时差N小时:比现代人更聪明
耶尔：你好，唐。我敢打赌，你肯定认为自己特别聪明。
D: Well, Yael, I guess so. I mean I've no genius oranything.
唐：是的，耶尔。我认为自己是挺聪明的，但可不是什么天才人物。
Y: Relax. I just meant that you have a big braincompared to most other animals.
耶尔：别紧张。我的意思是，和其它动物相比，你拥有一个更大的大脑。
D: OK. I guess in that sense I am pretty smart, atleast compared to a chimp or something.
唐：是的。从这种意义上讲，我确实挺聪明的——至少比黑猩猩要聪明。
Y: But guess what? About 10,000 years ago, there was a race of people who may have beeneven smarter than we modern humans.
耶尔：但你知道吗?大约一万年前，有一个人种可能比我们现代人更聪明。
D: Really? Who were they?
唐：真的吗?他们是谁?
Y: They are known as the Boscups because that's the region in South Africa where their fossilswere first found. And the cool thing is that the Boscups appear to have skulls that were a lotbigger than ours.
耶尔：这个人种叫做Boscups，因为他们的化石首次发现于南非的Boscups地区。最奇妙的是，他们的头骨比我们这些现代人还要大很多。
D: Which would mean that their brains would probably bigger than ours too? But does thatmean they were necessarily smarter?
唐：他们的大脑更大?这意味着什么?难道这就说明他们一定更聪明吗?
Y: Well, that's impossible for us to know for sure. But consider that our bigger brains allow toimagine possibilities and alternate realities in ways that smaller-brained animals can't as far aswe know. Now if you imagine a person with a brain significantly larger than normal, it stands toreason that they'd be able to process more information at once and see imagined things in waysthat are beyond us.
耶尔：嗯，这一点我们倒无法确认。但是，我们应考虑到脑部较小的动物在想象力和思考力上远远不及我们人类这一事实。如果一个人的大脑明显大于常人大脑，按理说，他们一次能够处理的信息和想象力会远远超出我们普通人。
D: That's interesting. But if the Boscups were so smart, where are they now?
唐：真有意思。但是，既然 Boscups人这么聪明，他们现在在哪?
Y: They died out obviously. And that may be simply because their heads were so big thatbabies' heads had hard time feeding through the birth canal. Maybe too many Boscups babiesdied in childbirth.
Y：他们显然早已灭绝了。一个简单的原因可能就是因为Boscups人的头部太大了，因此他们的婴儿很难顺利从产道分娩。也许太多的Boscups婴儿都是在分娩时死亡的。
D: So I guess it doesn't always pay to have a big brain.
唐：由此看来，脑部太发达并非都是好事啊。
Y: Maybe not.
耶尔：也许是这样的。
