原文已被隐藏，你可用 快捷键 - 或点击 显示原文 按钮来查看原文
第1段
1 .Listen to part of a lecture in an Archaeology class
该句暂无译文！
2 .So, one thing archeologists had pretty much agreed on, for a while now, is that the first migration of humans out of Africa to Europe, began about 42,000 years ago.
该句暂无译文！
3 . We believe they first settled in southern and Western Europe and we knew this from evidence found at sites in those areas, artifacts that this culture left behind.
该句暂无译文！
4 .These sites and these artifacts are referred to as Aurignacian.
该句暂无译文！
5 . Now, during the Aurignacian era there was a surge of, well, creativity, uh, ingenuity in human behavior and skills and one of the defining characteristics of the era is representational art, art created to resemble something, sculptures of human figures, things like that.
该句暂无译文！
6 . And, well, a few years ago some archeologists made an interesting discovery in Russia, in Kostenki.
该句暂无译文！
7 .As you can see, Kostenki is south of Moscow, about 400 kilometers south.
该句暂无译文！
8 . It’s on what is called the central East European Plain.
该句暂无译文！
9 .Near this village is a prehistoric site or group of sites, actually.
该句暂无译文！
10 . And these archeologists at Kostenki uncovered some artifacts that are clearly Aurignacian in origin.
该句暂无译文！
11 .For instance, they found a carved head of an unfinished human figurine made of ivory, representational art, right?
该句暂无译文！
12 . There were also personal ornaments and tools for digging, drilling, and cutting, all of them indicative of the Aurignacian era.
该句暂无译文！
13 . And they were all found buried well below the level of previous discoveries of the same site.
该句暂无译文！
14 .So we can be reasonably sure they are older.
该句暂无译文！
15 .Not only that but there are reasons to believe that these artifacts are a good deal older than any that had previously been found much further west in what we have thought were the first Aurignacian settlements.
该句暂无译文！
16 . You can see why this is important, now, because if these artifacts are indeed that old, then theories of a direct migration into western and southern Europe are called into question.
该句暂无译文！
17 .Humans must have settled in the central East European Plain first, several thousands of years before ways of migration went west and south.
该句暂无译文！
18 . That’s why it’s crucial to get the dating right.
该句暂无译文！
19 .And our archeologists at Kostenki are convinced that the ivory head and other artifacts are over 42,000 years old, maybe as old as 45,000 years.
该句暂无译文！
20 .Now, unfortunately that far back it gets harder to date things.
该句暂无译文！
21 . We can’t expect to get an accurate reading from radiocarbon dating.
该句暂无译文！
22 . The technology just isn’t that reliable at dating things over 40,000 years old.
该句暂无译文！
23 .So how did they manage to date the Kostenki artifacts then?
该句暂无译文！
24 . Well, right around that time, 40,000 years ago, there was a large volcanic eruption in what is now Italy.
该句暂无译文！
25 .This volcano spewed out a layer of ash that settled onto the ground all across central and eastern Europe.
该句暂无译文！
26 .And that layer serves as a pretty reliable time marker.
该句暂无译文！
27 .The date of the eruption has been quite well established by means that I’m not going to get into right now.
该句暂无译文！
28 .And guess what? The Kostenki artifacts, the ivory head and all, they were found well beneath this layer.
该句暂无译文！
29 .All of this points to an Aurignacian settlement several thousand years older than any we found elsewhere in Europe.
该句暂无译文！
30 .But it is somewhat perplexing in a way, I mean, the climate at Kostenki, we’re talking significantly colder at that time than areas to the west and south.
该句暂无译文！
31 .Now I’m not saying these people couldn’t have handled such conditions.
该句暂无译文！
32 .I mean, among the artifacts found were needles made from ivory and bone that were likely used for sawing. So, they were probably able to keep warm wearing animal hides.
该句暂无译文！
33 . But we’d still like to be able to explain why a group of people would migrate to such a cold climate directly from the warm climate of Africa.
该句暂无译文！
34 .Did they somehow prefer the cold weather?
该句暂无译文！
35 . Well, we’ll leave that discussion for next time.
该句暂无译文！