时差N小时:比人类更聪明 Smarter

Don, 我赌你认为自己很聪明。Don: Well, uhm, Yael, I guess so. I mean, I'm no genius or anything. 恩，我猜是的。我的意思是，我不是天才也不是别的。Y: Relax. I just meant that you have a big brain compared to most other animals. 放松。我只是说与大部分其他动物相比你的脑容量会比较大。D: OK. I guess in that sense I am pretty smart--at least compared to a chimp or something. 好吧。从这方面来说那我想我确实相当聪明——至少和黑猩猩一类的动物作比较。Y: But guess what--about ten-thousand years ago there was a race of people who may have been even smarter than we modern humans. 但你想想——一万年前有一个种族甚至会比我们现代人类更加聪明。D: Really? Who where they? 真的吗？他们是谁，他们又在哪？Y: They're known as the Boskops because that's the region in South Africa where their fossils were first found. 它们被称为博斯科普人。因为他们是在南非的一个地方，在那里人们首次发现了化石。And the cool thing is that the Boskops appear to have had skulls that were a lot bigger than ours. 而且很惊人的是，博斯科普人似乎有着比我们还要大的头骨。D: Which would mean that their brains were probably bigger than ours, too! But does that mean they were necessarily smarter? 那也就意味着他们的大脑比我们的还要大！但那足以能证明他们比我们更聪明吗？Y: Well, that's impossible to know for sure. 恩，那确实是说不好的。But consider that our bigger brains allow us to imagine possibilities and alternate realities in ways that smaller-brained animals can't, as far as we know. 但据我们所知，我们的大脑能够想象的到一切可能发生的事情而且还能够改变现实，这些都是脑容量小的动物们做不到的。Now, if you imagine a person with a brain significantly larger than normal, it stands to reason that they'd be able to process more information at once and see and imagine things in ways that are beyond us. 现在，你想象有这么一个人，他的脑容量大于正常水平。那么他就足以加工更多的信息而且还能够想象的到我们之前想象不到的事情。D: That's interesting. But if the Boskops were so smart, where are they now? 那真有趣。但如果说博斯科普人那么聪明的话，他们现在又在哪呢？Y: They died out, obviously. And that may be simply because their heads were so big that babies heads had a hard time fitting through the birth canal. 显然，他们都灭绝了。很简单，是因为他们的脑袋太大了以至于婴儿的由很难挤出产道。Maybe too many Boskop babies died in childbirth. 也许太多的博斯科普小宝宝都死在分娩时期。D: So I guess it doesn't always pay to have a big brain. 所以我想有个大脑袋不一定是值得的。Y: Maybe not. 也许不是。