高級英語聽力-VOA新聞播報 03

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聽力原文

Researchers say they have identified stone tools that might represent the oldest known evidence of humans in Europe. The recent research suggests that the human ancestors started settling Europe 1.4 million years ago, that is hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. The stone tools were first discovered in the 1970s near the town of Corolevo, close to Ukraine's borders with Hungary and Romania, but the tools' age had remained unclear.
研究人員表示，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一些石器，它們可能是人類在歐洲存在的最古老證據(jù)。最近的研究表明，人類祖先在140萬年前開始定居歐洲，這比之前認為的早了幾十萬年。這些石器最早是在20世紀70年代在烏克蘭與匈牙利和羅馬尼亞邊境附近的科羅列沃鎮(zhèn)附近發(fā)現(xiàn)的，但這些石器的年代一直不清楚。

The place of the find is important for understanding how humans first spread into Europe. They moved into the area during warm periods called interglacial periods - those were times in between ice ages, when huge amounts of ice covered Europe. The scientists used a method for estimating the age that identifies the effects of cosmic rays on some kind of minerals. The new method placed the age of the sediment layer containing the stone tools at around 1.4 million years. The researchers believe that the maker of the tools was likely a human ancestor called Homo erectus. That early human species appeared around 2 million years ago and spread across Africa, Asia and Europe before disappearing, perhaps 110,000 years ago.
發(fā)現(xiàn)地點對于了解人類最初是如何進入歐洲的很重要。他們在被稱為間冰期的溫暖時期遷入該地區(qū)——那是兩個冰河時代之間的時期，當時歐洲被大量的冰覆蓋。科學(xué)家們使用了一種估算年齡的方法，該方法可以識別宇宙射線對某種礦物的影響。新方法將包含石器的沉積層的年齡定為大約140萬年。研究人員認為，這些工具的制造者很可能是直立人的人類祖先。早期人類物種出現(xiàn)于大約200萬年前，并遍布非洲、亞洲和歐洲，然后消失，大概在11萬年前。

No bones were found at Corolevo, only stone tools, but the age suggests that Homo erectus was the only possible human species at the time. "We know very little about our earliest ancestors. They used stone tools for butchery and probably used fire," said Roman Garba of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Garba was the lead writer of the research published in Nature. Homo erectus was the first member of our evolutionary lineage. Homo erectus had body proportions like our species, Homo sapiens, though with a smaller brain. The tools, made of volcanic rock, were made in a way that is called uldoan. While simple, they represent the beginning of human technology.
在科羅萊沃沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)任何骨骼，只有石器，但年代表明直立人是當時唯一可能的人類物種。捷克科學(xué)院的 Roman Garba 說：“我們對我們最早的祖先知之甚少。他們使用石器進行捕獵，可能還使用火。”Garba 是發(fā)表在《自然》雜志上的這項研究的主要作者。直立人是我們進化譜系的第一位成員。直立人的身體比例與我們這個物種智人相似，但大腦較小。這些工具由火山巖制成，制作方式稱為uldoan。雖然簡單，但它們代表了人類技術(shù)的開端。

Until now, the oldest known evidence of humans in Europe was from about 1.2 million years ago, from a place called Atapuerca in Spain. The coral level findings suggest how the first humans might have moved into Europe. Homo erectus fossils from 1.8 million years ago are known from a place in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia called Domanici.
到目前為止，已知最古老的歐洲人類證據(jù)來自大約120萬年前，來自西班牙一個叫阿塔普埃爾卡的地方。珊瑚層面的發(fā)現(xiàn)表明第一批人類可能是如何遷入歐洲的。在格魯吉亞高加索山脈的一個名叫多馬尼奇的地方，人們發(fā)現(xiàn)了180萬年前的直立人化石。