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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
By about 40,000 years ago, humans like ourselves had spread from Africa all over Asia and Europe, even crossing seas to get to Australia. But no humans had yet set foot in the Americas, and it needed major changes in climate before they could. Firstly, 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age locked up the water in ice-sheets and glaciers1, leading to a huge fall in sea level, and the sea between Russia and Alaska what's now the Bering Straits became a wide and easily passable land-bridge.
大约到了四万年前，像我你现代人的人类已经走出非洲，遍布了亚洲与欧洲，甚至穿越海洋抵达了澳大利亚。然后仍旧没有任何人类踏足到美洲的土地上，事实上只有到气候产生了重要变化之后，这种时机才能成熟。首先，大约到了两万前年，冰河世纪冰封了冰层与冰川的大量水份，导致海平面的大幅度下降；于是俄罗斯与阿拉斯加之间的海域，也就是如令的白令海峡，出现了一道巨大而容易通行的大陆桥。
Animals - mammals, bison and reindeer2 - moved across to the American side, and hunting humans followed. The way further south into the rest of America was through an ice-free corridor between the Rocky Mountains on the Pacific side, and the vast continental3 ice-sheet covering Canada on the other.
各种各样的动物，包括哺乳动物、野牛、驯鹿等开始向美洲方向进行迁徙，狩猎它们的人类也随之而来。当年一道巨大的无冰走廊，一头向着通过太平洋一侧的洛基山脉一路向南延伸至美国各地，另一头深深延伸至被大陆冰层覆盖着的加拿大广袤土地。
15,000 years ago, as the climate warmed up again, it was possible for large numbers of animals, followed again by their human hunters, to get through this corridor to the rich hunting grounds across what is now the United States. This is the new American world of the Clovis points.
一万五千年前，随着气候的再次回暖，极可能在此时数量巨大的动物及跟随着它们的人类猎人，通过这条走廊到达了如今的美国土地上这资源丰富的猎场。这就是克洛维斯矛头出现的美洲新世界。
It was clearly a great environment for those go-getting humans from north Asia but, if you were a mammoth4, the outlook wasn't quite so rosy5. The ripples6 on the side of the Clovis point, which I find so beautiful, produce intense bleeding in any animal they hit, so you don't need to be a dead shot and strike a vital organ, you can hit your prey7 anywhere and the blood loss will gradually weaken it until you can easily finish it off. And by 10,000 BC, all the mammoths and a lot of other big mammals, had been finished off.
显而易见，对于这些来自北亚的掠夺性人类而言，他们寻找到了一片乐土；但假如你不走运的身为一头猛犸象，那你的处境可就堪忧了。克洛维斯矛头边缘上那些我看起来如此美丽的涟漪磨痕，可以对受到攻击的任何动物造成严重出血。因此你根本不需要是一名神枪手，一出手便是命中致命要害；你可以往猎物身上任何部位乱砸一通，一旦被打中，猎物就会因为失血过多而慢慢虚弱下来，然后你轻轻松松就可以一下两下解决掉它了。大约在公元前一万年前，差不多所有猛犸象与其他大型哺乳动物就被这样解决掉了。
How far it's the Clovis people that are responsible for these extinctions is a matter for debate, but Gary Haynes thinks they were:
究竟克活维斯人对于这些物种的灭绝要负多大责任，是一个长年备受争论的话题，不过加里·海恩斯认为他们肯定要负责任：
'I think there's a direct connection between the first appearance of people and the last appearance of many of the large mammals - if not all of them - that disappeared in North America. You can actually trace this sort of connection across the world, wherever modern 'homo sapiens' turns up. There had never been a human population before this. It's almost invariable that large mammals disappeared - and not just some animals, it's a large proportion. In North America it's something like two-thirds to three-quarters.'
“我觉得人类的最初亮相与许多，即使不是全部的大型哺乳动物的最后消失在美洲之间有着相当直接的联系。事实上，你可以轻易地在全世界任何现代“智人”所到之处寻找到这种联系的踪影。假如某地区在此之前从来没有人类群体踏足过，一旦人类来了，大型哺乳动物的灭亡几乎是不可避免的；而且不仅仅是部分动物，而是相当大比重的动物。在北美，因此消亡的物种高达三分之二至四分之三。”
This was going to become a familiar story.
接下来的故事你我似曾相识。
收听单词发音 |
1
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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2
reindeer
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| n.驯鹿 | |
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3
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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4
mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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7
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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