評論
打印
"And there remains the remote possibility that he's right."
“有萬分之一的可能性，他是正確的。”
She laughed, then went on more intently: "Data from any single gene cannot really tell you anything so definitive.
她大聲笑了笑，接著沉思著說，“任何單個的基因實際上不能說明任何確切的東西。
If you follow the mitochondrial DNA backwards, it will take you to a certain place—to an Ursula or Tara or whatever.
如果你順著一段線粒體DNA往上推移，它可能把你帶到某個地方——烏爾蘇拉、杰斯敏，或別的任何人。
But if you take any other bit of DNA, any gene at all, and trace it back, it will take you someplace else altogether."
但是，如果你選擇任何另外，一段線粒體DNA，再按同樣的方式往上推移，它可能把你帶到—個完全不同的地方。”
It was a little, I gathered, like following a road randomly out of London and finding that eventually it ends at John O'Groats,
我想，這有點像沿著隨便哪條道路走出倫敦，最后你發現來到了蘇格蘭最北端的約翰角，
and concluding from this that anyone in London must therefore have come from the north of Scotland.
因此你就得出結論說所有的倫敦人都來自蘇格蘭北部。
They might have come from there, of course, but equally they could have arrived from any of hundreds of other places.
他們有可能來自那里，但是他們也有可能來自數以百計的別的地方。
In this sense, according to Harding, every gene is a different highway, and we have only barely begun to map the routes.
在這個意義上，按照哈丁的說法，每一個基因都是一條不同的公路，我們只不過剛剛開始繪制它們的路線圖。
"No single gene is ever going to tell you the whole story," she said.
“哪一個基因也不能反映全局。”她說。
So genetic studies aren't to be trusted?
那么，基因研究是不是就不可信了呢？
"Oh you can trust the studies well enough, generally speaking.
“噢，一般來說，你可以在相當程度上相信這類研究。
What you can't trust are the sweeping conclusions that people often attach to them."
你不能相信的是那些人們牽強附會得出的一些結論。”
She thinks out-of-Africa is "probably 95 percent correct,"
她認為：“‘走出非洲’也許95%是正確的。”
but adds: "I think both sides have done a bit of a disservice to science by insisting that it must be one thing or the other.
但是她補充說，“我認為，雙方都堅持非此即彼的觀點，這是違背科學精神的。
Things are likely to turn out to be not so straightforward as either camp would have you believe.
最后證明，事情很可能不是像雙方認為的那么簡單。
The evidence is clearly starting to suggest that there were multiple migrations and dispersals in different parts of the world going in all kinds of directions and generally mixing up the gene pool.
已經有證據開始顯示，在世界不同的地方曾經有過多次不同方向的古人類的遷移和擴散，所在這些都融人了整個人類的基因庫當中。
That's never going to be easy to sort out."
要想對之加以分門別類絕不是一件容易的事。”
Just at this time, there were also a number of reports questioning the reliability of claims concerning the recovery of very ancient DNA.
就在這個時候，還出現了不少對提取遠古DNA提出質疑的報道。
