I have 18 minutes to tell you what happened over the past six million years. All right. We all have come from a long way, here in Africa, and converged in this region of Africa, which is a place where 90 percent of our evolutionary process took place. And I say that not because I am African, but it's in Africa that you find the earliest evidence for human ancestors, upright walking traces, even the first technologies in the form of stone tools. So we all are Africans, and welcome home. All right.
在接下来的18分钟里,我要向你们讲述 过去六百万年内发生的事情。 开始吧。 我们都经历了漫长的历程, 在非洲这里,在非洲这一地区相聚, 这里是我们90%的进化过程的发生之地。 我这么说的原因不是因为我是个非洲人, 而是因为在非洲,你可以找到 关于人类祖先的最早证据、直立行走的痕迹、 甚至是最早的科技──石器。 所以我们都是非洲人。欢迎你们回家。 好的。
I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human. And today, I will use Selam, the earliest child ever discovered, to tell you a story of all of us. Selam is our most complete skeleton of a three-year-old girl who lived and died 3.3 million years ago. She belongs to the species known as Australopithecus afarensis. You don't need to remember that. That's the Lucy species, and was found by my research team in December of 2000 in an area called Dikika. It's in the northeastern part of Ethiopia. And Selam means peace in many Ethiopian languages. We use that name to celebrate peace in the region and in the planet. And the fact that it was the cover story of all these famous magazines gives you already an idea of her significance, I think.
我是一名古人类学家,我的职责是去定义 人类在大自然中的地位,并且探究人类的本质, 今天我就要通过塞拉姆(Selam)──至今发现的最远古的小孩── 来讲述一个关于我们所有人的故事。 塞拉姆是我们所拥有的最完整的三岁小女孩的骨骼, 她生活在330万年前。 她属于南方古猿阿法种, 你不需要记住这个。 那也是露西的种族,是由我的研究小组 在2000年的12月份在一个叫做Dikika的地方发现的。 是在埃塞俄比亚的东北部。 塞拉姆在很多埃塞俄比亚语言中都代表着“和平”。 我们选用了这个名字来庆祝这一区域和这个星球上的和平。 这些著名杂志都用其作为头版头条, 这一点就可以告诉你其重要性了。
After I was invited by TED, I did some digging, because that's what we do, to know about my host. You don't just jump into an invitation. And I learned that the first technology appeared in the form of stone tools, 2.6 million years ago. First entertainment comes evidence from flutes that are 35,000 years old. And evidence for first design comes 75,000 years old -- beads. And you can do the same with your genes and track them back in time. And DNA analysis of living humans and chimpanzees teaches us today that we diverged sometime around seven million years ago and that these two species share over 98 percent of the same genetic material. I think knowing this is a very useful context within which we can think of our ancestry.
在受到TED的邀请之后,我决定做一点“钻研”(一词双意:digging既指“研究”,又指“挖掘”。) 来进一步了解TED,毕竟我是干这一行的。 不能茫然地接受邀请。 通过我的研究,我发现最早的“科技”(T=Technology) 是260万年前的石器, 最早的“娱乐”(E=Entertainment)来自35000年前的笛子, 而最早的“设计”(D=Design)则有75000年的历史──是珠子。 你也可以用同样的办法追溯你的基因的历史。 而对现存的人类和猩猩的研究 告诉我们大概在7百万年前,人类和猩猩分道扬镳, 至今这两个物种仍然有98%的共同基因。 我认为,了解这些为我们对祖先的研究 提供了非常有用的背景资料。
However, DNA analysis informs us only about the beginning and the end, telling us nothing about what happened in the middle. So, for us, paleoanthropologists, our job is to find the hard evidence, the fossil evidence, to fill in this gap and see the different stages of development. Because it's only when you do that, that you can talk about -- (Laughter) -- it's only when you do that, [that] you can talk about how we looked like and how we behaved at different times, and how those likes and looks and behaviors changed through time. That then gives you an access to explore the biological mechanisms and forces that are responsible for this gradual change that made us what we are today. But finding the hard evidence is a very complicated endeavor. It's a systematic and scientific approach, which takes you to places that are remote, hot, hostile and often with no access.
不过,这些研究只告诉了我们开始和结局, 却没有告诉 其中都经历了什么。 而对于我们古人类学家而言,我们的工作就是找到确凿的证据, 化石证据,来填补其中的空白, 呈现发展过程中的各个阶段。 只有做到这一点之后,你才可以讨论... (笑声) 只有做到这一点之后,你才可以讨论 在不同时期我们的相貌和我们的行为, 以及这些喜好、相貌和行为如何随着时间的流逝而变化, 那时这就可以给我们一个 探索这样的生命机制, 正是这些机制和力量逐渐 把我们变成今天这个样子。 但是找到确凿的证据是一件非常复杂的任务。 这是一个系统和科学方法, 来带你去很遥远、炎热、危险并常常无法进入的地方。♫♫
Just to give you an example, when I went to Dikika, where Selam was found, in '99 -- and it's about 500 kilometers from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. It took us only seven hours to do the first 470 kilometers of the 500, but took four, solid hours to do the last only 30 kilometers. With the help of the locals and using just shovels and picks, I made my way. I was the first person to actually drive a car to the spot. When you get there, this is what you see, and it's the vastness of the place which makes you feel helpless and vulnerable. And once you make it there, the big question is where to start. (Laughter) And you find nothing for years and years.
比如,当我们去Dikika, 也就是塞勒姆99年被发现的地方,那里离Addis Ababa 埃塞俄比亚的首都约有500公里。 500公里的前470公里只花了我们7小时的时间, 但其后的30个小时足足花了我们整整4个小时。 在当地人的帮助之下,使用锹和镐,我开辟了了一条路。 我算是开车到这个地方的第一个人。 当你到那儿的时候,这就是你所看到的, 这片区域的广袤让你感到自身的无助和脆弱。 一旦你到了那里,最大的问题就是从哪里开始。 (笑声) 然后你年复一年,什么也找不到。
When I go to places like this, which are paleontological sites, it's like going to a game park, an extinct game park. But what you find are not the human remains, such as Selam and Lucy, on a day-to-day basis. You find elephants, rhinos, monkeys, pigs, etc. But you could ask, how could these large mammals live in this desert environment? Of course, they cannot, but I'm telling you already that the environment and the carrying capacity of this region was drastically different from what we have today. A very important environmental lesson could be learned from this. Anyway, once we made it there, then it's a game park, as I said, an extinct game park. And our ancestors lived in that game park, but were just the minorities. They were not as successful and as widespread as the Homo sapiens that we are.
当我去这样的古人类学研究现场时, 就像是去一家游乐园,一家灭绝的游乐园。 但是你找到的并不是在通常意义上存在的人类, 就像是塞勒姆和露西。 你找到的是大象,犀牛,猴子,野猪等等。 但你可能会问,这样大型的动物 如何能够生存在这样的沙漠环境中? 他们当然不能,但我已经告诉你的是 这个环境及这个地区的承载能力已经与我们今天 的情况产生了急剧的变化。 我们可以从这里学到一堂非常重要的生态课程。 不管怎样,当我们到了那里,它就是个游乐场,就像我说的那样,一个灭绝的游乐场。 而且我们的祖先也生活在那个游乐场, 但我们只是少数派。他们(人类祖先)并不像智人那样 成功生存而且广泛分布。
To tell you just an example, an anecdote about their rarity, I was going to this place every year and would do fieldwork here, and the assistants, of course, helped me do the surveys. They would find a bone and tell me, "Here is what you're looking for." I would say, "No, that's an elephant." Again, another one, "That's a monkey." "That's a pig," etc. So one of my assistants, who never went to school, said to me, "Listen, Zeray. You either don't know what you're looking for, or you're looking in the wrong place," he said. (Laughter) And I said, "Why?" "Because there were elephants and lions, and the people were scared and went somewhere else. Let's go somewhere else." Well, he was very tired, and it's really tiring.
再给你们举一个例子,一些关于他们稀缺性的奇闻轶事, 我每年都要去这个地方,去做实地调查, 当然,我的助手帮助我去做这些调查。 他们会找到一块骨头然后告诉我,“这就是你要找的。” 我会说,“不,这是一块大象的骨头。” 再一次,另外一块——“这是一只猴子的骨头,”“那是一只野猪的骨头,”等等。 因此,我的一位从未上过学的助手,对我说,“听着,Zeray。 你或者不知道你要找什么, 也不知道你是不是找对地方了,”他说。 (笑声) 然后我说,“为什么?”因为这里有大象和狮子, 所以人类会恐惧,就搬到其他地方去了。 我们去别的地方吧。” 好吧,他非常疲惫,而且这件事真的很让人倦怠。
It was then, after such hard work and many frustrating years that we found Selam, and you see the face here covered by sandstone. And here is actually the spinal column and the whole torso encased in a sandstone block, because she was buried by a river. What you have here seems to be nothing, but contains an incredible amount of scientific information that helps us explore what makes us human. This is the earliest and most complete juvenile human ancestor ever found in the history of paleoanthropology, an amazing piece of our long, long history. There were these three people and me, and I am taking the pictures, that's why I am not in.
找到了塞勒姆,经过如此艰苦的工作和令人沮丧的岁月后 你可以看到这里被砂岩覆盖的面孔。 这里实际上是嵌在一块砂岩中的 脊柱和整个躯体, 因为她被一条河流所埋葬。 你现在所拥有的貌似什么都不是, 但包含了大量不可思议的科学讯息, 能够帮助我们了解是什么让我们成为人类。 这是古人类学历史上找到的最早和 最年少的人类祖先—— 这段历史是我们长久历史中最叹为观止的片段。 这是我和其他三个人,我正在拍照, 所以我不在镜头中。
How would you feel if you were me? You have something extraordinary in your hand, but you are in the middle of nowhere? The feeling I had was a deep and quiet happiness and excitement, of course accompanied by a huge sense of responsibility, of making sure everything is safe.
如果你是我,你的手中捧着意义非凡的东西,但你却不是中心或焦点, 你会怎么想? 我的感觉就是,非常深切的快乐和激动, 当然随之而来的是巨大的责任感, 那种要确保所有事都安全(的责任感)。
Here is a close-up of the fossil, after five years of cleaning, preparation and description, which was very long, as I had to expose the bones from the sandstone block I just showed you in the previous slide. It took five years. In a way, this was like the second birth for the child, after 3.3 million years, but the labor was very long. And here is full scale -- it's a tiny bone. And in the middle is the minister of Ethiopian tourism, who came to visit the National Museum of Ethiopia while I was working there. And you see me worried and trying to protect my child, because you don't leave anyone with this kind of child, even a minister.
这是一块化石的特写, 它经过了5年的清理、准备和修饰——那时间非常长, 而且我需要把骨头从砂岩块中取出来 那块砂岩我在前一张片子里给大家演示了。 这花费了5年。 在某种程度下,这就像是这个孩子在330万年之后的第二次重生, 但是劳动的时间很长。 这里是一个完整的——这是一块小骨头。 中间这个是埃塞俄比亚的旅游部长, 当我在埃塞俄比亚的国家博物馆工作的时候,他造访了那里。 你可以看到我很担心,试图保护我的孩子, 因为你不会把那样的孩子留给任何人, 即使是一个部长。
So then, once you've done that, the next stage is to know what it is. (Laughter) Once that was done, then it was possible to compare. We were able to tell that she belonged to the human family tree because the legs, the foot, and some features clearly showed that she walked upright, and upright walking is a hallmark in humanity. But in addition, if you compare the skull with a comparably aged chimpanzee and little George Bush here, you see that you have vertical forehead. And you see that in humans, because of the development of the pre-frontal cortex, it's called. You don't see that in chimpanzees, and you don't see this very projecting canine. So she belongs to our family tree, but within that, of course, you do detailed analysis, and we know now that she belongs to the Lucy species, known as Australopithecus afarensis.
所以,一旦你那样做了,下一步就是弄明白那样的行为是什么意思。 (笑声) 一旦工作完成了,就有进行比较的可能性了。 我们能够告诉大家的是她属于 人类的大家庭,因为她的腿、脚、 和其他一些特征很明显的显示了她直立行走, 而直立行走是人类的专属标志。 不过另外,如果你你把这个头骨与 一个对等年龄的黑猩猩以及这里的小布什(美国第54届总统)相比, 你们可以看到有垂直的额头, 这是在人类中,由于所谓的 大脑前叶的发展所造成的—— 而你在黑猩猩的身上看不到这一点, 而且你也看不到这样突出的犬齿。 所以她属于我们这一族谱,当然,随着我们 进行了详细的分析,我们现在知道 她属于“露西”一族,这一族 被称做阿法南方古猿。
The next exciting question is, girl or boy? And how old was she when she died? You can determine the sex of the individual based on the size of the teeth. How? You know, in primates, there is this phenomenon called sexual dimorphism, which simply means males are larger than females and males have larger teeth than the females. But to do that, you need the permanent dentition, which you don't see here, because what you have here are the baby teeth. But using the CT scanning technology, which is normally used for medical purposes, you can go deep into the mouth and come up with this beautiful image showing you both the baby teeth here and the still-growing adult teeth here. So when you measure those teeth, it was clear that she turned out to be a girl with very small canine teeth. And to know how old she was when she died, what you do is you do an informed estimate, and you say, how much time would be required to form this amount of teeth, and the answer was three. So, this girl died when she was about three, 3.3 million years ago.
下一个令人激动的问题是女孩还是男孩, 当她死亡的时候有多大? 你可以根据牙齿的大小判断 一个人的性别。 怎么做到? 大家知道,在灵长类动物中,有一种现象 叫做两性异型,简单来讲就是 男性要比女性要大一些, 男性的牙齿要比女性更大。 不过要做到那一点,你需要找到恒齿, 我们在这里看不到,因为我们所有的是 婴儿的牙齿。 但使用CT扫描技术, 即常用于医学目的的那种—— 你可以深入口腔,获取那些既可以显示婴儿牙齿 又可以显示正在生长的成人牙齿 的美丽图像。 所以当我们测量这些牙齿时, 就这么小的犬齿来看,很明显 她是个女孩。 要想知道她死时有多少岁,你能够做的 就是去做一个可靠的估计,你要知道形成这个牙齿要花多长时间, 我们的答案就是三岁。 因此这个女孩在约三岁时夭折了, 距今330万年。
So, with all that information, the big question is -- what do we actually -- what does she tell us? To answer this question, we can phrase another question. What do we actually know about our ancestors? We want to know how they looked like, how they behaved, how they walked around, and how they lived and grew up. And among the answers that you can get from this skeleton are included: first, this skeleton documents, for the first time, how infants looked over three million years ago.
因此有了这么多信息,最大的问题就是—— 我们实际上——她告诉了我们什么事情? 要回答这个问题,我们可以引用另一个问题—— 关于我们的祖先我们究竟了解多少? 我们想了解他们长相如何,行为如何, 如何行走, 以及它们如何生活和成长。 你可以从这具骨骼中找到的答案已经 囊括了以上的疑问——首先,这句骨骼首次记录了 距今300万年前的孤儿长什么样儿。
And second, she tells us that she walked upright, but had some adaptation for tree climbing. And more interesting, however, is the brain in this child was still growing. At age three, if you have a still-growing brain, it's a human behavior. In chimps, by age three, the brain is formed over 90 percent. That's why they can cope with their environment very easily after birth -- faster than us, anyway. But in humans, we continue to grow our brains. That's why we need care from our parents. But that care means also you learn. You spend more time with your parents. And that's very characteristic of humans and it's called childhood, which is this extended dependence of human children on their family or parents. So, the still-growing brain in this individual tells us that childhood, which requires an incredible social organization, a very complex social organization, emerged over three million years ago.
其次,她告诉了我们她是直立行走的, 不过仍具有一些爬树的适应性 更令人觉得有趣的是,然而, 这个孩子的大脑仍然在成长。 三岁时,如果你的大脑还在成长, 这就属于人类的特征了。 三岁的黑猩猩,其大脑已经90%成型。 这正是它们在出生以后很快就能适应环境 的原因——无论怎样,适应的比我们快。 反观人类,我们则继续进行脑部发育。 这也是我们为何需要父母照顾的原因。 不过这种照看意味着你还在不断学习成长。 你跟父母在一起的时间更长。 这是人类的典型特点,它叫做童年, 即人类儿童对其家庭或父母的 更长久的依赖。 所以这个孩子正在成长的大脑 告诉我们她的童年开始于 300多万年前,而这需要 一个不可思议的社会组织, 一个非常复杂的社会组织。
So, by being at the cusp of our evolutionary history, Selam unites us all and gives us a unique account on what makes us human. But not everything was human, and I will give you a very exciting example. This is called the hyoid bone. It's a bone which is right here. It supports your tongue from behind. It's, in a way, your voice box. It determines the type of voice you produce. It was not known in the fossil record, and we have it in this skeleton. When we did the analysis of this bone, it was clear that it looked very chimp-like, chimpanzee-like. So if you were there 3.3 million years ago, to hear when this girl was crying out for her mother, she would have sounded more like a chimpanzee than a human. Maybe you're wondering, "So, you see this ape feature, human feature, ape feature. What does that tell us?" You know, that is very exciting for us, because it demonstrates that things were changing slowly and progressively, and that evolution is in the making.
因此在我们进化历史的顶端, 塞勒姆将我们联合起来,给予我们之所以为人的 特殊依据。 不过并不是所有的特征都是人类,我会给你展示 一个非常令人激动的例证。 这个叫做舌骨。它就是长在这里的骨头。 它从后部支撑着你的舌头。 在某种意义上,它是你的音箱。 它决定了你发出的声音类型。 在化石记录里,它并不出名, 我们在这具骨骼上发现了它。 当我们对这块骨头进行分析时,很明显发现, 它非常像黑猩猩(的舌骨)。 因此,如果你处于330万年前, 听这个女孩哭喊着找妈妈时, 她听起来会更像黑猩猩而非人类。 可能你在想,“那么你看到了猿类的特征,人类的特征,猿类的特征。 它到底对我们意味着什么?” 你要知道,那对我们来说实在激动人心, 因为它说明了事物是缓慢且不断前进的变化着的, 进化正在发生。
To summarize the significance of this fossil, we can say the following. Up to now, the knowledge that we had about our ancestors came essentially from adult individuals because the fossils, the baby fossils, were missing. They don't preserve well, as you know. So the knowledge that we had about our ancestors, on how they looked like, how they behaved, was kind of biased toward adults. Imagine somebody coming from Mars and his job is to report on the type of people occupying our planet Earth, and you hide all the babies, the children, and he goes back and reports. Can you imagine how much biased his report would be? That's what somehow we were doing so far in the absence of the fossil children, so I think the new fossil fixes this problem.
来总结一下这个化石的重要性, 我们可以谈到以下几点。 迄今为止,我们拥有的关于我们祖先的知识 基本上来自于成年人的化石,因为 婴儿的化石是缺失的。 正如你们所知道的,他们不易保存完好。 所以我们拥有的关于我们祖先 长相如何,行为如何的知识, 只是基于成人的片面观点。 想象一下有人从火星而来, 他的工作就是记录并报告统治着地球的 人类物种,而我们把所有婴儿、儿童都藏起来了, 接着他便回去复命。 你可以想象这个报告将有多大的偏差么? 这就是在缺少儿童化石的情况下,我们 到目前为止在做的工作, 因此我认为这些新化石解决了这个问题。
So, I think the most important question at the end is, what do we actually learn from specimens like this and from our past in general? Of course, in addition to extracting this huge amount of scientific information as to what makes us human, you know, the many human ancestors that have existed over the past six million years -- and there are more than 10 -- they did not have the knowledge, the technology and sophistications that we, Homo sapiens, have today. But if this species, ancient species, would travel in time and see us today, they would very much be very proud of their legacy, because they became the ancestors of the most successful species in the universe. And they were probably not aware of this future legacy, but they did great. Now the question is, we Homo sapiens today are in a position to decide about the future of our planet, possibly more. So the question is, are we up to the challenge? And can we really do better than these primitive, small-brained ancestors?
所以我觉得最终最重要的问题是, 从更普遍的意义上来讲,我们实际上从这样的标本 和我们的历史中学到了什么? 当然,除了提取到这么大量的科学信息 来证明我们之所以成为人类, 很多存在于过去600万年的远古人类祖先—— 至少有10个——他们并不具备这些 我们智人今天所拥有的知识、 技术和方法。 不过如果这个物种,远古的物种, 会通过时间旅行来看望今天的我们, 他们将会为他们所留的遗产而倍感骄傲, 因为他们是当前宇宙中最成功 物种的祖先。 他们可能并不知道他们未来的遗产, 不过他们确实很伟大。 现在问题是,我们今天这些智人 正担负着决定我们的星球未来的责任,或者有可能责任更大。 所以问题是,我们准备好去挑战了么? 我们真的能比这些先驱者、脑容量小的祖先 做得更好么?
Among the most pressing challenges that our species is faced with today are the chronic problems of Africa. Needless to list them here, and there are more competent people to talk about this. Still, in my opinion, we have two choices. One is to continue to see a poor, ill, crying Africa, carrying guns, that depends on other people forever, or to promote an Africa which is confident, peaceful, independent, but cognizant of its huge problems and great values at the same time. I am for the second option, and I'm sure many of you are. And the key is to promote a positive African attitude towards Africa.
我们的物种今日所面临的最有挑战性的问题是 非洲长期存在的问题。 无需去列举,已经有很多智者 讨论过这些。 然而,我认为,我们有两种选择。 一是维持一个贫穷、病痛、哭泣的非洲—— 手握武器——永远依赖着他人, 或是推动一个更加自信、 和平、独立,但同时能够认识到它自身面临的巨大问题和 巨大价值的非洲。 我支持第二种选择,而且我确信我们大多数人是这样想的。 关键是推动起一个对非洲更加积极的非洲精神。
That's because we Africans concentrate -- I am from Ethiopia, by the way -- we concentrate too much on how we are seen from elsewhere, or from outside. I think it's important to promote in a more positive way on how we see ourselves. That's what I call positive African attitude. So finally, I would like to say, so let's help Africa walk upright and forward, then we all can be proud of our future legacy as a species.
因为我们非洲关注于—— 顺便说一下,我来自埃塞俄比亚—— 我们太关注于别人怎么 看我们和理解我们。 我认为重要的是我们应以一个更积极的态度 来看待我们自己。 这就是我所说的非洲——积极的非洲精神。 最后,我想说, 就让我们帮助非洲站起来,向前走—— 那时,作为同一个物种,我们都会为我们留给未来的遗产而骄傲。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)