Planet of the Humans: Why Haven't Apes Evolved into Humans?
地球疑问:为什么类人猿未变成为人
Virginia and her guest, Johnson, have just watched Planet of the Apes on DVD:
弗吉尼亚和客人约翰逊刚刚看完DVD影片《决战猩球》:
J: Hmm. Apes that evolve into something humanlike? Pretty unlikely, methinks.
约翰逊:嗯,类人猿进化成和人类一样?我想不太可能。
V: Definitely. Evolution within a species or family of species does not have to increase in complexity.
弗吉尼亚:当然,某一物种或某一群物种的进化不一定增加其复杂性。
J: Right. If it did, every fish in the ocean would now have limbs and live on land.
约翰逊:对,如果会增加复杂性,那海里的鱼现在就应该长了四肢,住在陆地上了。
V: Exactly. Because countless ecological opportunities remained for fish underwater, plenty of them remained aquatic.
弗吉尼亚:没错。因为海底的生态环境仍然为水族提供了无尽的生存机会,所以很多鱼仍然是水栖动物。
J: Another thing: the most developed species, like humans and apes, are products of a very specific combination of selection pressures and genetic mutations over millions of years. There's no reason why such a combination will repeat itself.
约翰逊:还有,最先进的物种,比如人类和类人猿,是数百万年前物竞天择的压力和基因突变两者结合作用下的产物。这种结合未必会再次发生。
V: Right. Planet of the Apes simply exploits the fallacy1 that present-day apes are traveling down the same evolutionary path as ourselves.
弗吉尼亚:对,《决战猩球》采用了另类推论,认为当今类人猿的演化途径和人类是相同的。
J: When it's widely accepted among scientists that at some point five to eight million years ago, humans and apes diverged2 to form the two separate species we know today.
约翰逊:科学家们已经广泛地接受了以下观点:约在500万到800万年以前,人类和类人猿分别进化成为目前我们所知道的这两个物种。
V: Yeah. As descendants of a common ancestor, apes are our evolutionary cousins.
弗吉尼亚:是啊,类人猿和我们来自同一祖先,他们可以算是我们的表兄弟姐妹呢!
J: The main bone of contention3 remaining among the boffins4 is which species in the fossil record is the so-called"missing link."
约翰逊:科学家们目前主要争论的焦点是,化石纪录中的哪个物种才是所谓的"失去的一环"。[注1]
V: What John say? Virginia not understand.
弗吉尼亚:约翰逊说什么?弗吉尼亚不懂。
[注1]:missing link:(相关联的整个事物中)缺少的一环,指介于类人猿与人类之间的假想灵长类动物。
[注2]:这句话是模仿"泰山电影式语言",类似"Dumb apes speak"。
来源:疯狂英语