評論
打印
'There's some scattered evidence that people were in North America maybe before these Clovis points were made (which would be before 13,000 years ago), but most of that evidence is arguable.
“有些零散的證據表明，也許是在克洛維斯矛頭被制造出來前，即在一萬三千年前，已經有遠古人類的北美洲定居；但是絕大部分證據還是值得商榷的。
The fact is that Clovis look like the first people. If you dig an archaeological site almost anywhere, the bottom levels are going to be about 13,000 years old, and if there are any artefacts, it will be Clovis or Clovis-related.
隨便在北美洲一處地方挖掘出一處考古遺址，最底層的地質層總是約在一萬三千年前；如果有任何文物出土的話，肯定是克洛維斯或者與克洛維斯相關的。
So it looks like maybe these are the very first dispersers who filled up the continent and became the ancestors of modern Native Americans. The area that was populated by Clovis was just about all of North America, and they came from somewhere up north, because the studies of genetics seem to prove conclusively that the ancestry of Native Americans is north-east Asian.'
因此看上去這些人類似乎就是最早期的傳播者、開拓者，在這片大陸上開枝散葉、繁衍生息，成為現代印第安人的祖先。這些克洛維斯人幾乎遍布了北美各地，而且他們來自于更加北部的某個地方；因為遺傳學研究給出了相當定性的證據，說明土著美洲人的祖先就是東北亞人種。”
So archaeology, DNA, and the bulk of academic opinion, are telling us effectively that everybody in America arrived from north-east Asia less than 15,000 years ago. When history gets re-written like this, it can lead to head-on collision with deeply-held beliefs.
因此，考古學、DNA及大量的學術見解都極明確地告訴大家，最早不過一萬五千年前，人類從東北亞抵達了北美洲。當歷史即將被重新編寫時，它就不可避免地要與根深蒂古的信息迎頭相撞。
'This is an affront to their very specific beliefs ...
“這對于他們相當特定的信仰而言肯定是一種冒犯……
Historian Gabrielle Tayac is a Piscataway Indian. She works for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and she studies how Native Americans are reacting to this new narrative that science is giving them:
歷史學家加布里埃爾·塔亞克是一位皮斯卡塔韋印第安人，在史密森安那的美國印第安人國家博物館工作；她專門研究了土著美洲人對于此項科學新發現的說法反應是如何的：
If you look at creation stories, there are certainly people who have very strong beliefs that either they emerged from the earth, or fell from the sky or developed out of the back of a water beetle, depending on where they were ... Native American religions were repressed for a very long time and so people have become very protective.
假如你立刻一下他們的創世故事，部分人們有很強的信念，取決于他們來自哪里，他們要么覺得他們要么是從地心出現的，要么是從天空掉下來的，要么就是從一種水甲蟲的背部進化而來的……美洲土著的信仰曾經長年被壓抑過，所以現在人們變得防備性相當強。
For some Native people, though not all, the insertion of scientific findings that Native people did not get created from the very site that they emerged from, or that there are findings that might be counter to a specific oral recitation, can be seen as a way of invalidating Native traditions.'
對于某些，盡管不是全部的土著人，這種科學發現的介入，硬生生地說明土著居民根本就是不是從當地進化而來的，或者有些科學發現可能對某種口口相傳的民族傳說相碰撞，這會被他們看成是一種挑戰土著傳統權威的方式。”
