時差N小時:比人類更聰明 Smarter

Yael: Hey Don, I bet you think you're pretty smart.

Don, 我賭你認(rèn)為自己很聰明。

Don: Well, uhm, Yael, I guess so. I mean, I'm no genius or anything.

恩，我猜是的。我的意思是，我不是天才也不是別的。

Y: Relax. I just meant that you have a big brain compared to most other animals.

放松。我只是說與大部分其他動物相比你的腦容量會比較大。

D: OK. I guess in that sense I am pretty smart--at least compared to a chimp or something.

好吧。從這方面來說那我想我確實(shí)相當(dāng)聰明——至少和黑猩猩一類的動物作比較。

Y: But guess what--about ten-thousand years ago there was a race of people who may havebeen even smarter than we modern humans.

但你想想——一萬年前有一個種族甚至?xí)任覀儸F(xiàn)代人類更加聰明。

D: Really? Who where they?

真的嗎?他們是誰，他們又在哪?

Y: They're known as the Boskops because that's the region in South Africa where their fossilswere first found.

它們被稱為博斯科普人。因?yàn)樗麄兪窃谀戏堑囊粋€地方，在那里人們首次發(fā)現(xiàn)了化石。

And the cool thing is that the Boskops appear to have had skulls that were a lot bigger thanours.

而且很驚人的是，博斯科普人似乎有著比我們還要大的頭骨。

D: Which would mean that their brains were probably bigger than ours, too! But does thatmean they were necessarily smarter?

那也就意味著他們的大腦比我們的還要大!但那足以能證明他們比我們更聰明嗎?

Y: Well, that's impossible to know for sure.

恩，那確實(shí)是說不好的。

But consider that our bigger brains allow us to imagine possibilities and alternate realities inways that smaller-brained animals can't, as far as we know.

但據(jù)我們所知，我們的大腦能夠想象的到一切可能發(fā)生的事情而且還能夠改變現(xiàn)實(shí)，這些都是腦容量小的動物們做不到的。

Now, if you imagine a person with a brain significantly larger than normal, it stands to reasonthat they'd be able to process more information at once and see and imagine things in waysthat are beyond us.

現(xiàn)在，你想象有這么一個人，他的腦容量大于正常水平。那么他就足以加工更多的信息而且還能夠想象的到我們之前想象不到的事情。

D: That's interesting. But if the Boskops were so smart, where are they now?

那真有趣。但如果說博斯科普人那么聰明的話，他們現(xiàn)在又在哪呢?

Y: They died out, obviously. And that may be simply because their heads were so big thatbabies heads had a hard time fitting through the birth canal.

顯然，他們都滅絕了。很簡單，是因?yàn)樗麄兊哪X袋太大了以至于嬰兒的由很難擠出產(chǎn)道。

Maybe too many Boskop babies died in childbirth.

也許太多的博斯科普小寶寶都死在分娩時期。

D: So I guess it doesn't always pay to have a big brain.

所以我想有個大腦袋不一定是值得的。

Y: Maybe not.

也許不是。