纪录片《熟食造就了人类吗》 第11期：食肉祖先

Could eating meat really have caused us to evolve?

难道真是食肉让我们得以进化

About 2.3 million years ago,

大约230万年以前

Homo habilis - the first ancestor we THINK ate meat - appeared.

出现了我们认为最先开始食肉的祖先——能人

There had been an amazing change.

他们一定有过惊人的演变

Though habilis stood no more than a metre tall,

尽管能人站立身高不到1米

fossils show it had a bigger skull¹

从化石来看他们的颅骨却比南方古猿大

and a brain 30% larger than Australopithecus.

而且脑部比南方古猿大30%

And, crucially, scientists have speculated that

至关重要的是 科学家推测

this upright, big-brained chimpanzee

这种直立行走 脑大的猩猩

evolved as a result of eating meat.

本身就是因食肉而进化的结果

The Australopiths' brain size remained stable.

南方古猿的大脑稳步发育

Then meat-eating came in, and then the brains got bigger,

而后它们开始食肉 大脑就发育得更大

and that set everything off in the director of modern humans.

从而确定了进化成当代人类的主要演变趋势

1 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。