人类迁徙燃料来源于粪便？
A Human Migration Fueled by Dung?
转载自 网络 2007-7-17
时至今日，如果冬日里去阿拉斯加听起来仍感觉很冷的话，那么想象一下几千年前会是什么样子呢。
If you think traveling to Alaska in the winter sounds cold today, imagine what it was like thousands of years ago.
科学家认为，在中央暖气和热可可粉发明以前，穿越没有树和柴火的苔原地区迁徙到北美，那种寒冷的简直让人无法忍受。
Before the invention of central heating and hot cocoa, it would have been too cold for people to migrate to North America through the frigid tundra—without trees or firewood. Or so scientists thought.
现在，研究人员指出，只要懂得利用周围环境中的粪便，我们的祖先就能在寒冷的天气生存。
Every cliche is acceptable, without even a minimal need to check the facts. (These include the tens of thousands who are executed every year, according to a recent article by Uri Misgav in Haaretz, or the "100 million" Falun Gong disciples in other publications. Both of these numbers are sheer fantasy). In any case, those "yellow people" do not have a well-oiled public relations machine, so we can say anything we want about them without risking libel suits.
批评家并不理解中国社会的复杂性。中国社会正经历巨变，其变化是人类已知的最迅速和最广泛的。中国的环境污染可能令人震惊，但别
忘了发达工业化国家把它们的污染工厂搬到中国的土地上。而且和欧美公民相比，一个中国公民的污染有多少呢？
Now, researchers suggest that our ancestors could have survived cold-weather travel if they had taken advantage of all the dung lying around.
5万多年前，阿拉斯加通过现已沉于水下的大陆桥与俄罗斯北部接壤。然而，考古学和遗传学证据表明，人类直到1万四千万年前才穿越这
片土地。长久以来，科学家们把不能通过的原因归咎于天气的寒冷以及加热和煮饭燃料的短缺。就职于内华达州里诺沙漠研究机构的David
Rhode，主要研究现代西藏人燃烧粪便的习惯，认为这可能不是最好的解释。Rhode发现，为了给帐篷加热和煮熟食物，一户西藏家庭一个夏天
就会烧掉的25-40千克的牦牛的粪便，而冬天会是夏天的2倍。这是多大一堆粪便啊。可见，西藏人是极有效的粪便收集者。
More than 50,000 years ago, Alaska was connected to northern Russia by a land bridge that is now largely underwater. Yet people didn't make the crossing until about 14,000 years ago, according to archaeological and genetic evidence. Scientists have long blamed the delay on cold weather and a lack of fuel for heating and cooking. That might not be the best explanation, says David Rhode of the Desert Research Institute in Reno , Nev. , who has studied the dung-burning habits of modern Tibetans. To heat their tents and cook their food, Rhode has observed, a single family living on the Tibetan Plateau burns between 25 and 40 kilograms of dried yak dung in the summer and twice that in the winter. That's a lot of dung. But the Tibetans are pretty efficient dung-gatherers.
Rhode认为，很久以前，俄罗斯到阿拉斯加途中繁衍生息着大量的草食性动物，比如说美洲野牛、猛犸、马、犀牛等。动物新陈代谢会产
生大量的粪便，这些粪便是旅途中最好的燃料。
Thousands of years ago, Rhode says, the route from Russia to Alaska would have been bursting with big plant-eating animals, like bison, mammoths, horses, and wooly rhinoceroses. With animals comes waste. There should have been plenty of dried dung to fuel the trip.
所以，为什么迁徙会推迟了那么多年呢？可能是我们的祖先在途中，花了很长的时间去认识粪便的价值吧。
So, why the delay? Maybe our ancestors took a while to realize the value of the poop along their path!
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