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By about 40,000 years ago, humans like ourselves had spread from Africa all over Asia and Europe, even crossing seas to get to Australia. But no humans had yet set foot in the Americas, and it needed major changes in climate before they could. Firstly, 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age locked up the water in ice-sheets and glaciers, leading to a huge fall in sea level, and the sea between Russia and Alaska what's now the Bering Straits became a wide and easily passable land-bridge.
大約到了四萬年前，像我你現代人的人類已經走出非洲，遍布了亞洲與歐洲，甚至穿越海洋抵達了澳大利亞。然后仍舊沒有任何人類踏足到美洲的土地上，事實上只有到氣候產生了重要變化之后，這種時機才能成熟。首先，大約到了兩萬前年，冰河世紀冰封了冰層與冰川的大量水份，導致海平面的大幅度下降；于是俄羅斯與阿拉斯加之間的海域，也就是如令的白令海峽，出現了一道巨大而容易通行的大陸橋。
Animals - mammals, bison and reindeer - moved across to the American side, and hunting humans followed. The way further south into the rest of America was through an ice-free corridor between the Rocky Mountains on the Pacific side, and the vast continental ice-sheet covering Canada on the other.
各種各樣的動物，包括哺乳動物、野牛、馴鹿等開始向美洲方向進行遷徙，狩獵它們的人類也隨之而來。當年一道巨大的無冰走廊，一頭向著通過太平洋一側的洛基山脈一路向南延伸至美國各地，另一頭深深延伸至被大陸冰層覆蓋著的加拿大廣袤土地。
15,000 years ago, as the climate warmed up again, it was possible for large numbers of animals, followed again by their human hunters, to get through this corridor to the rich hunting grounds across what is now the United States. This is the new American world of the Clovis points.
一萬五千年前，隨著氣候的再次回暖，極可能在此時數量巨大的動物及跟隨著它們的人類獵人，通過這條走廊到達了如今的美國土地上這資源豐富的獵場。這就是克洛維斯矛頭出現的美洲新世界。
It was clearly a great environment for those go-getting humans from north Asia but, if you were a mammoth, the outlook wasn't quite so rosy. The ripples on the side of the Clovis point, which I find so beautiful, produce intense bleeding in any animal they hit, so you don't need to be a dead shot and strike a vital organ, you can hit your prey anywhere and the blood loss will gradually weaken it until you can easily finish it off. And by 10,000 BC, all the mammoths and a lot of other big mammals, had been finished off.
顯而易見，對于這些來自北亞的掠奪性人類而言，他們尋找到了一片樂土；但假如你不走運的身為一頭猛犸象，那你的處境可就堪憂了。克洛維斯矛頭邊緣上那些我看起來如此美麗的漣漪磨痕，可以對受到攻擊的任何動物造成嚴重出血。因此你根本不需要是一名神槍手，一出手便是命中致命要害；你可以往獵物身上任何部位亂砸一通，一旦被打中，獵物就會因為失血過多而慢慢虛弱下來，然后你輕輕松松就可以一下兩下解決掉它了。大約在公元前一萬年前，差不多所有猛犸象與其他大型哺乳動物就被這樣解決掉了。
How far it's the Clovis people that are responsible for these extinctions is a matter for debate, but Gary Haynes thinks they were:
究竟克活維斯人對于這些物種的滅絕要負多大責任，是一個長年備受爭論的話題，不過加里·海恩斯認為他們肯定要負責任：
'I think there's a direct connection between the first appearance of people and the last appearance of many of the large mammals - if not all of them - that disappeared in North America. You can actually trace this sort of connection across the world, wherever modern 'homo sapiens' turns up. There had never been a human population before this. It's almost invariable that large mammals disappeared - and not just some animals, it's a large proportion. In North America it's something like two-thirds to three-quarters.'
“我覺得人類的最初亮相與許多，即使不是全部的大型哺乳動物的最后消失在美洲之間有著相當直接的聯系。事實上，你可以輕易地在全世界任何現代“智人”所到之處尋找到這種聯系的蹤影。假如某地區在此之前從來沒有人類群體踏足過，一旦人類來了，大型哺乳動物的滅亡幾乎是不可避免的；而且不僅僅是部分動物，而是相當大比重的動物。在北美，因此消亡的物種高達三分之二至四分之三。”
This was going to become a familiar story.
接下來的故事你我似曾相識。
