字神帝國英語天地

今日主題：Ancient Human Ancestors Heard Differently  遠古人類與現代人類的聽力差別

洪欣老師推薦：托福聽力最好的課外教材：60-Second Science
康康精選托福會考的主題，堅持每天精聽一定會進步的哦!!

建議方法：
1. 先聽兩三遍 (不看文稿)
2. 再一句一句聽寫 (每句都要聽寫數遍，直到寫出85%以上的字)
3. 最後check文稿，看哪聽不出來，單字沒背過，還是發音不熟。
4. 堅持天天聽，就能每天進步哦。

MP3音檔 (按右鍵可下載聽)：喜歡的同學，幫忙推或按讚哦~~
http://online1.tingclass.net/voaspe/…/20151013sa_science.mp3

只有音檔怎夠，聽不懂地方，不用怕，康康幫你準備好中英文稿了：

中英文稿：
Imagine the evolutionary advantage of being able to hear a predator rustling in the tall grass nearby—or in the ability to hear a comrade making a sound to warn you about that predator. Now a study finds that early human species may have had sharper hearing incertain frequencies than we enjoy. The finding is in the journal Science Advances.
想想這樣的進化的優勢——能夠聽到捕食者在附近高高的草叢中發出的細細碎碎的聲音——或者能夠聽到夥伴們給你發出附近有捕食者的警告。現在一項研究發現古代的人類與我們相比聽力更加敏銳。該項研究結果發表在《科學進步》雜誌上。

“We’ve been able to reconstruct an aspect of sensory perception in a fossil human ancestor known as Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus from South Africa.”
我們已經能夠根據古代人類的化石重構其感官知覺——該種古代人類的化石分別來自於南非的非洲南方古猿以及羅百氏傍人。

Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam.
Binghamton大學的人類學家Rolf Quam說道。

“Both of these fossil forms lived about two million years ago and represent early human ancestors. We took CT scans of the skulls. We created virtual reconstructions on the computer of the internal structures of the ear that will predict how an organism hears based on these measurements of its ear.”
這兩種人類化石的祖先都存在於約2百萬年前，同時也代表了早期的人類。我們把這些化石的頭骨進行CT掃描，我們在電腦上創造出了可視的重新構建的耳部模型，這將能使我們基於對耳部的這些資訊的測量，用於預測一種有機生命的聽力

And the reconstructed physiology reveals that those early hominins likely heard differently than both modern chimps and modern humans.
並且這些重構的生理機能反映出那些早期的人類很可能在聽力上比現代黑猩猩和現代人類都要好。

Specifically, the hominins were probably more sensitive to frequencies associated with sounds like t, k, f and s.
特別的是，這些人種很可能對一些與tkfs等音有關的頻率更加敏感。

“We’re not arguing they had language, but we think our results do have implications for how they communicated. And the finding is that this hearing pattern would have been beneficial if you were engaging in short-range vocal communication in an open environment.”
我們並沒有提出說他們已經有了語言，但是我們認為我們的研究結果確是已經暗示出他們彼此之間是如何交流的。並且這些研究發現如果在一個開放的環境中的短距離語音交流，這種聽力模式更具有優勢。

The estimation of the hearing abilities of the hominins complements previous research suggesting that these species spent more time in open environments such as the savannah—where a hasty, short-range consonant from a comrade might convey important information—than they spent in dense rainforests, where sound travels farther. Could be that [consonant sounds] were survival tools that also paved the way for the evolution of full-fledged human language. Even if we can’t hear those sounds quite as well as those ancient hominins did.
對這類人種中出現的聽力能力的估計是對之前相關研究的一種補充，提示我們這些物種在開放環境，比如大草原中，消耗的時間更多——在那裡，從同伴中那裡得到 的一種急促短距離的輔音聲響也許傳遞的是重要資訊——比他們在茂密的雨林中消耗的時光更多，那裡的聲音可以傳播更遠些。也許是這種聲音是一種生存工具，為 將要出現的完全成熟的人類的語言的進化進行鋪墊。即便我們現在已經不能聽到那些和我們祖先聽到的一樣的那些聲音了。