It is by now a truism that the story of human evolution is being rethought. Discoveries have come thick and fast over the last decade or so, and these have forced us to rethink many crucial points, such as how old our species is - about 300,000 years old as opposed to 200,000 - and what extinct hominins, such as our cousins the Neanderthals, were really like. But because there are so many species and eras involved, it's hard to discern the common threads linking them.

如今，人类进化的历程正被重新审视已成为不争的事实。过去十年左右，大量新发现不断涌现，迫使我们重新思考许多关键问题，例如我们的物种究竟有多古老——大约30万年，而非20万年——以及像尼安德特人这样的已灭绝智人究竟长什么样。但由于涉及的物种和时代众多，要找出它们之间的共同线索却十分困难。

However, I do think it's possible to draw out some overall messages from the blizzard of archaeological finds in recent years. Two things stand out to me. One is the growing evidence that many supposedly 'advanced' behaviours, such as architecture and art, can be traced much further back in time than we thought, often to hominin species that existed before modern humans. And the other is that we have badly misunderstood gender roles in prehistoric societies, imposing patriarchal values onto cultures that had very different ideas about how women should behave.

然而，我认为从近年来出土的大量考古发现中，仍可以提炼出一些总体性的信息。其中两点尤其引人注目。第一点是，越来越多的证据表明，许多所谓“先进”的行为，例如建筑和艺术，其历史可追溯到远比我们想象得更早的时期，常常可追溯至生活在现代人类之前的人类祖先物种。第二点是，我们严重误解了史前社会中的性别角色，将父权价值观强加于那些对女性行为有着完全不同观念的文化之中。

Let's start with architecture. At Kalambo Falls in Zambia, researchers found buried logs that had been shaped with stone tools so that they interlocked. They seem to have once been part of a larger structure, perhaps a building. This would be unsurprising if they weren't 476,000 years old. That's almost 200,000 years before our species, Homo sapiens, evolved. Extinct hominins also managed to settle in extreme places. For instance, we now know that extinct hominins such as the Denisovans lived on the frozen heights of high-altitude regions 200,000 years ago - upending the old notion that such environments were only settled by modern humans around 3,600 years ago.

让我们从建筑学说起。在赞比亚的卡拉姆博瀑布，研究人员发现了一些被石头工具雕刻成相互嵌合的埋藏木桩。这些木桩似乎曾属于一个更大的结构，可能是一座建筑的一部分。如果它们不是47.6万年前的产物，这一点也就不足为奇了——那比我们人类智人（Homo sapiens）的演化时间早了近20万年。灭绝的人类祖先也曾成功定居于极端环境中。例如，我们现在知道，像丹尼索瓦人这样的已灭绝人类祖先，大约在20万年前就生活在高海拔地区的冰冻高原上，这推翻了过去认为这类环境仅在约3600年前才由现代人类居住的观点。

Art also seems to have been invented by older hominins. We have had evidence for a long time now that Neanderthals painted on cave walls. Even earlier species, such as Homo erectus, may also have made art, for example by engraving patterns on shells. By far the most contentious claim in this area is that Homo naledi made art. H. naledi lived around 250,000 years ago, making it a contemporary of our species. However, it had quite a small brain, typical of older hominins - and was therefore, according to palaeoanthropological dogma, incapable of complex behaviours. Nevertheless, in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa where the H. naledi remains were found, researchers have found what seem to be etchings - resembling rudimentary artwork - on the cave walls, though these have yet to be firmly dated.

艺术似乎是由早期人类祖先所创造的。长期以来，我们已有证据表明尼安德特人曾在洞穴墙壁上进行绘画。更早的物种，例如直立人，也可能创作艺术，例如在贝壳上刻划图案。目前这一领域最具争议的说法是，纳莱迪人（Homo naledi）也曾制作过艺术。纳莱迪人生活在大约25万年前，与我们的物种同时代。然而，其大脑体积相当小，这正是早期人类祖先的典型特征——根据古人类学的教条，因此他们不具备复杂行为的能力。尽管如此，在南非的“升起之星”洞穴系统中发现了纳莱迪人的化石，研究人员在洞穴壁上发现了一些看似雕刻的痕迹，类似于原始的艺术作品，但这些痕迹尚未被确切地测定年代。

To say these claims about H. naledi are controversial is to understate the situation. Many experts say the evidence presented so far is completely inadequate to support them. The dispute has only been heightened by the way the results were released, in a non-traditional journal that publishes peer reviews publicly alongside the paper. My views on the H. naledi controversy are complicated. I do think more evidence is needed: in particular with regard to the dating of the etchings. At the same time, I think the species' small brains are a distraction. Palaeoanthropologists got fixated on brain size because it was what they could see: if what you have is skeletons, then all you know about brains are their shapes and sizes But other properties, such as the brain's internal wiring, are surely equally important and may explain how a species like H. naledi might have been capable of complex behaviours, despite their small brains.

说关于H. naledi的这些说法颇具争议，其实是在低估当前的情况。许多专家认为，迄今为止所提供的证据完全不足以支持这些观点。而争议之所以更加激烈，还在于研究结果的发布方式——它发表在一本非传统期刊上，该期刊会将同行评审意见与论文一同公开。我对H. naledi争议的看法较为复杂。我确实认为需要更多的证据，尤其是关于这些刻痕的年代测定问题。与此同时，我认为这种物种较小的大脑是一个干扰因素。古人类学家之所以执着于大脑大小，是因为这正是他们所能观察到的：如果你只有骨骼，那么你对大脑所知的就仅限于其形状和大小。但其他特征，例如大脑内部的神经连接结构，同样至关重要，或许能解释为何像H. naledi这样的物种尽管大脑较小，仍可能具备复杂的认知行为。

In a sense, we shouldn't be surprised that so many of these behaviours had their origins in older, extinct hominins. Evolution usually works by incremental steps and so does technology. The first birds weren't great at flying, and the first mobile phones weren't great at, well, anything really. The idea that there was a sudden explosion of intelligence and creativity at some point in our evolution isn't inherently ridiculous: sometimes a system hits a tipping point and undergoes runaway change. But there was never that much evidence that human evolution worked this way. Instead, it seems the Neanderthals and many others all walked so we could run.

从某种意义上说，我们并不应该感到惊讶，因为这些行为的根源大多来自更早、已灭绝的人类祖先。进化通常是一个渐进的过程，技术也是如此。最早的鸟类飞行能力并不强，最早的手机也并非特别擅长什么。认为人类进化过程中某个时刻突然爆发了智力和创造力的观点本身并不荒谬：有时一个系统会达到临界点，从而发生失控的变化。但过去并没有太多证据表明人类进化就是如此进行的。相反，似乎尼安德特人和其他许多人的行走方式，正是为了让我们能够奔跑。

One way or another, the H. naledi story is going to be an example of letting our preconceptions get in the way of the evidence. The same is true for our ideas about gender in prehistory. Archaeology was invented by individuals with now unfashionably patriarchal views about gender, and those notions fed into their research. Today's researchers are trying to unpick this stuff, and there have been some significant steps in recent years.

无论如何，H. naledi 的故事都将成为一个例子，说明我们的先入之见如何阻碍了对证据的判断。对于史前时期性别观念也是如此。考古学是由一些如今已不合时宜的父权制性别观者所创立的，这些观念也深深影响了他们的研究。如今的研究者正试图拆解这些陈旧观念，近年来已取得了一些重要进展。

Perhaps the most dramatic was the demolition of 'Man the Hunter'. This was the idea, promoted for decades, that in most prehistoric societies the men went out to hunt and the women looked after the home. However, a meta-analysis published in June 2023 compiled data on several dozen foraging societies and found women hunted in 80 per cent of them. In line with this, it emerged that an ancient spear-throwing tool called an atlatl enables women to launch projectiles at the same speed as men. We have also seen growing evidence of women occupying positions of authority in ancient societies. The Viking queen Thyra may have helped unify Denmark in the 900s. Going further back, an Iberian leader from around 4000 years ago turned out to be female, not male as many had assumed, when proteins in her teeth were analysed.

或许最引人注目的是“猎人”（Man the Hunter）理论的被推翻。这一理论数十年来一直被广泛宣传，认为在大多数史前社会中，男性外出狩猎，而女性则负责照看家庭。然而，2023年6月发表的一项元分析汇总了数十个采集社会的数据，发现其中80%的社会里女性也参与狩猎。与此一致的是，研究还发现一种名为“阿特拉斯”（atlatl）的古代投掷长矛工具，能让女性以与男性相同的速度发射 projectiles。此外，越来越多的证据表明，古代社会中女性曾担任重要领导职位。例如，维京女王提拉可能在公元9世纪帮助统一了丹麦。更早一些，约4000年前一位伊比利亚地区的领袖被证实为女性，而非男性——这是由于对其牙齿中的蛋白质进行分析后得出的结论。

It seems that the more we find out about past societies, the more our preconceptions about the ways society 'has to be' turn out to be wrong. Inequality, authoritarianism and patriarchy aren't inevitable. They're choices, and prehistory shows us that we can choose differently.

似乎我们对过去社会了解得越多，就越会发现关于社会“必须如此”的先入之见是错误的。不平等、专制和父权制并非不可避免，它们是选择，而史前历史向我们证明，我们可以做出不同的选择。