An Animal of No Significance

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语言词汇

本文语言通俗易懂，生词和复杂句型都很少，秉持熟词内化的原则，选择以下词汇学习。

Three important revolutions shaped the course of history: the Cognitive Revolution kick-started history about 70,000 years ago. The Agricultural Revolution sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The Scientific Revolution, which got under way only 500 years ago, may well end history and start something completely different.

1.To start by using a kick starter:

例：He kick-started the motorcycle and took off.

2.Informal To start or reinvigorate (an activity, system, or process):

例：Albany needs to pass the solar jobs bill to help kick-start this job-producing energy source.

例：Saturday night's fight at the Hartwell Arena offered Gammer another chance to kick-start his career.

例：American businesses need pro-growth economic policies that will end the uncertainty and kick-start hiring and investment.

Nobody, least of all humans themselves, had any inkling that their descendants would one day walk on the moon, split the atom, fathom the genetic code and write history books.

1.N-COUNT If you have an inkling of something, you have a vague idea about it. 略知

例：I had no inkling of his real purpose until much later.

例：If you've enjoyed Ethernets in big corporations, you have some inkling about always-on Internet access.

例：He had no inkling what was about to happen

They will happily mate and their puppies will grow up to pair off with other dogs and produce more puppies.

1. 把…配成对，与…结成对子；合作

例：Jane paired off with Alice in a table tennis doubles match.

例：I paired off with an old schoolmate of mine.

例：They may even split the legal profession in two: big corporate clients will pair off with the big-five firms, leaving independent law firms with private clients only.

例：Qwest CEO Richard Notebaert has fought stubbornly to stay in the merger picture, despite MCI CEO Michael Capellas ' clear preference to pair off with the more financially stable Verizon.

[口语]与…结婚，与…结为夫妻，结合：

例：My friend paired off with an English teacher who taught in a junior middle school.

例：We would have a mixture of half a dozen males and females engage in a display of gay and straight sex in the bungalow and then Eddy, Wally, and I would each pair off with the one we fancied most.

It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

1. doing something you are not prepared for

例：She was clearly out of her league, suddenly forced to finish a project she knew little about.

2. not right for you

例：I think an expensive car is a little out of your league right now, don't you?

Lone mothers could hardly forage enough food for their offspring and themselves with needy children in tow.

拖带

例：Young people, often with kids in tow, plop on chairs to watch videos on their smartphones.

例：This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. 拖家带口

例：He met Sharapova at the airport, his computer in tow, and examined her most recent images.

Thus humans who lived a million years ago, despite their big brains and sharp stone tools, dwelt in constant fear of predators, rarely hunted large game, and subsisted mainly by gathering plants, scooping up insects, stalking small animals, and eating the carrion left behind by other more powerful carnivores.

1.V-IIf people subsist, they are just able to obtain the food or money that they need in order to stay alive. 生存[正式]

例：The prisoners subsisted on one mug of the worst quality porridge three times a day.

例：In drought years, many of their cows die and they subsist on food aid.

例：Yemen is a poor country with a dispersed population, many of whom subsist without basic government services.

例：The family must subsist on a single income while still paying the taxes that finance public schools.

But it’s still not your turn because first the hyenas and jackals – and you don’t dare interfere with them – scavenge the leftovers.

1. If people or animals scavenge for things, they collect them by searching among waste or unwanted objects. (在垃圾或废物中) 捡拾

例：Many are orphans, their parents killed as they scavenged for food.

例：Children scavenge through rubbish.

2. feed on carrion or refuse

例：Hyenas scavenge.

Scientists also agree that about 70,000 years ago, Sapiens from East Africa spread into the Arabian peninsula, and from there they quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass.

1. V-T If an army or an armed force overruns a place, area, or country, it succeeds in occupying it very quickly. 迅速占领

例：A group of rebels overran the port area and most of the northern suburbs.

例：The mill was situated in a region overrun by Maoist insurgents known as Naxalites.

2.ADJ If you say that a place is overrun with things that you consider undesirable, you mean that there are a large number of them there. 泛滥成灾的[v-link ADJ]

例：The hotel has been ordered to close because it is overrun by mice and rats.

例：The mobile industry, whose networks are overrun with data-hungry users, meanwhile, controls just 10-15%.

3.V-T/V-I If costs overrun, they are higher than was planned or expected. (费用) 超支[商业]

例：We should stop the nonsense of taxpayers trying to finance joint weapons whose costs always overrun hugely.

例：Costs overran the budget by about 30%.

Another possibility is that competition for resources flared up into violence and genocide.

1. PHRASAL VERB Flare up means the same as flare. 突然烧旺

例：Don't spill too much fat on the barbecue as it could flare up.

例：Camp fires flared like beacons in the dark.

2. V-I If something such as trouble, violence, or conflict flares or flares up, it starts or becomes more violent. 爆发; 激化

例：Even as the president appealed for calm, trouble flared in several American cities.

例：Dozens of people were injured as fighting flared up.

例：Yet gay-bashing has continued to flare up in New York at times in recent years.

例：While drinking soda is not known to cause ulcers, it can cause symptoms to flare up.

3. If people's tempers flare, they get angry. 发怒

例：Tempers flared and harsh words were exchanged.

How did we push all other human species into oblivion?

1.N-UNCOUNT Oblivion is the state of not being aware of what is happening around you, for example, because you are asleep or unconscious. 神志不清

例：He just drank himself jovially into oblivion.

2.N-UNCOUNT Oblivion is the state of having been forgotten or of no longer being considered important. 被淡忘状态

例：It seems that the so-called new theory is likely to sink into oblivion.

例：He sought the great oblivion of sleep.(total forgetfulness)

例：In 2010 another lost sibling was rescued from oblivion, when scientists excavating the Denisova Cave in Siberia discovered a fossilised finger bone.

3. N-UNCOUNT If you say that something is bombed or blasted into oblivion, you are emphasizing that it is completely destroyed. 被彻底摧毁[强调]

例：An entire poor section of town was bombed into oblivion.

例：The assumption is that countries will default before taxing their companies and individuals to oblivion.

例：Their views can change in an instant, casting all the existing numbers into oblivion.

例：The company will be saved by improving productivity and products, not by cutting itself into oblivion.

汉英积累

无家可归的孤儿 an orphan bereft of family

肌肉萎缩 their muscles atrophied

...带来的好处显而易见 ... pay off nicely

...对人类手部肌肉进行了修正 ... finely tuned muscles in the palms and fingers

...也有不利的一面 ... has its downside

自行觅食 forage on its own

一直生存在对...的恐惧之中 dwell in constant fear of ...

火的使用 domestication of fire

一群 a pride of lions, clutches of children;

火焰熄灭 the fire died down

...灭绝或者被消灭了 the Neanderthals died out or were killed off

...就处于那个零界点 It seems that about 50,000 years ago, Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans were at that borderline point. They were almost, but not quite, entirely separate species.

种族清洗 genocide; ethnic cleansing campaign; push all other human species into oblivion

小 a mere blip on the ecological radar

形容词群

chest-thumping machos 捶胸口的猛男hhh

temperamental youths 敏感、易激动的年轻人

steaming jungles 炎热潮湿的热带雨林

a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain 庞大的大脑是个庞大的负担

prowling lions 徘徊的狮群

the archetypical brutish and stupid ‘cave people’ 典型的粗鲁而愚蠢的“洞穴人”

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概述

综述

从大爆炸写到人类和历史的出现，列出了本书的线索——人类社会的三大革命：认知革命、农业革命、科技革命。接着从生物学分类的角度阐述了：人类并没有他们自己想象的那样特别，而只是一种灵长目动物。

Skeletons in the Closet

人类并非只有一种，不同的历史时期有不同种的人，在同一个历史时期也曾有好几个人类品种同时存在。文章介绍了好几种人类。

不写了，画图TAT

An Animal of No Significance

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有趣的观点和疑问

Most mammals emerge from the womb like glazed earthenware emerging from a kiln – any attempt at remoulding will scratch or break them. Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom.This is why today we can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist, capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving.

概述：人类初生的脆弱给了人类幼崽更多教育的机会，使得人类智力得以发展。

问题：只有人类幼崽初生格外脆弱吗？其他动物也会教育幼崽，只是不如我们的教育内容那么繁杂。也可以是因为人类本身拥有更高的智能，所以才能在拥有漫长成长期的情况下，依然通过了自然选择。而不是因为人类有更长的成长期，所以我们才能获得更高的智力。这段缺乏充分的论证，感觉只是作者在开脑洞啊。

Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. ... In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens, by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump

概述：狮子、鲨鱼之类的动物在漫长的演化中逐渐成为食物链顶端的动物，生态系统在这一过程中创造出了与之制衡的力量，防止这些动物造成过度的破坏。但人类是突然进驻食物链顶端的，因此生态系统没有足够的时间自我调整，人类自身也难以适应这一变化。顶级捕食者拥有生而为王的宏大气度，而人类却缺乏足够的信心和安定感，这便塑造了人类格外残忍的天性。

问题：很有意思的观点，但是缺乏根据，难以令人信服。依然是脑洞大开的产物。

It turned out that 1–4 per cent of the unique human DNA of modern populations in the Middle East and Europe is Neanderthal DNA. That’s not a huge amount, but it’s signiɹcant. A second shock came several months later, when DNA extracted from the fossilised ɹnger from Denisova was mapped. The results proved that up to 6 per cent of the unique human DNA of modern Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians is Denisovan DNA.

..., yet it appears it was still just possible, on rare occasions, for a Sapiens and a Neanderthal to produce a fertile offspring. So the populations did not merge, but a few lucky Neanderthal genes did hitch a ride on the Sapiens Express. It is unsettling – and perhaps thrilling – to think that we Sapiens could at one time have sex with an animal from a different species, and produce children together

两个观点：现代中东人与Neanderthal有1-4%的人类基因是一样的，如果这一数据属实，早期Sapiens和Neanderthals可能交配、生产过。当时两种人类可能即将产生生殖隔离，但尚未变成真正的两个种族，所以少量的Neanderthals和Sapiens交配繁衍，在基因上留下了这些痕迹。这种人类曾经与其他动物繁衍的想法十分惊悚\(≧≦)/。

问题：一. 证据部分似乎缺少了一个关键性的数据：当时的Sapien和Neanderthal的人类DNA有多少相同？这些相同的DNA中有多少是那1-4%相同的DNA中的？没有这个数据我不知道作者怎样推出的结论。二. 如果sapien和其他homo species能够繁衍，并且传承DNA，那么说明sapien和那几个homo species没有产生生殖隔离，还是是同个种族啊。既然大家都是同个种族，为什么还算和其他动物交配呢呢呢？以我高中水平的生物知识，实在不能理解啊啊啊？？？