埃塞俄比亚发现四百万年前人类遗迹

'Human' Remains¹ Found in Ethiopia Said to

Be Up to Four Million Years Old

埃塞俄比亚发现四百万年前人类遗迹

 

The team of scientists from the Cleveland, Ohio Museum of Natural History returned from their research trip to Ethiopia's Afar region at the beginning of this week with the news of their discovery.

 

The scientists found a lower leg bone, pelvis, femur fragments, several ribs², a collarbone, and a complete shoulder blade belonging to an early hominid believed to have lived between 3.8 and four million years ago.

 

The remains are even older than those of the famous hominid dubbed³ "Lucy," who is 3.2 million years old. Lucy, discovered in 1974 some 60 kilometers from the current find, is famous primarily because scientists found almost half of her skeleton, which is very rare and which has yielded vital clues about human evolution.

 

Scientists are hoping the latest find will increase their knowledge of evolution, as many as one million years before Lucy's life.

 

Team member and curator of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's department of physical anthropology⁴, Yohannes Haile-Selassie explained "Given its age, it's going to be very significant in terms of connecting the dots between the earlier Ardipithecus ramidus at 4.4 [million years ago] and the younger species Australopithecus afarensis, which is Lucy's species,". "So it's going to be very critical when we finish the study. It's going to give us a lot of information and I'm sure a lot of scientists involved in this research would be interested to know what this species was."

 

But, unlike in Lucy's case, the excavation⁵ did not yield a skull⁶, jawbone or teeth. Mr. Haile-Selassie says, without these, it will be difficult to determine the hominid's exact species, but much can still be learned from the remains.

 

Mr. Haile-Selassie: When you have isolated⁸ teeth, you can't really say much, but when we have the leg bone, the arm bone, the head, then you can look at proportions of the body. You can also look at how long the arm was compared to the leg, and this has to do with locomotion⁹ and how things evolved.

 

Mr. Haile-Selassie says he and his team will return to the site next year to see if they can find the hominid's skull and jaw⁷.

 

The hominid could be a member of Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, or Australopithecus anamensis, a species that lived up to 4.2 million years ago.

 

What Mr. Haile-Selassie and his colleagues do know from the remains they just found is that the hominid was bipedal, or walked on two legs, and was larger than Lucy.

 

There have been other remains discovered in eastern Africa from the same time period and earlier, all pointing to bipedalism.

 

A professor of anthropology at the University of Nairobi, Simiyu Wandibba, explains that the oldest hominid fossil, found in Chad, dates back seven million years. He says six million-year-old remains were located in the Kenyan areas of Lake Turkana, Baringo District and Tugen Hills.

 

Mr. Wandibba says hominids living between 3.4 million to 4.2 million years ago were likely to have created some form of crude technology.

 

Mr. Wandibba: Our ancestors at that time will have relied on wood, and wood doesn't preserve in the archaeological record. So they probably made wooden tools for digging up roots, for breaking hard fruits or nuts in order to make them more easily edible¹⁰, and so on. We can assume that these people made tools out of wood, and that these tools have not preserved.

 

Mr. Wandibba says stone tools first appeared some 2.5 million years ago.

 

The "homo" species line producing modern human beings occurred a little more than two million years ago with the emergence¹¹ of Homo habilis. Homo erectus then came on the scene, followed by Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neandertalensis, and humankind's present species, Homo sapiens sapiens.

 

Those in the homo line have a greater cranial capacity than their earlier hominid ancestors, suggesting increased intelligence, and an opposable thumb, which Mr. Wandibba says aided greatly in the evolutionary¹² process.

 

He says hominids living between 3.5 million to 4.2 million years were not as sophisticated as members of the Homo species.

 

Mr. Wandibba: They must have invented things, otherwise they will not have survived. These people utilized¹³ ready-made objects as tools. So you find a stone, you pick it up, and you use it, and then abandon it. The difference between them and homo is that homo sat down and said, 'I want to make a tool that looks like this,' and then made it. And, if need be, if the material is not available, then you look for that material.

 

Scientists are unsure of the origins of the Homo species line. Some argue that Lucy's species, which died out about a million years ago, gave rise to the homo line. Findings at Lake Turkana in Kenya indicate that the Homo and Lucy's species, Australopithecus, actually co-existed.

 

Cathy Majtenyi, for VOA News, Nairobi.

 

注释：

Cleveland [5kli:vlEnd] n. 克利夫兰

afar [E5fB:] adv. 遥远地

pelvis [5pelvis] n. 骨盆

femur [5fi:mE] n. 大腿骨

fragment [5frA^mEnt] n. 碎片

collarbone [5kClEbEJn] n. 锁骨

hominid [5hCminid] n. 原始人类

vital [5vaitl] adj. 至关重要的

clue [klu:] n. 线索

anthropology [7AnWrE5pClEdVi] n. 人类学

jawbone [dVC:5bEun] n. 颚骨

locomotion [lEukE5mEuF(E)n] n. 运动

fossil [5fCsl] n. 化石

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 ribs   

n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹

参考例句：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• Make a small incision below the ribs. 在肋骨下方切开一个小口。

3 dubbed   

v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制

参考例句：

• Mathematics was once dubbed the handmaiden of the sciences. 数学曾一度被视为各门科学的基础。
• Is the movie dubbed or does it have subtitles? 这部电影是配音的还是打字幕的？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 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。

5 excavation   

n.挖掘，发掘；被挖掘之地

参考例句：

• The bad weather has hung up the work of excavation.天气不好耽误了挖掘工作。
• The excavation exposed some ancient ruins.这次挖掘暴露出一些古遗迹。

6 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。

7 jaw   

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 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

9 locomotion   

n.运动，移动

参考例句：

• By land,air or sea,birds are masters of locomotion.无论是通过陆地，飞越空中还是穿过海洋，鸟应算是运动能手了。
• Food sources also elicit oriented locomotion and recognition behavior patterns in most insects.食物源也引诱大多数昆虫定向迁移和识别行为。

10 edible   

n.食品，食物；adj.可食用的

参考例句：

• Edible wild herbs kept us from dying of starvation.我们靠着野菜才没被饿死。
• This kind of mushroom is edible,but that kind is not.这种蘑菇吃得，那种吃不得。

11 emergence   

n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体

参考例句：

• The last decade saw the emergence of a dynamic economy.最近10年见证了经济增长的姿态。
• Language emerges and develops with the emergence and development of society.语言是随着社会的产生而产生，随着社会的发展而发展的。

12 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

13 utilized   

v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• In the19th century waterpower was widely utilized to generate electricity. 在19世纪人们大规模使用水力来发电。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The empty building can be utilized for city storage. 可以利用那栋空建筑物作城市的仓库。 来自《简明英汉词典》