A series of fortunate events: How our culture made us

导读

现代智人是唯一拥有历史的物种。我们从当年能够直立行走会使用简单工具的猿人发展到今天遍布世界几乎各个角落的智人,这是一个奇迹。而跟我们基因相似的黑猩猩,以及跟我们更相似的早期人类却停滞不前或者干脆灭绝。为什么会这样?常见的解释是我们人类聪明智力高,然而作者发现,这是个误判。我们大部分的划时代的进步其实都是来自于不断的试错,而不是真正的发明创造。托马斯爱迪生是通过数千次的失败取得的成功,连牛顿都承认自己是站在了巨人的肩膀上。文中提到的一个实验也发现,真正能够在不停变化的环境当中胜出的程序不是善于发明创造的,而是善于模仿别人的。种种迹象告诉我们,真正使人类胜出的,不是创造力,不是聪明才智,而是模仿。然而单纯的模仿也可能会让错误陈陈相因,黑猩猩的例子足够有力,所以,人类在具备模仿能力的基础上,进化出了“教学”这个重要的手段。专家甚至认为,人类进化出语言这个能力,并非出于经济或者社会原因,而是出于协助教学这个原因。通过教学,七万年前的人类才有能力走出非洲,通过学习新知识而能够适应在新环境中生存下来。此外,文化的传承使得我们能够与有身份认同感的陌生人相安无事。

更多剧透

第一步:解决高频单词

Species ['spiːʃiːz]

n. 种类;(单复同)物种

compelling [kəm'pelɪŋ]

adj. 引人注目的

unbridgeable [ʌn'brɪdʒəbl]

adj. 不可逾越的

Conceit [kən'siːt]

n. 自负

Modification [ˌmɒdɪfɪ'keɪʃn]

n. 修正

Propel [prə'pel]

vt. 推动

Imitation [ˌɪmɪ'teɪʃn]

n. 模仿

Offspring ['ɒfsprɪŋ]

n. 后代

Foster ['fɒstə(r)]

vt. 培养,促进

accessible [ək'sesəbl]

adj. 可进入的,易理解的

60p

第二步:精读重点段落

(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

第一段:
HOMO sapiens is the only species with a history. In the mere 200,000 years of our existence, we have gone from upright apes with a few hand-axes and spears to a species that spread from Africa to occupy nearly every habitat on Earth, building a world replete with technologies most of us don’t even understand.

  • homo sapiens 现代智人
  • upright 直立的
  • spread 传播/散布
  • replete 充满的

第五段:
We know it must have been small in genetic terms because we share around 98 per cent of our protein-coding gene sequences with chimpanzees, and more than 99 per cent with the hapless and extinct Neanderthals. And yet there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between our evolutionary potential and theirs. Indeed, there seems to be a gap between us and all other species.

  • In … terms 在……方面
  • Hapless 不幸的
  • Unbridgeable 不可逾越的

第六段:
The usual human conceit is that we are simply more intelligent: our big brains allow us to figure things out. But this view is exaggerated. Looking at the evolution of technology, it did not happen with great leaps of insight, but small and often accidental modifications to existing ideas. Thomas Edison’s notebooks show he tried thousands of materials, including platinum and bamboo, before alighting on a carbon fibre as the filament for his light bulb; Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line; even Isaac Newton acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants.

  • Conceit 自负
  • Modification 修正
  • Platinum 白金
  • Alighting 偶然发现
  • Carbon fibre 碳纤维

第八段:
Programs could combine strategies of copying and innovation in whatever ways they liked. Startlingly, the winning program almost exclusively copied others. The program that relied almost entirely on innovation finished close to last.

  • Startlingly 惊人地
  • Exclusively 仅仅

第九段:
Our view of ourselves as progressing through a series of light-bulb moments of inspiration is being replaced with the idea that what our species is really good at is imitation. We can search among a sea of what might be little more than random ideas others have tried, picking the ones that seem to work best. It is a form of survival of the fittest ideas that mimics biological evolution, but because ideas can quickly spread from one mind to another, the pace of our cultural evolution vastly outstrips the plodding rate of most genetic change.

  • Imitation 模仿
  • Outstrip 超过
  • Plodding 沉闷的苦干

第十八段:
That same atavism must now confront a globalised world (also a product of cumulative culture) in which we routinely mix and live alongside people whose cultural roots and identities may be distant from our own. In spite of the tensions this can cause, when measured across the world, human societies are becoming more, rather than less, peaceful, continuing a trajectory that began at least 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in larger groups.

  • atavism 返祖现象
  • confront 对抗
  • trajectory 轨迹
85p

第三步:攻克必学语法

What 引导名词性从句:

原文句1: Our view of ourselves as progressing through a series of light-bulb moments of inspiration is being replaced with the idea that what our species is really good at is imitation. (主语从句)

原文句2: We can search among a sea of what might be little more than random ideas others have tried, picking the ones that seem to work best. (宾语从句)

这时的what仍作“什么”或“什么样的”解,更多例句:

1 He knows what heat is. 他知道热是什么。(宾语从句)

2 What you mean is not known to me. 你是什么意思,我并不知道。(主语从句)

3 We are thinking of what we should do next. 我们在考虑下一步该做什么。(宾语从句)

替换练习:
我不在乎你在乎的,我也不想你在乎我在乎的是什么。

100p

加分任务:精读全文

在之前的三步后,你已经完全具备了精读全文的能力。再多花半个小时,让你的学习效果达到120%!

查看/展开全文


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(Tips: 双击文中单词可以查释义并加入你的生词本哦)

A series of fortunate events: How our culture made us

导言:
We now accept culture drove our extraordinary success as a species, but how? A compelling new account brings us up to speed with the story so far.

By Mark Pagel

第一段:
HOMO sapiens is the only species with a history. In the mere 200,000 years of our existence, we have gone from upright apes with a few hand-axes and spears to a species that spread from Africa to occupy nearly every habitat on Earth, building a world replete with technologies most of us don’t even understand.

  • homo sapiens 现代智人
  • upright 直立的
  • spread 传播/散布
  • replete 充满的

第二段:
By comparison, our close genetic cousins, chimpanzees, still sit on the ground cracking nuts with stones, as they have for millions of years. History for other animals really is, as British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “just one damn thing after another” – and the same “thing” at that.

  • Chimpanzee 黑猩猩

第3段:
Our achievements pose a challenge to Darwin. His great theory of evolution by natural selection provides a sophisticated view of how species adapt to their environments. But how are we to explain the existence of petrol engines, cameras, pasta machines, yo-yos, religion and the arts? Even if we concoct stories to explain how these artefacts might improve our survival, why have only humans produced them?

  • Pasta n. 意大利面
  • yo-yo n. 悠悠球
  • concoct  vt. 编织
  • artefact n. 手工艺品

第4段:
These questions make up, in Kevin Laland’s eyes, the “unfinished symphony” of his new book. He wants to know exactly what it was about humans that set us on a trajectory of cumulative and accelerating technological innovation, the limits of which we are still exploring.

  • trajectory n. 轨迹
  • cumulative  累积的

第5段:
We know it must have been small in genetic terms because we share around 98 per cent of our protein-coding gene sequences with chimpanzees, and more than 99 per cent with the hapless and extinct Neanderthals. And yet there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between our evolutionary potential and theirs. Indeed, there seems to be a gap between us and all other species.

  • hapless adj. 不幸的
  • unbridgeable adj. 不可逾越的

第6段:
The usual human conceit is that we are simply more intelligent: our big brains allow us to figure things out. But this view is exaggerated. Looking at the evolution of technology, it did not happen with great leaps of insight, but small and often accidental modifications to existing ideas. Thomas Edison’s notebooks show he tried thousands of materials, including platinum and bamboo, before alighting on a carbon fibre as the filament for his light bulb; Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line; even Isaac Newton acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants.

  • Conceit n. 自负
  • Modification n. 修正
  • Platinum n. 白金
  • Alight vt. 偶然发现
  • Carbon fibre n. 碳纤维

第7段:
Laland, who is a behavioural and evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, organised a tournament in which 100 computer programs competed over many rounds of interactions to survive in an ever-changing environment.

第8段:
Programs could combine strategies of copying and innovation in whatever ways they liked. Startlingly, the winning program almost exclusively copied others. The program that relied almost entirely on innovation finished close to last.

  • Startlingly adv. 惊人地
  • exclusively adv. 仅仅

第9段:
Our view of ourselves as progressing through a series of light-bulb moments of inspiration is being replaced with the idea that what our species is really good at is imitation. We can search among a sea of what might be little more than random ideas others have tried, picking the ones that seem to work best. It is a form of survival of the fittest ideas that mimics biological evolution, but because ideas can quickly spread from one mind to another, the pace of our cultural evolution vastly outstrips the plodding rate of most genetic change.

  • Imitation n. 模仿
  • Outstrip vt. 超过
  • plodding n. 沉闷的苦干

第10段:
However, there is more to this story. Copying is fraught with errors. If left uncorrected, those errors will accumulate on top of other errors, and this will eventually bring the cultural evolutionary train to a halt, at least for things more complicated than those you might be able to learn on your own. This is a fair description of most other animals’ technologies – chimpanzees, for example, probably rediscover the art of nut cracking every generation, perhaps benefiting only from having their attention called to it from watching others. Lacking a mechanism to reduce copying errors, the chimpanzees are stuck at this level of sophistication.

  • fraught adj. 充满的
  • halt n. 停止

第11段:
Our solution, in Laland’s view, was to teach. Teaching can transmit new information, but it is also an error-correction mechanism that allows more sophisticated practices and technologies to be passed on and accumulate.

第12段:
Some animals do display rudimentary forms of teaching – such as when adult meerkats disable the stinger on a scorpion to allow their offspring to experiment with it at low risk – but only humans practise the systematic teaching of complex actions. Laland even suggests that our human capacity for language evolved not for the economic and social reasons many others suggest, but as an aid to teaching: language arose as something akin to an aural DNA.

  • Meerkat n. 海岛猫鼬
  • Stinger n. 螫针
  • scorpion n. 蝎子
  • offspring n. 后代
  • aural adj. 听觉的

第13段:
It’s surprising how little was needed to accelerate our development: who would have thought that the ability to copy others could get us so far? What’s more, the cultural environment this cognitive shift produced has fostered other adaptations. There is a growing recognition that, compared with other species, humans are less a product of their genes than our genes are a product of living in the presence of the cultures we have created.

  • Foster vt. 培养/促进
  • Adaptation n. 适应

第14段:
If Laland is right, language provides a striking example. Another is psychology and social behaviour that is uniquely centred around group living. Around 70,000 years ago, our capacity for culture propelled us out of Africa by allowing us to acquire the knowledge and technologies necessary for survival in new environments.

  • Propel vt. 推动

第15段:
 “Language may have evolved as an aid to teaching: as something akin to an aural DNA”

第16段:
Humans eventually occupied nearly every environment on Earth in small tribal societies with their own languages, customs and beliefs. So important were our groups to our survival that we developed a tendency to treat other members almost as honorary relatives: we came to risk our well-being and even our lives for our tribes, for example, when going to war. No other species does these things, apart from the social insects – the ants, bees and wasps – whose unusual reproductive systems mean that the members of a hive or nest are brothers and sisters.

  • Honorary adj. 荣誉的
  • wasp n. 大黄蜂

第17段:
Our cultural adaptations have equipped us for the modern world, but have also left legacies. Today, the advance of culture and the changes it has wrought in us have yielded a species that is curiously in and out of its time. Remarkably, our ancient allegiance to our group has been able to scale up as our increasingly sophisticated cultures grew in size from the small societies we evolved in, to the larger, modern groupings of villages, towns, cities and even nations with millions of people. The emotion of watching your nation triumph over another in a sporting contest is an atavism from an earlier age, and it allows us to live relatively peaceably and productively alongside people who are effectively strangers with a shared identity.

  • Wring vt. 强迫取得
  • allegiance n. 忠诚
  • scale up vt. 扩大规模
  • atavism n. 返祖现象

第18段:
That same atavism must now confront a globalised world (also a product of cumulative culture) in which we routinely mix and live alongside people whose cultural roots and identities may be distant from our own. In spite of the tensions this can cause, when measured across the world, human societies are becoming more, rather than less, peaceful, continuing a trajectory that began at least 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in larger groups.

第19段:
The simple and yet unexpected story of our species’ success shows how H. sapiens gives up the secrets of its success slowly and only after painstakingly detailed work by academics. Laland’s book shows how those evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and social scientists are currently leading the way in unlocking those secrets. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony is accessible to the general reader and well researched. It is an enjoyable and valuable place to begin or to top up your understanding of our enigmatic existence.

  • accessible adj. 易理解的
  • enigmatic adj. 不可思议的 / 莫名其妙的
200p

Species ['spiːʃiːz]

n. 种类;(单复同)物种

compelling [kəm'pelɪŋ]

adj. 引人注目的

unbridgeable [ʌn'brɪdʒəbl]

adj. 不可逾越的

Conceit [kən'siːt]

n. 自负

Modification [ˌmɒdɪfɪ'keɪʃn]

n. 修正

Propel [prə'pel]

vt. 推动

Imitation [ˌɪmɪ'teɪʃn]

n. 模仿

Offspring ['ɒfsprɪŋ]

n. 后代

Foster ['fɒstə(r)]

vt. 培养,促进

accessible [ək'sesəbl]

adj. 可进入的,易理解的

不要一时兴起,就要天天在一起

明天见!


下载音频

A series of fortunate events: How our culture made us

导言:
We now accept culture drove our extraordinary success as a species, but how? A compelling new account brings us up to speed with the story so far.

By Mark Pagel

第1段:
HOMO sapiens is the only species with a history. In the mere 200,000 years of our existence, we have gone from upright apes with a few hand-axes and spears to a species that spread from Africa to occupy nearly every habitat on Earth, building a world replete with technologies most of us don’t even understand.

第2段:
By comparison, our close genetic cousins, chimpanzees, still sit on the ground cracking nuts with stones, as they have for millions of years. History for other animals really is, as British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “just one damn thing after another” – and the same “thing” at that.

第3段:
Our achievements pose a challenge to Darwin. His great theory of evolution by natural selection provides a sophisticated view of how species adapt to their environments. But how are we to explain the existence of petrol engines, cameras, pasta machines, yo-yos, religion and the arts? Even if we concoct stories to explain how these artefacts might improve our survival, why have only humans produced them?

第4段:
These questions make up, in Kevin Laland’s eyes, the “unfinished symphony” of his new book. He wants to know exactly what it was about humans that set us on a trajectory of cumulative and accelerating technological innovation, the limits of which we are still exploring.

第5段:
We know it must have been small in genetic terms because we share around 98 per cent of our protein-coding gene sequences with chimpanzees, and more than 99 per cent with the hapless and extinct Neanderthals. And yet there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between our evolutionary potential and theirs. Indeed, there seems to be a gap between us and all other species.

第6段:
The usual human conceit is that we are simply more intelligent: our big brains allow us to figure things out. But this view is exaggerated. Looking at the evolution of technology, it did not happen with great leaps of insight, but small and often accidental modifications to existing ideas. Thomas Edison’s notebooks show he tried thousands of materials, including platinum and bamboo, before alighting on a carbon fibre as the filament for his light bulb; Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line; even Isaac Newton acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants.

第7段:
Laland, who is a behavioural and evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, organised a tournament in which 100 computer programs competed over many rounds of interactions to survive in an ever-changing environment.

第8段:
Programs could combine strategies of copying and innovation in whatever ways they liked. Startlingly, the winning program almost exclusively copied others. The program that relied almost entirely on innovation finished close to last.

第9段:
Our view of ourselves as progressing through a series of light-bulb moments of inspiration is being replaced with the idea that what our species is really good at is imitation. We can search among a sea of what might be little more than random ideas others have tried, picking the ones that seem to work best. It is a form of survival of the fittest ideas that mimics biological evolution, but because ideas can quickly spread from one mind to another, the pace of our cultural evolution vastly outstrips the plodding rate of most genetic change.

第10段:
However, there is more to this story. Copying is fraught with errors. If left uncorrected, those errors will accumulate on top of other errors, and this will eventually bring the cultural evolutionary train to a halt, at least for things more complicated than those you might be able to learn on your own. This is a fair description of most other animals’ technologies – chimpanzees, for example, probably rediscover the art of nut cracking every generation, perhaps benefiting only from having their attention called to it from watching others. Lacking a mechanism to reduce copying errors, the chimpanzees are stuck at this level of sophistication.

第11段:
Our solution, in Laland’s view, was to teach. Teaching can transmit new information, but it is also an error-correction mechanism that allows more sophisticated practices and technologies to be passed on and accumulate.

第12段:
Some animals do display rudimentary forms of teaching – such as when adult meerkats disable the stinger on a scorpion to allow their offspring to experiment with it at low risk – but only humans practise the systematic teaching of complex actions. Laland even suggests that our human capacity for language evolved not for the economic and social reasons many others suggest, but as an aid to teaching: language arose as something akin to an aural DNA.

第13段:
It’s surprising how little was needed to accelerate our development: who would have thought that the ability to copy others could get us so far? What’s more, the cultural environment this cognitive shift produced has fostered other adaptations. There is a growing recognition that, compared with other species, humans are less a product of their genes than our genes are a product of living in the presence of the cultures we have created.

第14段:
If Laland is right, language provides a striking example. Another is psychology and social behaviour that is uniquely centred around group living. Around 70,000 years ago, our capacity for culture propelled us out of Africa by allowing us to acquire the knowledge and technologies necessary for survival in new environments.

第15段:
 “Language may have evolved as an aid to teaching: as something akin to an aural DNA”

第16段:
Humans eventually occupied nearly every environment on Earth in small tribal societies with their own languages, customs and beliefs. So important were our groups to our survival that we developed a tendency to treat other members almost as honorary relatives: we came to risk our well-being and even our lives for our tribes, for example, when going to war. No other species does these things, apart from the social insects – the ants, bees and wasps – whose unusual reproductive systems mean that the members of a hive or nest are brothers and sisters.

第17段:
Our cultural adaptations have equipped us for the modern world, but have also left legacies. Today, the advance of culture and the changes it has wrought in us have yielded a species that is curiously in and out of its time. Remarkably, our ancient allegiance to our group has been able to scale up as our increasingly sophisticated cultures grew in size from the small societies we evolved in, to the larger, modern groupings of villages, towns, cities and even nations with millions of people. The emotion of watching your nation triumph over another in a sporting contest is an atavism from an earlier age, and it allows us to live relatively peaceably and productively alongside people who are effectively strangers with a shared identity.

第18段:
That same atavism must now confront a globalised world (also a product of cumulative culture) in which we routinely mix and live alongside people whose cultural roots and identities may be distant from our own. In spite of the tensions this can cause, when measured across the world, human societies are becoming more, rather than less, peaceful, continuing a trajectory that began at least 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in larger groups.

第19段:
The simple and yet unexpected story of our species’ success shows how H. sapiens gives up the secrets of its success slowly and only after painstakingly detailed work by academics. Laland’s book shows how those evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and social scientists are currently leading the way in unlocking those secrets. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony is accessible to the general reader and well researched. It is an enjoyable and valuable place to begin or to top up your understanding of our enigmatic existence.

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