評論
打印
字號:
這看起來像是我們的祖先懂得收集有著鋒利邊緣，可以用來切肉的工具，就好像小孩子們懂得挑選扁平的石頭用來打水漂一樣。但是未來的考古工作致力于尋找把石頭塑造成廚具的工具。相信三百四十萬年后，露西跟她的伙伴們會不斷給我們帶來驚喜。
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. [Shannon P. McPherron et al., http://bit.ly/dzCs4d]
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.
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.
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
收藏
