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Now the reason the chimpanzees don't do that
黑猩猩不那么做的原因
is that they lack what psychologists and anthropologists call social learning.
是它們?nèi)狈π睦韺W家和人類學家所謂的社會學習能力
They seem to lack the ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching.
它們似乎缺乏向別人學習的能力，通過照搬或模仿或者僅僅觀察
As a result, they can't improve on others' ideas or learn from others' mistakes -- benefit from others' wisdom.
理所當然，它們無法改進他人的想法，或者從別人錯誤中吸取教訓，汲取別人的智慧
And so they just do the same thing over and over and over again.
所以它們只是單純做同一件事重復一遍又一遍
In fact, we could go away for a million years and come back
事實上，如果我們能跨越一百萬年，然后再追溯回來
and these chimpanzees would be doing the same thing
這些黑猩猩肯定還在做著同樣的事
with the same sticks for the termites and the same rocks to crack open the nuts.
用同樣的棍子抓著白蟻，用同樣的石頭砸著堅果
Now this may sound arrogant, or even full of hubris. How do we know this?
也許這聽上去有些傲慢，甚至狂妄自大。我們怎么知道這些的？
Because this is exactly what our ancestors, the Homo erectus, did.
因為我們的祖先--直立人就是這樣
These upright apes evolved on the African savanna about two million years ago,
約二百萬年前，這些直立猿人在非洲的熱帶稀樹草原進化
and they made these splendid hand axes that fit wonderfully into your hands.
他們造出了精巧的手斧，能完全貼合手形
But if we look at the fossil record,
但如果我們查看化石
we see that they made the same hand axe over and over and over again for one million years.
會發(fā)現(xiàn)他們造著同樣的手斧，重復著，持續(xù)了一百萬年
You can follow it through the fossil record.
你可以通過各年代的化石看到
Now if we make some guesses about how long Homo erectus lived, what their generation time was,
現(xiàn)在我們可以做幾個關(guān)于猿人生存時間和他們的世代的猜想
that's about 40,000 generations of parents to offspring, and other individuals watching, in which that hand axe didn't change.
在約四萬代的時間里，從父輩到子輩，以及周圍人的觀察中，手斧沒有任何改進
It's not even clear that our very close genetic relatives, the Neanderthals, had social learning.
我們甚至不太清楚，我們的近親--尼安德特人是否具備社會學習能力
Sure enough, their tools were more complicated than those of Homo erectus,
當然他們的工具比猿人要復雜得多
but they too showed very little change over the 300,000 years or so that those species, the Neanderthals, lived in Eurasia.
但在30萬年時間里，他們也只表現(xiàn)出很少的變化，那些尼安德特人生活在歐亞大陸。
