第二十八章神秘的兩足動物
Just before Christmas 1887, a young Dutch doctor with an un-Dutch name, Marie Eugene Francois Thomas Dubois, arrived in Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies, with the intention of finding the earliest human remains on Earth.
就在1887年圣誕節前，一位有著非荷蘭名字的年輕荷蘭醫生馬里·尤金·弗朗索瓦·托馬斯·杜布瓦來到荷屬東印度群島的蘇門答臘島，他此行的目的是為了尋找地球上最早的人類的遺骨。（注：盡管是荷蘭人，杜布瓦出生于比利時法語區邊終地帶的小鎮埃吉斯頓。）
Several things were extraordinary about this. To begin with, no one had ever gone looking for ancient human bones before. Everything that had been found to this point had been found accidentally, and nothing in Dubois's background suggested that he was the ideal candidate to make the process intentional.
他的這一舉動有幾點非同尋常之處。首先，在此之前，從未有人專門去尋找過古人類遺骸。迄今為止所發現的一切都純屬偶然，而杜布瓦的背景決定了他似乎也不是使這一過程變得具有全球性影響的理想人選。
He was an anatomist by training with no background in paleontology. Nor was there any special reason to suppose that the East Indies would hold early human remains. Logic dictated that if ancient people were to be found at all, it would be on a large and long-populated landmass, not in the comparative fastness of an archipelago. Dubois was driven to the East Indies on nothing stronger than a hunch, the availability of employment, and the knowledge that Sumatra was full of caves, the environment in which most of the important hominid fossils had so far been found. What is most extraordinary in all this—nearly miraculous, really—is that he found what he was looking for.
他是一個訓練有索的解剖學家，對于古生物學卻是一個門外漢。也沒有任何特別的理由認為荷屬東印度群島存在早期人類的化石。從邏輯上說，若要發現古代人類的遺跡，應該到地域遼闊，很久以前就有人類活動的大陸，而不是空間相對狹小的群島。驅使杜布瓦來到東印度群島的目的，一是他的直覺，一是這里可以找到工作，還有就是蘇門答臘有許多洞穴，當時為止的大多數重要的人科動物化石都是在這樣的環境里發現的。然而，最令人想不到的是他居然找到了他要尋找的東西。這簡直是個奇跡。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201910/596681.shtml
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