科学美国人60秒:蜗牛壳证明古代人类迁徙路线-托福听力下载

　　科学美国人60秒中文翻译：

　　Want to know the route humans took when they first migrated from Africa into Europe? 想知道古代人类第一次从非洲迁到欧洲走的是什么路线吗?

　　Seems that they might have marked the path. 看起来他们似乎在沿途做过标记。

　　Not like Hansel and Gretel, who consciously left bread crumbs. 他们可不像汉瑟尔和格雷特尔那样故意留下面包屑。

　　Ancient humans ate as they trekked. 古人会在艰苦跋涉的途中进食。

　　And they appear to have chucked aside the packaging for some of their slimy sustenance: snails. 而且他们似乎还把自己黏糊糊食物的外包装扔在了道路两旁，比如蜗牛。

　　Conventional wisdom has been that humans initially traveled from Africa to the Near East,then up around the Mediterranean through Lebanon before heading into Europe some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. 传统观点认为人类最初从非洲迁到近东地区，而后在约40,000至50,000年抵达欧洲前通过黎巴嫩北上至地中海地区。

　　But recently, some scientists have theorized that humans made it to Europe first and then headed east. 但最近一些科学家们得出人类先抵达欧洲之后才东进的新理论。

　　Now there's more support for the old view that humans traveled through the Levant on the way to Europe–in the form of the shells of edible marine snails. 而现在有了更多支持人类在欧洲之旅中经过黎凡特旧观点的依据，那就是海洋蜗牛的壳。

　　The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 这项研究已在《国家科学院院刊》上发表。

　　Researchers evaluated shells from an archaeological site dated to the Upper Paleolithic in Lebanon. 研究人员在黎巴嫩可追溯到旧石器时代晚期的考古遗址中发现了蜗牛壳并且进行了分析。

　　The shells were mostly intact, except the tapered pointy tip had been removed—most likely for easier access to the meat inside. 除去被拿掉的锥形尖点外这些壳大多很完整，而摘掉那部分极有可能是为了更容易吃到里面的肉。

　　The scientists calculated the age of the shells via a variety of methods. 科学家们通过一系列方法估算它们的年龄。

　　And they found that the snails dated back almost 46,000 years. 他们发现这些蜗牛可追溯到约46000年前。

　　The earliest evidence of modern human remains in Europe seem to be no more than 45,000 years old. 而现代人类存于欧洲的最早证据似乎不超过45000年。

　　The snail evidence thus adds weight to the hypothesis that ancient people passed through the Levant on their way to Europe. 因此蜗牛的证据更加坚定了古人类经黎凡特到达欧洲的这一假说。

　　And not at a snail's pace, either. 当然并非以蜗牛的速度迁徙。

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