诙谐的语言，生动的内容一分钟快速掌握科技最新动态

 

 本期节目音频下载

Almost a Million Years Added for Earliest Human Ancestor Stone Tool Use and Meat Eating

There’s nothing like a good steak. And our Australopithecus afarensis ancestors apparently felt the same way. Because new discoveries from Ethiopia show that what was likely the species of the famous fossil Lucy used stone tools to butcher meat from big mammals—about 3.4 million years ago. That’s a million years earlier than our best previous evidence for human ancestor stone tool use and meat eating.. The finding appears on the cover of the journal Nature.

没有什么东西比得上一客美味的牛排。而我们的祖先——阿法尔南猿——显然也是这样认为的。之所以这么说，是因为根据在埃塞俄比亚的新发现，大约在340万年前，一种可能和著名化石露西同种的猿人就开始使用石器工具切割大型哺乳动物的肉。与之前发现的最好的证据相比，此次发现将人类祖先使用石器和食肉的时间提前了一百万年。，这已经在《自然》杂志上作为封面新闻刊登了出来。

The research team found two fossil bones with cut and scrape marks, signs of meat carving. One bone was a piece of rib from a cow-sized mammal; the other, a leg bone fragment from a mammal the size of a goat. The bones also had percussion marks, sustained while Lucy’s friends smashed the bones to get at the marrow.

研究小组发现了两块有砍刮痕迹的骨骼化石，这就是曾经进行肉类切割的证据。其中一块化石是块肋骨，来自一头牛般大的哺乳动物，另外一块则是腿部骨头的碎片，来自一头山羊般大的哺乳动物。这两块骨头上都有着敲击的痕迹，这些痕迹是露西的同胞们为取得骨髓而猛砸骨头时留下来的。

It looks like the ancient tool users collected stones that happened to have shapes conducive to butchering, the way kids select particular stones with good potential to skip on water. But future expeditions will look for evidence for any attempts at shaping stones into kitchen utensils. Because after 3.4 million years, Lucy and her fellow afarensis keep surprising us.

古时候使用工具的猿人会收集那些形状恰好方便用于切割的石器，正如孩子们会收集易于打水漂的石头一样。然而，未来的考察队仍会寻找古人尝试把石器打磨成炊具的证据，因为就算经过了340万年，露西和她的阿法尔南猿同伴们仍在不断给我们带来惊喜。

点击进入参与科学60秒>>> 

声明：音视频均来自互联网链接，仅供学习使用。本网站自身不存储、控制、修改被链接的内容。"沪江英语"高度重视知识产权保护。当如发现本网站发布的信息包含有侵犯其著作权的链接内容时，请联系我们，我们将依法采取措施移除相关内容或屏蔽相关链接。