of a body, it looked like. I'd never seen anything like that in all of my career, just lying there on the floor, and so we celebrated18 a little. I couldn't sleep that night. Picked up the phone at two a.m., called National Geographic19.

00:06:25 ALICE WINKLER: National Geographic agreed to fund an expedition to bring up the bones, but because of the extremely tight and treacherous20 space the scientists were going to need to get through — remember, seven-and-a-half inches wide — Berger had to advertise for skinny little risk-taking scientists. He ended up with six volunteers who fit the bill, all women. He calls them underground astronauts.

00:06:54 LEE BERGER: Within a week, we had the richest hominid site ever discovered in the history of South Africa, and by the end of a 21-day expedition, we’d found more fossils of primitive hominids than had been discovered in the entire history of the search for human origins, and we left thousands in the chamber. It's probably the richest site ever discovered in the world. It's like our version of Tutankhamun's tomb.

00:07:23 ALICE WINKLER: Before the expedition began, Lee Berger explains, he thought that they were onto one skeleton, which would have been miracle enough.

00:07:32 LEE BERGER: You know, this is a field of fragments. We don’t find these things, and I'd already had my lottery21 ticket punched with sediba, you know. I had my skeletons from that discovery. I went after this second one with all the expectation of a fragmented skeleton that we would get out of some species. I never in the world expected that chamber to have that richness, and I really didn't expect to find another new species.

00:08:01 ALICE WINKLER: Berger and his team were able to put together enough complete skeletons - male, female, young and old, to confidently form a picture of what this creature looked like.

00:08:12 LEE BERGER: So the easiest way to sort of describe Homo naledi is, it's not a human, first. You've got to get that out of your mind, but it is standing2 on two legs. Imagine something standing on two legs. It's probably about five feet tall but ultrathin. If you were looking at it across a room, you'd immediately know you're not looking at a human, or if you are, there's something wrong with him because perched atop that five-foot body is going to be a pinhead, a head literally22 with a brain the size of an orange.

00:08:45 The shoulders would be high and almost a brought-up sort of — held like an ape would hold its shoulders, but then you'd notice that the arms would be more human proportioned. The hands would look like a human hand, except they'd be held and curved out at the end so that they wouldn't be flat. They would just be sort of more like an ape at the end but human proportioned.

00:09:11 When you got down to the hips23, they'd be sort of flared24, but again, a very slender body, and then long, skinny legs, which, at the very end of that, a humanlike foot.

00:09:23 ALICE WINKLER: Homo naledi may have just been discovered, but because of the huge number of bone fragments involved — over 1,500 pieces from 15 individuals — scientists probably already know more about it than almost any other species of human relative ever discovered. Berger says they don’t yet know its age because the tools now available aren’t well suited for the condition these bones were found in.

00:09:51 Homo naledi may have lived a hundred thousand years ago or as much as three million years ago. Either way, naledi’s physique and its behavior are providing scientists with crucial new insights.

00:10:06 LEE BERGER: And so, we can say that Homo naledi was a climber, but we don’t know what it was climbing. It has these very different hands than any kind of hominid we've ever seen before, with those long, curved fingers.

00:10:20 We know it's a long distance walker. It's got these long legs, and it's walking in much the way a human is. We can even see that in the way the foot and ankle are constructed, but it's doing it somehow a little bit differently because the pelvis is constructed differently. So you've got a climbing, long distance walker, but perhaps what's most amazing about it is that we've also had a glimpse into its behavior.

08:45:55 We've hypothesized, after eliminating pretty much everything else, that Homo naledi was deliberately25 disposing of its dead, which means it's got a mind that has the capacity that we previously26 thought was not only unique to humans, but perhaps identified humans — the concept, perhaps, of the recognition of self-mortality.

00:11:07 ALICE WINKLER: That bears repeating, repeating and elaborating. Lee Berger and his colleagues are quite certain that these creatures were intentionally27 disposing of their dead. Baruch Shemtov, who spoke28 to Dr. Berger for the Academy of Achievement in 2015, asked how he could be so sure.

00:11:28 LEE BERGER: We were faced with a dilemma29. About day four, we realized that there was nothing in this chamber but hominids. All of us have degrees in archeology, forensic30 anthropology31, and we kind of knew what it meant to see a truly monospecific assemblage. It's rare to the point of unique in the paleontological record. Well, except for one species, Homo sapiens. This wasn't Homo sapiens. We knew that very early on.

00:11:57 We knew it was primitive, and so we began trying to eliminate things. We could easily eliminate, eventually, that it wasn't a predator32. There were no marks of that. There was no scavenging. We knew that it wasn't a mass death assemblage because they had come in one after the other. We could tell that from studies of how the bones had — were laid out, and also how they were weathering. We knew that they hadn't died in some collapse. We knew they weren't washed in there. We could see that from the sediments33.

00:12:26 We went through everything, and we were eventually left with this one hypothesis, that this non-human species of animal was doing something that we previously thought only humans did, deliberately disposing of its dead.

00:12:44 BARUCH SHEMTOV: And why would that be so significant?

00:12:47 LEE BERGER: Well, up until September 10, when we announced that we have a species of non-human animal that deliberately disposes of its dead in a ritualized fashion — at least that's the best hypothesis — it was thought that that was not only unique to humans, but perhaps identified us. Now we have to rethink what it means to be a human.

00:13:12 ALICE WINKLER: Lee Berger emphasized several times during this interview that no one knows where this species, Homo naledi, fits into the human family tree. And more than that, he said, it’s probably the wrong question to be asking. If anything, Homo naledi and Berger’s previous discovery, sediba, seem to indicate that there is no one family tree. More likely, there are branches that split off, developed, and came back together at times.

00:13:42 That’s why Berger calls these two species human relatives rather than human ancestors. On the path to humankind, he says, there were lots of different experiments. I want to switch gears here and take you on Lee Berger’s personal path, the path that brought him to sediba and Homo naledi eventually, but that began in the mid-1960s on the farm where he grew up outside the tiny town of Sylvania, Georgia. It's far, far away in every way from where he now lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

00:14:19 LEE BERGER: I was always collecting things. I would spend my time in the woods whenever I could. Some unfortunate animals ended up in terrariums or aquariums34 in my house, or I would be out in the plowed35 fields looking for arrowheads or Native American artifacts or rocks. I came from a sort of long line of these sorts of explorers, if you will. My grandfather was an oil wildcatter. I have deep history in sodbusters, the first pioneers going out, and all types of sort of people who were always never happy to be right where they were but always looking for something.

00:14:55 And I found a real thrill in seeing things other people missed, you know, seeing the anomaly, if you will.

00:15:04 ALICE WINKLER: His dad sold insurance. His mom was a math teacher, but all he wanted to do was stay outdoors. He was an Eagle Scout36, head of the Georgia 4H Club. You get the picture.

00:15:17 LEE BERGER: I began to become interested in wildlife conservation and biology. I found out there was an endangered species in my region called the gopher tortoise, and that took me to national competitions, and it also introduced me to the first scientists I’d ever met, and they were hugely formative. And I ended up starting the first gopher tortoise preserve in the state of Georgia.

00:15:41 It's now the state reptile37, and it was a big part of teaching me not just about passion when you find something, but about the process of what you do to study something or to actually make something happen. It also taught me a little bit about politics, which, you know, getting some other people to become interested in something and assist you in accomplishing something.

00:16:05 ALICE WINKLER: But Lee Berger decided38 he ought to study law. Why is not such a big mystery, he explained in this interview with journalist Gail Eichenthal. Anyone who’s ever had parents can figure it out. “When you’re young,” he said, “what other people want you to be is often the easiest way out.” Berger got into Vanderbilt University on a Navy ROTC scholarship, but after his first few pre-law courses, he says, he was ready to die.

00:16:36 But he had gotten a scholarship to do what he was doing and didn’t see an escape.

00:16:41 LEE BERGER: My transcript39 looked sort of like F, D, D, F in my core subjects of what I was supposed to be, and then A, A, A in everything I was taking as an elective. And I reached a critical point where it was literally one of those situations where I was going to fail out of college, or I had to do something radical40 in my life.

00:17:05 And I had one of those incredible moments when I met a person who didn’t realize how influential41 he would be in my life, in the young lieutenant42 who was my advisor43 in the Naval44 ROTC, because I went in on the verge45 of failing out. Now I was lucky enough at that time that we had the two-year process, so I'd gone a year-and-a-bit into it, so I wouldn’t have to go enlisted, but I was in trouble.

00:17:33 And I went to him, and I said, "Gosh, you know, it's not working, and I think I'm maybe going to drop out for a while, maybe enlist15 in the Navy, and find myself, because this isn't working." And this young lieutenant, who had my life in his hands, he could have told me — and it would have been in his interests, because they're recruiting officers in some ways, to say, "Absolutely." Or, you know — he leaned across the table, and he said, "What is this, when you look at it?" And he had my transcript, and he shoved it across, and, you know, I was like, "Failure?"

00:18:09 You know, that was — and he said, "No, look at it again. Don't look at the D’s and F’s. Look at that again." And I said, "I don't see it." And he said, "I see your passion there. I see what you love. You just don't realize it." He said, "You’re not enlisted material. You need to find your love." And he said, "I will let you out of here right now as long as you promise me to go do what you love."

00:18:38 And he signed my release papers. I put my stay at Vanderbilt in abeyance46, and I walked out the door into a very interesting period, but where I then found that thing and never looked back.

00:18:55 ALICE WINKLER: It wasn’t a straight shot to paleoanthropology. His journey included a stint47 as a news cameraman and the dramatic rescue of a drowning woman, but eventually Berger did get back to school, this time at East Georgia College.

00:19:10 LEE BERGER: And there I met a geologist48 who just exploded the world of fossils that were all around me. I had no idea, in the place that I lived, this low country, of what was around me. I met this — these passionate49 English professors and mathematicians50. My grades, of course, rocked, because it wasn't work anymore. I stayed there for a brief period, got my grades back, went down to Georgia Southern University because it was the only place I could afford.

00:19:38 You know, I was on my own on this one. I’d had my scholarship chance. And I walked into another place with — that was just full of these rare, passionate academics and scientists. I had, by that time, read a book that fundamentally changed my life, and it was Lucy, and I actually took this book from the library. I did eventually pay the fine and put it back, but I couldn’t put it down.

00:20:06 ALICE WINKLER: “Lucy,” discovered in 1974 by Don Johanson and Tom Gray, was the first skeleton found of an early hominid, which is to say an animal that walks upright on two legs. Until Lucy, the field of paleoanthropology was based mostly on scraps51 and conjecture52, which the book Lee Berger was reading made clear.

00:20:30 LEE BERGER: And there was one line in there that struck me, when Don, who would eventually become a great friend and mentor53 of mine, said that these early hominid fossils are effectively the rarest sought-after objects on Earth, and there's something like a one-in-ten-million chance of finding one. And I had just before then been thinking of becoming a dinosaur54 paleontologist or something, and I — that line so intrigued55 me because the first thought that came into my mind was not, "Gee56, who would want to go into a field of science where you have no chance of finding something?"

00:21:11 But, "There's a field that you can make a difference with even the smallest discovery," and I wanted to make a difference.

00:21:21 ALICE WINKLER: Not too much later, Lee Berger met his hero, Don Johanson. Johanson liked him and invited him to join in on a project in Tanzania. When the project didn’t come through, though, Johanson arranged for Lee Berger to join a different research expedition in Kenya with the other most-famous paleontologist of that era, Richard Leakey.

00:21:44 LEE BERGER: My first morning there, I couldn’t sleep. Here I was. You know, these are the fossil fields of Africa. I woke up early. All the rest of the students stayed asleep, and I walked in. I saw the light on in this small encampment in the middle — right on the edge of Lake Turkana, middle of Africa, and there I met a man, John Kimengich, one of Richard Leakey’s fossil hunters, and he chatted to me for a moment. He was having tea.

00:22:12 It was probably 4:30, and then when he said, "You know, you want to go look for fossils with me? I'm going out now." I said, "Of course." Over the next several hours, he taught me how to find these anomalies, how to see these things, and as we were walking back to the Land Rover, 11:00 in the morning — it gets too hot to work — a hundred meters from the Land Rover, I look down, and there was a piece of a femur, this leg bone, of an early hominid. I found my first hominid — one-in-ten-million chance — my first day. It was completely — I was hooked.

00:22:46 ALICE WINKLER: Fast forward not too many years, Lee Berger, now just in his early 30s, had rocketed to a position as chair of a very prestigious57 research unit at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

00:23:01 LEE BERGER: I'd taken over from a very powerful and famous paleoanthropologist named Phillip Vallentine Tobias, and I had made some discoveries. And when I first got to South Africa to do my Ph.D., I discovered two little hominid teeth, but those two teeth were the first new early hominid site discovered in Southern Africa in 48 years. They appeared in National Geographic, two teeth. That's how rare this stuff was at the time.

00:23:32 I had done other work looking at what killed the Taung Child. I had looked at body proportions, but I had not made major hominid discoveries because they are just that rare. And I had gotten into the type of ups and downs and wars — I'd had the most ferocious58 fights with colleagues, and I was always pushing boundary. I also took a stance in the late 1990s about open access to fossils.

00:24:03 You’ve got to remember — it's very important to remember — that I'm almost the first generation of scientists, people my age and just maybe a year older, that were never without a computer. It makes us think differently, and, in the late 1990s, there were some behavioral abnormalities within paleoanthropology that bothered me a lot. And I was in a very powerful position, a young man made director in seemingly one of the most powerful chairs in the science of paleoanthropology. And I had fossils that had been found by other people, albeit59 in the very distant past, under my control.

00:24:40 And in this science, those are resources, and I decided to open them up, let everyone look at them. It now is called “open access.” We didn’t have a name for it at that time, really, but I took a relatively60 public stance on that, that I was going to let people see these fossils. It was not the way it was done.

00:25:00 ALICE WINKLER: Keep in mind, the idea of an online database was still pretty novel at the time, so that's not what Lee Berger’s talking about here.

00:25:09 LEE BERGER: That was yet to be. No, I meant physically look at them. I meant — and it may sound strange to people, but let scientific colleagues see material, published or unpublished. And that was not the norm. The norm at that time was — and I'm not criticizing it, I'm just explaining how the science worked. You would gather a small team of people around you when you had important fossils, and you would study them over years and years and years and years, and then, at times, you would pronounce on the analyses that you had carefully conducted.

00:25:46 While that's not wrong in any way, shape, or form, it was different than the way my generation thinks about the value. We grew up in the age of where you have a Google or a Facebook or the Internet, where we didn't know what anything was worth until you put it out there and began to establish its worth as a community, as you tested the robusticity of it as you went along.

00:26:13 And so, I was looking at the fossils the same way, and I said, "I'm going to open the safe door." Well, it was probably a decade too early to say that, and it caused wars. It coincided with also a discovery of a very major fossil by a person older than me that worked for me. That caused tension and conflicts.

00:26:34 ALICE WINKLER: All in all, it was one of the lowest periods in his career. Berger says some of the academic infighting caused him to dissolve his own unit, which he’d spent six or seven years building. Eventually, he rebuilt it, but the problems persisted, and then technology shifted with the advent10 of 3D imaging and reliable large data.

00:26:58 LEE BERGER: Because my exploration efforts looking for fossils in various sites and stuff had not produced any really big hits, the push by things like the universities and colleagues was to move away from exploration. There was very much a real feel that we’d probably pretty much discovered every major fossil field in Africa, and, in fact, some scientists even wrote that down at the turn of the millennia61.

00:27:27 ALICE WINKLER: It was becoming clear to Lee Berger that the future of paleoanthropology was going to be in the lab, looking at the fossils already discovered decades before with new tools. Berger began thinking about a career shift.

00:27:43 LEE BERGER: It was going to be very hard to continue to get the kind of resources to fund risk-taking exploration. People were clearly not believing that there were other sites out there. There were talks of not even allowing digging at new sites because they clearly had failed, and I'd almost been a demonstration62 of that over 17 years. It was at that moment that I became the last human being on Earth to discover Google Earth.

00:28:09 ALICE WINKLER: Berger had spent the previous three years using a handheld GPS and satellite maps he bought from NASA for thousands - sometimes tens of thousands - of dollars, to try and plot the coordinates64 of known fossil sites. It’s complicated and pretty technical, but he was looking for clues on the terrain65 that might help him discover where to search next. This technology was a big leap forward, he thought. Then, as he said, came Google Earth.

00:28:42 LEE BERGER: Well, you know, after looking at my house, like everyone does the first time they do it, I saw that little window over to the left that you could put GPS coordinates in. And I had some of the most expensively obtained GPS coordinates on the planet to put in that window, and I typed them in, and I saw what everyone sees, that amazing Google Earth phenomena66 of flying from the sky and popping right down onto the point that that coordinate63 is.

00:29:09 And my coordinate, the first one, which I'd put in because I knew it better than any place on Earth, landed on nothing. It landed hundreds and hundreds of meters away. Second point I put in, the same thing. Third — they were all useless. They were all wrong. I had wasted three years of my life. I had wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars of research grant.

00:29:34 Did not take me long to Google why the U.S. government had put deliberate error into those GPSs in the late 1990s, for military purposes, and that, with my — the errors that were inherent in those handheld GPSs had created a compounding error. Well, that was like adding low to low on my life at that moment, and so I spent the rest of December and January moving those points physically on Google from where they landed to where I knew they should be, because I could see these sites.

00:30:10 It was one of the most important moments in the entire story of my scientific career because it was in correcting that error that I began to see patterns, that I began to see that they fell in linear structures, that I began to see the fossil sites clustered together. Caves might be in more random67 situations.

00:30:37 And I also began to see and learn what a site would look like, all the different varieties, and I began to think that if that’s a site, that looks like a site, and this looks like a site.

00:30:52 ALICE WINKLER: First thing he did was make a list of targets, gathered a team, and started out. Within the year, he’d found 40 new fossil sites in an area world-famous for having 20. Then one morning he went out with a student; his dog, Tao; and his nine-year-old son, Matthew, to look at a potential site where some miners, looking for lime 100 years ago, had blasted a few holes with dynamite68. For some reason, though, the miners had left the site otherwise untouched.

00:31:26 LEE BERGER: Matthew shouts, "Dad, I found a fossil!" He was 15 meters off the site in high grass. I could see he was holding a small rock, and just for a moment I almost didn't go look because I knew what he would have found. He would have found an antelope69 fossil because for every one of these early hominins we find, these human ancestor pieces, we find about 250,000 pieces of antelopes70. We just don't find these things.

00:31:55 My nine-year-old son and — encouraging fossil-hunting — I started walking towards him, and five meters away I knew that his and my life were going to change forever. Because he was holding a small rock — you have to visualize71 and crouch72 down, and there on the outside of it was an S-shaped bone. And that S-shaped bone was a hominin clavicle, and the reason I knew that is very few mammals, first, in Africa have hominin clavicles.

00:32:24 Bats have them because they fly. Moles73 have them because they dig, and primates74 have them. We're primates, and only amongst primates do humans and our ancestors have this very characteristic S-shape, and at that time I was probably one of the world's only experts on hominin clavicles. I did my Ph.D. on them. All six or seven pieces, never a complete one, had been found.

00:32:49 I did my thesis on the clavicle, the proximal humerus, and the scapula, and one of the reasons I did is there were no complete bones in the entire record of those, and it was about the only thing left to study, and it was all scraps. And I was looking at one.

00:33:04 ALICE WINKLER: Berger turned over the rock, and on the other side was a jaw and a tooth. It turned out he and nine-year-old Matthew had found the partial skeleton of a child, a tween actually. Up until that day, there were only something like seven partial early hominid skeletons ever found, and two of those were discovered by Berger’s role models and mentors75, Don Johanson and Richard Leakey. Overnight, Lee Berger had joined their ultra-elite club.

00:33:39 And all three, I can't help mentioning here, are members of the Academy of Achievement. But anyway, when Berger went back to the fossil site to hunt for the rest of his skeleton, he discovered another, and another, and another — six skeletons in all, belonging to that species he named Australopithecus sediba. At the time he talked to the Academy of Achievement about sediba, four years later, he was still in the glow of it.

00:34:10 After all, it was the discovery of a lifetime, as he told journalist Gail Eichenthal.

00:34:16 LEE BERGER: That started this adventure I’ve been on. It has — the site of Malapa, which I would eventually call it, which means “my home,” has turned into perhaps the richest early hominid site ever discovered in the history of this planet.

00:34:29 ALICE WINKLER: But remember, this conversation about sediba with the Academy of Achievement took place in 2012. The very next year, lightning struck again when Lee Berger discovered another new species, Homo naledi, and a way bigger collection of skeletons deep inside a cave, intentionally buried, it seems. Just weeks after news of that discovery went very, very viral, Lee Berger spoke with the Academy for the second time.

00:35:03 LEE BERGER: Homo naledi has done something that I thought would never happen to me as a paleoanthropologist. I went into a field to study and interpret bones. Suddenly, not only are there bones, but you've got a discovery that's giving you insight into behavior in a way that I never anticipated. The idea that we're getting a window into another species' mind from this chamber — that's amazing, you know?

00:35:33 That's something that I think the whole world is going to have to think about. You know, you've got something here, a discovery that's making us question our own humanity. I guess I don’t know how I feel about that. I haven't had enough time to digest the effect of that in something that I wasn't really prepared for. I'd spent my life as a biologist, a paleontologist, and now I have to also think like a philosopher. That's kind of neat though.

00:36:09 ALICE WINKLER: Lee Berger doesn’t know what he’s looking for next. At any moment, he says, his phone could ring and one of his explorers could be on the other end saying, "Hey, you’ve got to see this," and that, Berger says, is the thrill of it. This is What It Takes from the Academy of Achievement. If you want to learn more about Lee Berger’s life and work, go to achievement.org, and because you are a particularly curious form of hominid, make sure to follow us on Twitter to find out about upcoming episodes. Our handle is @WhatItTakesNow. I’m Alice Winkler.

00:36:49 And thanks, as always, to the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation for funding What It Takes.


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1 perseverance oMaxH     
n.坚持不懈,不屈不挠
参考例句:
  • It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
  • Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。
2 standing 2hCzgo     
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的
参考例句:
  • After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
  • They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。
3 genealogy p6Ay4     
n.家系,宗谱
参考例句:
  • He had sat and repeated his family's genealogy to her,twenty minutes of nonstop names.他坐下又给她细数了一遍他家族的家谱,20分钟内说出了一连串的名字。
  • He was proficient in all questions of genealogy.他非常精通所有家谱的问题。
4 descend descend     
vt./vi.传下来,下来,下降
参考例句:
  • I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
  • We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。
5 physically iNix5     
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律
参考例句:
  • He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服,心绪也很乱。
  • Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。
6 intrepid NaYzz     
adj.无畏的,刚毅的
参考例句:
  • He is not really satisfied with his intrepid action.他没有真正满意他的无畏行动。
  • John's intrepid personality made him a good choice for team leader.约翰勇敢的个性适合作领导工作。
7 jaw 5xgy9     
n.颚,颌,说教,流言蜚语;v.喋喋不休,教训
参考例句:
  • He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
  • A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。
8 suspense 9rJw3     
n.(对可能发生的事)紧张感,担心,挂虑
参考例句:
  • The suspense was unbearable.这样提心吊胆的状况实在叫人受不了。
  • The director used ingenious devices to keep the audience in suspense.导演用巧妙手法引起观众的悬念。
9 epic ui5zz     
n.史诗,叙事诗;adj.史诗般的,壮丽的
参考例句:
  • I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗,而写了这个小故事。
  • They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。
10 advent iKKyo     
n.(重要事件等的)到来,来临
参考例句:
  • Swallows come by groups at the advent of spring. 春天来临时燕子成群飞来。
  • The advent of the Euro will redefine Europe.欧元的出现将重新定义欧洲。
11 collapse aWvyE     
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷
参考例句:
  • The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
  • The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。
12 chamber wnky9     
n.房间,寝室;会议厅;议院;会所
参考例句:
  • For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说,牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
  • The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。
13 scattered 7jgzKF     
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的
参考例句:
  • Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来,塞进文件夹里。
14 skull CETyO     
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。
15 enlist npCxX     
vt.谋取(支持等),赢得;征募;vi.入伍
参考例句:
  • They come here to enlist men for the army.他们来这儿是为了召兵。
  • The conference will make further efforts to enlist the support of the international community for their just struggle. 会议必将进一步动员国际社会,支持他们的正义斗争。
16 enlisted 2d04964099d0ec430db1d422c56be9e2     
adj.应募入伍的v.(使)入伍, (使)参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 );获得(帮助或支持)
参考例句:
  • enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
  • He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
17 primitive vSwz0     
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。
18 celebrated iwLzpz     
adj.有名的,声誉卓著的
参考例句:
  • He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
  • The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。
19 geographic tgsxb     
adj.地理学的,地理的
参考例句:
  • The city's success owes much to its geographic position. 这座城市的成功很大程度上归功于它的地理位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Environmental problems pay no heed to these geographic lines. 环境问题并不理会这些地理界限。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
20 treacherous eg7y5     
adj.不可靠的,有暗藏的危险的;adj.背叛的,背信弃义的
参考例句:
  • The surface water made the road treacherous for drivers.路面的积水对驾车者构成危险。
  • The frozen snow was treacherous to walk on.在冻雪上行走有潜在危险。
21 lottery 43MyV     
n.抽彩;碰运气的事,难于算计的事
参考例句:
  • He won no less than £5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
  • They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。
22 literally 28Wzv     
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实
参考例句:
  • He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
  • Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候,她不走到真正要昏厥了,决不肯坐下来。
23 hips f8c80f9a170ee6ab52ed1e87054f32d4     
abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯,耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 );[建筑学]屋脊;臀围(尺寸);臀部…的
参考例句:
  • She stood with her hands on her hips. 她双手叉腰站着。
  • They wiggled their hips to the sound of pop music. 他们随着流行音乐的声音摇晃着臀部。 来自《简明英汉词典》
24 Flared Flared     
adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词
参考例句:
  • The match flared and went out. 火柴闪亮了一下就熄了。
  • The fire flared up when we thought it was out. 我们以为火已经熄灭,但它突然又燃烧起来。
25 deliberately Gulzvq     
adv.审慎地;蓄意地;故意地
参考例句:
  • The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
  • They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。
26 previously bkzzzC     
adv.以前,先前(地)
参考例句:
  • The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
  • Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿,解释原先发生了什么。
27 intentionally 7qOzFn     
ad.故意地,有意地
参考例句:
  • I didn't say it intentionally. 我是无心说的。
  • The local authority ruled that he had made himself intentionally homeless and was therefore not entitled to be rehoused. 当地政府裁定他是有意居无定所,因此没有资格再获得提供住房。
28 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
29 dilemma Vlzzf     
n.困境,进退两难的局面
参考例句:
  • I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
  • He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。
30 forensic 96zyv     
adj.法庭的,雄辩的
参考例句:
  • The report included his interpretation of the forensic evidence.该报告包括他对法庭证据的诠释。
  • The judge concluded the proceeding on 10:30 Am after one hour of forensic debate.经过近一个小时的法庭辩论后,法官于10时30分宣布休庭。
31 anthropology zw2zQ     
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。
32 predator 11vza     
n.捕食其它动物的动物;捕食者
参考例句:
  • The final part of this chapter was devoted to a brief summary of predator species.本章最后部分简要总结了食肉动物。
  • Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard and a fearsome predator.科摩多龙是目前存在的最大蜥蜴,它是一种令人恐惧的捕食性动物。
33 sediments 8b3acb612b624abdf2c2881bc6928565     
沉淀物( sediment的名词复数 ); 沉积物
参考例句:
  • When deposited, 70-80% of the volume of muddy sediments may be water. 泥质沉积物沉积后,体积的70-80%是水。
  • Oligocene erosion had truncated the sediments draped over the dome. 覆盖于穹丘上的沉积岩为渐新世侵蚀所截削。
34 aquariums 82747d9c1d5a367d4d227b28ed8cf5c6     
n.养鱼缸,水族馆( aquarium的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Biotope aquariums represent the natural environments of ornamental fish. 生态鱼缸表现出观赏鱼的自然生活环境。 来自互联网
  • There are aquariums in many cities in the world. 世界上好多城市有水族馆。 来自互联网
35 plowed 2de363079730210858ae5f5b15e702cf     
v.耕( plow的过去式和过去分词 );犁耕;费力穿过
参考例句:
  • They plowed nearly 100,000 acres of virgin moorland. 他们犁了将近10万英亩未开垦的高沼地。 来自辞典例句
  • He plowed the land and then sowed the seeds. 他先翻土,然后播种。 来自辞典例句
36 scout oDGzi     
n.童子军,侦察员;v.侦察,搜索
参考例句:
  • He was mistaken for an enemy scout and badly wounded.他被误认为是敌人的侦察兵,受了重伤。
  • The scout made a stealthy approach to the enemy position.侦察兵偷偷地靠近敌军阵地。
37 reptile xBiz7     
n.爬行动物;两栖动物
参考例句:
  • The frog is not a true reptile.青蛙并非真正的爬行动物。
  • So you should not be surprised to see someone keep a reptile as a pet.所以,你不必惊奇有人养了一只爬行动物作为宠物。
38 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
39 transcript JgpzUp     
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书
参考例句:
  • A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
  • They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。
40 radical hA8zu     
n.激进份子,原子团,根号;adj.根本的,激进的,彻底的
参考例句:
  • The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
  • She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。
41 influential l7oxK     
adj.有影响的,有权势的
参考例句:
  • He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
  • He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。
42 lieutenant X3GyG     
n.陆军中尉,海军上尉;代理官员,副职官员
参考例句:
  • He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
  • He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官,递上了一张简短的便条进去。
43 advisor JKByk     
n.顾问,指导老师,劝告者
参考例句:
  • They employed me as an advisor.他们聘请我当顾问。
  • The professor is engaged as a technical advisor.这位教授被聘请为技术顾问。
44 naval h1lyU     
adj.海军的,军舰的,船的
参考例句:
  • He took part in a great naval battle.他参加了一次大海战。
  • The harbour is an important naval base.该港是一个重要的海军基地。
45 verge gUtzQ     
n.边,边缘;v.接近,濒临
参考例句:
  • The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
  • She was on the verge of bursting into tears.她快要哭出来了。
46 abeyance vI5y6     
n.搁置,缓办,中止,产权未定
参考例句:
  • The question is in abeyance until we know more about it.问题暂时搁置,直到我们了解更多有关情况再行研究。
  • The law was held in abeyance for well over twenty years.这项法律被搁置了二十多年。
47 stint 9GAzB     
v.节省,限制,停止;n.舍不得化,节约,限制;连续不断的一段时间从事某件事
参考例句:
  • He lavished money on his children without stint.他在孩子们身上花钱毫不吝惜。
  • We hope that you will not stint your criticism.我们希望您不吝指教。
48 geologist ygIx7     
n.地质学家
参考例句:
  • The geologist found many uncovered fossils in the valley.在那山谷里,地质学家发现了许多裸露的化石。
  • He was a geologist,rated by his cronies as the best in the business.他是一位地质学家,被他的老朋友们看做是这门行当中最好的一位。
49 passionate rLDxd     
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的
参考例句:
  • He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
  • He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。
50 mathematicians bca28c194cb123ba0303d3afafc32cb4     
数学家( mathematician的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? 你以为我们的数学家做不到这一点吗? 来自英汉文学
  • Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. 数学家们可以用两个变数来解决问题。 来自哲学部分
51 scraps 737e4017931b7285cdd1fa3eb9dd77a3     
油渣
参考例句:
  • Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
  • A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。
52 conjecture 3p8z4     
n./v.推测,猜测
参考例句:
  • She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
  • This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。
53 mentor s78z0     
n.指导者,良师益友;v.指导
参考例句:
  • He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
  • He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。
54 dinosaur xuSxp     
n.恐龙
参考例句:
  • Are you trying to tell me that David was attacked by a dinosaur?你是想要告诉我大卫被一支恐龙所攻击?
  • He stared at the faithful miniature of the dinosaur.他凝视著精确的恐龙缩小模型。
55 intrigued 7acc2a75074482e2b408c60187e27c73     
adj.好奇的,被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式);激起…的兴趣或好奇心;“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词
参考例句:
  • You've really intrigued me—tell me more! 你说的真有意思—再给我讲一些吧!
  • He was intrigued by her story. 他被她的故事迷住了。
56 gee ZsfzIu     
n.马;int.向右!前进!,惊讶时所发声音;v.向右转
参考例句:
  • Their success last week will gee the team up.上星期的胜利将激励这支队伍继续前进。
  • Gee,We're going to make a lot of money.哇!我们会赚好多钱啦!
57 prestigious nQ2xn     
adj.有威望的,有声望的,受尊敬的
参考例句:
  • The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
  • You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。
58 ferocious ZkNxc     
adj.凶猛的,残暴的,极度的,十分强烈的
参考例句:
  • The ferocious winds seemed about to tear the ship to pieces.狂风仿佛要把船撕成碎片似的。
  • The ferocious panther is chasing a rabbit.那只凶猛的豹子正追赶一只兔子。
59 albeit axiz0     
conj.即使;纵使;虽然
参考例句:
  • Albeit fictional,she seemed to have resolved the problem.虽然是虚构的,但是在她看来好象是解决了问题。
  • Albeit he has failed twice,he is not discouraged.虽然失败了两次,但他并没有气馁。
60 relatively bkqzS3     
adv.比较...地,相对地
参考例句:
  • The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
  • The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。
61 millennia 3DHxf     
n.一千年,千禧年
参考例句:
  • For two millennia, exogamy was a major transgression for Jews. 两千年来,异族通婚一直是犹太人的一大禁忌。
  • In the course of millennia, the dinosaurs died out. 在几千年的时间里,恐龙逐渐死绝了。
62 demonstration 9waxo     
n.表明,示范,论证,示威
参考例句:
  • His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
  • He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。
63 coordinate oohzt     
adj.同等的,协调的;n.同等者;vt.协作,协调
参考例句:
  • You must coordinate what you said with what you did.你必须使你的言行一致。
  • Maybe we can coordinate the relation of them.或许我们可以调和他们之间的关系。
64 coordinates 8387d77faaaa65484f5631d9f9d20bfc     
n.相配之衣物;坐标( coordinate的名词复数 );(颜色协调的)配套服装;[复数]女套服;同等重要的人(或物)v.使协调,使调和( coordinate的第三人称单数 );协调;协同;成为同等
参考例句:
  • The town coordinates on this map are 695037. 该镇在这幅地图上的坐标是695037。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下,负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》
65 terrain sgeyk     
n.地面,地形,地图
参考例句:
  • He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
  • He knows the terrain of this locality like the back of his hand.他对这一带的地形了如指掌。
66 phenomena 8N9xp     
n.现象
参考例句:
  • Ade couldn't relate the phenomena with any theory he knew.艾德无法用他所知道的任何理论来解释这种现象。
  • The object of these experiments was to find the connection,if any,between the two phenomena.这些实验的目的就是探索这两种现象之间的联系,如果存在着任何联系的话。
67 random HT9xd     
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动
参考例句:
  • The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
  • On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查,发现肉变质了。
68 dynamite rrPxB     
n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破)
参考例句:
  • The workmen detonated the dynamite.工人们把炸药引爆了。
  • The philosopher was still political dynamite.那位哲学家仍旧是政治上的爆炸性人物。
69 antelope fwKzN     
n.羚羊;羚羊皮
参考例句:
  • Choosing the antelope shows that China wants a Green Olympics.选择藏羚羊表示中国需要绿色奥运。
  • The tiger was dragging the antelope across the field.老虎拖着羚羊穿过原野。
70 antelopes ca529013a9640792629d32a14a98d705     
羚羊( antelope的名词复数 ); 羚羊皮革
参考例句:
  • One jump, and you're out, and we'll run for it like antelopes.' 你只要一跳就出来了,我们可以像羚羊那样飞快地逃掉。”
  • Most antelopes can withhold their young for weeks, even months. 绝大部分羚羊能把分娩期推迟几个星期,甚至几个月。
71 visualize yeJzsZ     
vt.使看得见,使具体化,想象,设想
参考例句:
  • I remember meeting the man before but I can't visualize him.我记得以前见过那个人,但他的样子我想不起来了。
  • She couldn't visualize flying through space.她无法想像在太空中飞行的景象。
72 crouch Oz4xX     
v.蹲伏,蜷缩,低头弯腰;n.蹲伏
参考例句:
  • I crouched on the ground.我蹲在地上。
  • He crouched down beside him.他在他的旁边蹲下来。
73 moles 2e1eeabf4f0f1abdaca739a4be445d16     
防波堤( mole的名词复数 ); 鼹鼠; 痣; 间谍
参考例句:
  • Unsightly moles can be removed surgically. 不雅观的痣可以手术去除。
  • Two moles of epoxy react with one mole of A-1100. 两个克分子环氧与一个克分子A-1100反应。
74 primates 9536f12c27d026e37c108bd6fc53dbba     
primate的复数
参考例句:
  • Primates are alert, inquisitive animals. 灵长目动物是机灵、好奇的动物。
  • Consciousness or cerebration has been said to have emerged in the evolution of higher primates. 据说意识或思考在较高级灵长类的进化中已出现。
75 mentors 5f11aa0dab3d5db90b5a4f26c992ec2a     
n.(无经验之人的)有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的名词复数 )v.(无经验之人的)有经验可信赖的顾问( mentor的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • Beacham and McNamara, my two mentors, had both warned me. 我的两位忠实朋友,比彻姆和麦克纳马拉都曾经警告过我。 来自辞典例句
  • These are the kinds of contacts that could evolve into mentors. 这些人是可能会成为你导师。 来自互联网

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