Monkeys and tools

猴子们和工具

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

卷尾猴使用石器已有大约3000年的历史

词汇

Capuchin/卷尾猴

Bang the rocks together, guys

伙计们，那些猴子会把石头结合在一起使用，厉害不？

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 São 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.

电影史上最著名的桥段之一是《2001太空漫游》。一个原始人类向空中扔出一根骨头棒，燃成火柴，转场化为宇宙飞船这一瞬间刻画出了人类智慧的千年历史。不会用工具，何以为人？但正如《自然生态与进化》(Nature Ecology & Evolution)杂志上的一篇新论文所显示的那样，人类从未垄断过工具的使用。由巴西圣保罗大学Tiago Falótico领导的一支团队,和伦敦大学的Tomos Proffitt,证明了在猴子科目中，有一种叫野生大胡子卷尾猴的猴群已经使用石器工具约为3000年,而且他们使用的技术随着时间的推移而不断改进。

词汇

Cinematic/电影的；影片的

Hominid/原始人类；人科动物

Hurl/丢下；用力投掷

Maketh/【原：Manners maketh man——不知礼，无以立也。】

Monopoly/ 垄断

 

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.

研究团队已知卷尾猴、黑猩猩和海獭等动物分别用岩石来敲开坚果和贝类。Falótico博士早先的一次考察发现了证据，证明卷尾猴的这种习惯至少可以追溯到600年前。尽管有些人可能会质疑用石头砸坚果是否真的称得上是“工具的使用”，卷尾猴(如图所示)同时使用石锤和铁砧——这显示出相当高的复杂性。

词汇

Chimpanzee/黑猩猩

Anvil/铁砧；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.)

他们在使用工具方面也表现出老练，因为在打破坚果壳的同时不破坏果仁需要技巧。打开腰果，这是最适合用它们的操作技巧来完成，需要持刀者使用一个单一的，娴熟的手法。首先，这只动物用两只手把锤石拿下来，在坚果的另一边打了一下。然后它把石头滚向自己，越过坚果。年轻人花了大约8年的时间来模仿他们的父母，以掌握这一切的诀窍。尽管所用的石头并没有经过改造，但猴子们还是孜孜不倦地寻找和选择那些形状完美的石头。(不过，他们确实缺乏保存这些石头以备将来使用的远见。)

词汇

Wield/使用；行使

Kernel/果仁

Mimic/模仿；戏弄【过去式 mimicked；过去分词 mimicked；现在分词 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点——巴西亚马逊地区Serra da Capivara国家公园的一部分。他们挖掘了67平方米的区域——这是猴子们从附近的河床上搬来石头的地方。这块区域的卷尾猴用石英岩鹅卵石做石锤，用树枝和松散的石头做铁砧。

词汇

Excavation/挖掘，发掘

Quartzite/  石英岩；硅岩

Cobble/修，拙劣地修补

 

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.

通过挖掘1699块石头、鹅卵石和石片，并根据旁边埋藏的木炭的放射性碳年代计算出122块锤状石头的年龄，研究小组将该遗址的历史分为四个阶段。卷尾猴在3000年到2400年前的某个区域第一次挥舞石头，这是研究人员称之为第四阶段的开始。这是已知的最古老的非类人猿使用工具的例子。第四阶段锤石很轻，有很多撞击痕迹。这表明它们主要用于种子(可能来自木薯)，比今天猴子敲打的腰果还小，这意味着锤石和铁砧经常互相接触。

词汇

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.

第三阶段是640年至565年前，这是向第二阶段的过渡时期，大约257年前，石锤更重，与许多大铁砧有关，这表明食物来源比腰果更大、更硬【可能是硬壳jatoba（南美柚？）水果】。而到近期，在第一阶段(27年前)，石头上的腰果残渣表明猴子正在向它们现在的食物要点移动。Falótico博士和Proffitt博士尚不清楚的是，是否它们所看到的工具种类（用法）多样性是源于不同种族的卷尾猴——他们有着不同的习惯，在不同的年代居住在不同的区域；亦或，是否只是单一一种动物，随着年代的变化，它们在不断改变自己的饮食习惯。

词汇

Alimentary/滋养的；食物的

Lineage/血统；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，黑猩猩是除了人类之外唯一一个有考古学上工具使用记录的物种。(2007年，研究人员发现黑猩猩携带的黑猩猩遗传的石头有4300年的历史。)不过，我们没有理由不期待未来会发现更远、甚至更古老的遗址。此外，研究卷尾猴和黑猩猩是如何使用工具的，可能会让我们对这一过程在人类身上是如何发生的有所了解。Falótico博士和Proffitt博士注意到的一件事是，当锤子与铁砧摩擦时，一些锋利的薄片会脱落，看起来和石器时代人类制造的刀片一模一样。据我们所知，卷尾猴还没有想到用刀这样的薄片。但也许他们自己的“2001”时刻（开头所提及的电影桥段）在未来等待着他们。

词汇

Inkling/暗示；略知；模糊概念