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26 The Stuff of Life
第二十六章 生命的物質(zhì)
If your two parents hadn't bonded just when they did — possibly to the second, possibly to the nanosecond — you wouldn't be here. And if their parents hadn't bonded in a precisely timely manner, you wouldn't be here either. And if their parents hadn't done likewise, and their parents before them, and so on, obviously and indefinitely, you wouldn't be here.
如果你父母雙方?jīng)]有在恰當(dāng)?shù)臅r(shí)間結(jié)合——可能要精確到秒，更有可能要精確到毫微秒，你就不會(huì)在這里；而如果你父母的父母沒有在恰當(dāng)?shù)臅r(shí)間以恰當(dāng)?shù)姆绞浇Y(jié)合，你也不會(huì)在這里；如果你父母的父母的父母，以及你父母的父母的父母的父母，以此類推下去，沒有以同樣的方式結(jié)合，顯而易見，你也肯定不會(huì)在這里。
Push backwards through time and these ancestral debts begin to add up. Go back just eight generations to about the time that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born, and already there are over 250 people on whose timely couplings your existence depends. Continue further, to the time of Shakespeare and the Mayflower Pilgrims, and you have no fewer than 16,384 ancestors earnestly exchanging genetic material in a way that would, eventually and miraculously, result in you.
時(shí)光越是倒流，你賴以降生的人的數(shù)量越是增加。僅僅上溯到8代以前，也就是查爾斯·達(dá)爾文和亞伯拉罕·林肯出生的時(shí)間，這個(gè)數(shù)目已經(jīng)超過250人，他們雙方的結(jié)合決定了你的存在。繼續(xù)往前推，一直到莎士比亞和“五月花”號(hào)清教徒生活的時(shí)間，你有不少于16384個(gè)祖先，他們彼此的基因交換與組合，最終奇跡般地成就了你。
At twenty generations ago, the number of people procreating on your behalf has risen to 1,048,576. Five generations before that, and there are no fewer than 33,554,432 men and women on whose devoted couplings your existence depends. By thirty generations ago, your total number of forebears — remember, these aren't cousins and aunts and other incidental relatives, but only parents and parents of parents in a line leading ineluctably to you — is over one billion (1,073,741,824, to be precise).
在20代以前，這個(gè)祖先數(shù)目已增加到了1048576個(gè)。在此基礎(chǔ)上再往前推5代，成就你的祖先數(shù)不會(huì)少于33554432個(gè)。而在30代以前，你的祖先的總數(shù)——記住，這些數(shù)目不包括堂親、表親以及其他更遠(yuǎn)的親戚，而只是父母一父母的父母一直到你這一線——已超過10億（確切地說是1073741824）。
