Monkeys and tools

猴子們和工具

Capuchin monkeys have been using stone tools for around 3,000 years

卷尾猴使用石器已有大約3000年的歷史

詞匯

Capuchin/卷尾猴

Bang the rocks together, guys

伙計們，那些猴子會把石頭結合在一起使用，厲害不？

ONE OF THE most famous edits in cinematic history comes early in “2001: A Space Odyssey”. A primitive hominid hurls a bone club into the air, and a match cut to a spacecraft instantaneously tells the millennia-long story of human ingenuity. Tools maketh man. But there was never a human monopoly on tool use, as a new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows. A team led by Tiago Falótico of the University of S?o Paulo, in Brazil, and Tomos Proffitt of University College, London, has demonstrated that a species of monkey called the wild bearded capuchin has been employing stone tools for perhaps 3,000 years, and that their use of the technology has changed over the course of time.

電影史上最著名的橋段之一是《2001太空漫游》。一個原始人類向空中扔出一根骨頭棒，燃成火柴，轉場化為宇宙飛船這一瞬間刻畫出了人類智慧的千年歷史。不會用工具，何以為人？但正如《自然生態(tài)與進化》(Nature Ecology & Evolution)雜志上的一篇新論文所顯示的那樣，人類從未壟斷過工具的使用。由巴西圣保羅大學Tiago Falótico領導的一支團隊,和倫敦大學的Tomos Proffitt,證明了在猴子科目中，有一種叫野生大胡子卷尾猴的猴群已經使用石器工具約為3000年,而且他們使用的技術隨著時間的推移而不斷改進。

詞匯

Cinematic/電影的；影片的

Hominid/原始人類；人科動物

Hurl/丟下；用力投擲

Maketh/【原：Manners maketh man——不知禮，無以立也?！?/p>

Monopoly/ 壟斷

?

Capuchins, chimpanzees and sea otters, among others, are known to use rocks to crack open, respectively, nuts and shellfish. And an earlier dig by Dr Falótico found evidence that, in capuchins, this habit goes back at least 600 years. Though some may question whether bashing a nut with a rock truly qualifies as “tool use”, capuchins (as the picture shows) use both hammerstones and anvils—which demonstrates quite a high level of sophistication.

研究團隊已知卷尾猴、黑猩猩和海獺等動物分別用巖石來敲開堅果和貝類。Falótico博士早先的一次考察發(fā)現了證據，證明卷尾猴的這種習慣至少可以追溯到600年前。盡管有些人可能會質疑用石頭砸堅果是否真的稱得上是“工具的使用”，卷尾猴(如圖所示)同時使用石錘和鐵砧——這顯示出相當高的復雜性。

詞匯

Chimpanzee/黑猩猩

Anvil/鐵砧；砧骨

They also demonstrate sophistication in the wielding of their tools, because not damaging the soft kernel of a nut while breaking the shell takes skill. Cracking open a cashew, the favourite for this treatment, requires the tool-wielder to employ a single, practised motion. First, the animal brings the hammerstone down two-handed for a glancing blow on the nut’s far side. It then rolls the stone towards itself, over the nut. Youngsters take around eight years of mimicking their parents to get the knack of all this. And although the stones used are not actually modified for the task, monkeys are assiduous in searching for and selecting those of the perfect shape. (They do, however, lack the insight to keep such stones for future use.)

他們在使用工具方面也表現出老練，因為在打破堅果殼的同時不破壞果仁需要技巧。打開腰果，這是最適合用它們的操作技巧來完成，需要持刀者使用一個單一的，嫻熟的手法。首先，這只動物用兩只手把錘石拿下來，在堅果的另一邊打了一下。然后它把石頭滾向自己，越過堅果。年輕人花了大約8年的時間來模仿他們的父母，以掌握這一切的訣竅。盡管所用的石頭并沒有經過改造，但猴子們還是孜孜不倦地尋找和選擇那些形狀完美的石頭。(不過，他們確實缺乏保存這些石頭以備將來使用的遠見。)

詞匯

Wield/使用；行使

Kernel/果仁

Mimic/模仿；戲弄【過去式 mimicked；過去分詞 mimicked；現在分詞 mimicking】

Assiduous/刻苦的，勤勉的

Dr Falótico and Dr Proffitt returned to the site of the previous excavation—a part of Serra da Capivara National Park in the Brazilian Amazon. They dug into an area of 67 square metres, to which the monkeys bring stones from a nearby stream bed. The site’s capuchins use quartzite cobbles as hammerstones, and tree limbs and loose stones as anvils.

Falótico博士和Proffitt博士回到了上次挖掘的地點——巴西亞馬遜地區(qū)Serra da Capivara國家公園的一部分。他們挖掘了67平方米的區(qū)域——這是猴子們從附近的河床上搬來石頭的地方。這塊區(qū)域的卷尾猴用石英巖鵝卵石做石錘，用樹枝和松散的石頭做鐵砧。

詞匯

Excavation/挖掘，發(fā)掘

Quartzite/ ?石英巖；硅巖

Cobble/修，拙劣地修補

?

By excavating 1,699 stones, pebbles and flakes, and working out the age of 122 hammerstones from the radiocarbon dates of charcoal buried alongside them, the team split the site’s history into four phases. Capuchins first swung a rock in the area somewhere between 3,000 and 2,400 years ago—the beginning of a period the researchers call Phase IV. This is the oldest known instance of non-ape tool use. Phase IV hammerstones are light and have many impact marks. This suggests they were used mainly on seeds (possibly from cassava) smaller than the cashews which today’s monkeys pound, meaning hammerstone and anvil often came into contact with one another.

通過挖掘1699塊石頭、鵝卵石和石片，并根據旁邊埋藏的木炭的放射性碳年代計算出122塊錘狀石頭的年齡，研究小組將該遺址的歷史分為四個階段。卷尾猴在3000年到2400年前的某個區(qū)域第一次揮舞石頭，這是研究人員稱之為第四階段的開始。這是已知的最古老的非類人猿使用工具的例子。第四階段錘石很輕，有很多撞擊痕跡。這表明它們主要用于種子(可能來自木薯)，比今天猴子敲打的腰果還小，這意味著錘石和鐵砧經?；ハ嘟佑|。

詞匯

Charcoal/木炭

Phase III, between 640 and 565 years ago, featured transitional behaviours that led to Phase II, from about 257 years ago, when hammerstones were heavier and are associated with many large anvils, suggesting a food source bigger and harder than cashews (the hard-shelled jatoba fruit is a possibility). More recently, in Phase I (from 27 years ago), cashew residue on stones suggests the monkeys were moving towards their present-day alimentary focus. What Dr Falótico and Dr Proffitt do not yet know is whether the variation they saw is a result of different groups of capuchins, with different habits, occupying the site at different times—or, alternatively, whether a single lineage of the animals has changed its nutritional culture over the years.

第三階段是640年至565年前，這是向第二階段的過渡時期，大約257年前，石錘更重，與許多大鐵砧有關，這表明食物來源比腰果更大、更硬【可能是硬殼jatoba（南美柚？）水果】。而到近期，在第一階段(27年前)，石頭上的腰果殘渣表明猴子正在向它們現在的食物要點移動。Falótico博士和Proffitt博士尚不清楚的是，是否它們所看到的工具種類（用法）多樣性是源于不同種族的卷尾猴——他們有著不同的習慣，在不同的年代居住在不同的區(qū)域；亦或，是否只是單一一種動物，隨著年代的變化，它們在不斷改變自己的飲食習慣。

詞匯

Alimentary/滋養(yǎng)的；食物的

Lineage/血統(tǒng)；家系

?

Until Dr Falótico’s original dig, chimps were the only species other than human beings for which an archaeological record of tool use had been found. (In 2007 researchers discovered chimpanzee-modified stones that were 4,300 years old.) There is no reason, though, not to expect the finding of further, and perhaps older, sites in future. Moreover, studying how capuchins and chimps have used tools may give an inkling of how the process happened in people. One thing Dr Falótico and Dr Proffitt have noticed is that some of the sharp flakes that fly off when hammer meets anvil look identical to Stone Age blades made by human beings. Capuchins have not yet—so far as is known—thought to use such flakes as knives. But perhaps their own “2001” moment awaits them in the future.

在Falotico博士最初的挖掘工作之前，黑猩猩是除了人類之外唯一一個有考古學上工具使用記錄的物種。(2007年，研究人員發(fā)現黑猩猩攜帶的黑猩猩遺傳的石頭有4300年的歷史。)不過，我們沒有理由不期待未來會發(fā)現更遠、甚至更古老的遺址。此外，研究卷尾猴和黑猩猩是如何使用工具的，可能會讓我們對這一過程在人類身上是如何發(fā)生的有所了解。Falótico博士和Proffitt博士注意到的一件事是，當錘子與鐵砧摩擦時，一些鋒利的薄片會脫落，看起來和石器時代人類制造的刀片一模一樣。據我們所知，卷尾猴還沒有想到用刀這樣的薄片。但也許他們自己的“2001”時刻（開頭所提及的電影橋段）在未來等待著他們。

詞匯

Inkling/暗示；略知；模糊概念