本文选自科学美国人Scientific American：60-second science. 亦可作为听力训练素材。
背景
介绍10万年前穴居人以贝壳作为工具来使用的情况，讲述了它们如何获取，使用贝壳。
Neandertals Tooled Around with Clams
以贝壳为工具的穴居人
Neandertals ate clams and then modified the hard shells into tools for cutting and scraping.
穴居人吃蛤蜊并将其硬壳改造成用于切割和刮削的工具
Around 100,000 years ago, in what is now Italy, our Neandertal cousins waded out into the shallow coastal waters the Mediterranean Sea in search of clams. They grabbed the mollusks from the sea floor, and perhaps even dived for them in deeper water. And they also simply collected clams from the beach. But the creatures weren’t just food.
大约10万年前，在现在的意大利的这个地方，穴居人的近亲跋山涉水到地中海沿岸的浅水区域寻找蛤蜊。他们抓海底的贝类动物，甚至会潜至更深的水底去抓它们。穴居人也会单单在沙滩上拾贝壳，不过这些东西不仅仅是当做食物供人食用。
In a recent study, University of Colorado, Boulder archaeologist Paola Villa and her team report that Neandertals modified the clams’ hard shells into tools for cutting and scraping. The clam-derived implements were found inside the Grotta dei Moscerini, a coastal cave that was first rediscovered around 85 years ago.
科罗大多大学博尔德分校考古学家 Paola Villa和他的团队最近研究指出，穴居人将蛤蜊的硬壳改造成用于切割和刮削的工具。这些壳类衍生工具发现于一个沿海的山洞里，该山洞于85年前被再次发现。
By examining wear and tear on the shells, the researchers determined that about 75 percent of the tool source material had been found dead on the beach. These shells had been worn down from being battered by waves and sand. But the remaining shells were smooth and shiny, indicating that the clams were still alive on the sea floor when they were gathered.
通过检查贝壳的磨损状况，研究人员确定（制作）工具75%的的原材料在沙滩上找到时就已经死亡了。这些贝壳被海浪和沙子打烂，但是保留下来的贝壳表面光滑且有光泽，这表明贝壳在从海底捞上来时仍然活着。
These shells were also thicker, and therefore might have made more durable tools. So even though gathering clams underwater took more work than picking them up on the beach, the effort may have been worth it.
这些（从海底捞上来的）贝壳非常厚，因此可能制作出更加耐用的工具。尽管从海底打捞它们要比在沙滩上捡花费更多的代价，但这样做事值得的。
Also found in the Grotta dei Moscerini were pumice stones from volcanic eruptions that had occurred to the south of the site. Those stones may have been used by Neandertals as abrasive tools.
在Grotta dei Moscerini洞穴发现了来自火山喷发的浮石，火山喷发发生于该洞穴遗址的南侧，穴居人可能用这些浮石当做磨具使用。
The study is in the journal PLOS ONE.
这项研究发表在PLOS ONE杂志上。
Neandertals were making these tools more than 50,000 years before modern humans first arrived in Western Europe. But Neandertal intelligence was dismissed by the scientific community during much of the 20th century. In recent years, however, evidence of their tool use and even artistic abilities has grown.
穴居人制作这些工具的时间比现代人到达西欧的时间还早了5万年。但是在20世纪的绝大部分时间里，穴居人的智力一直被科学界所忽略。然而，近些年来，他们使用工具的能力甚至(体现)艺术创造能力的证据越来越多。
Neandertals hunted, made cave art, cooked with fire, used boats and went fishing. Just last year, for example, research by Villa and others found that Neandertals living not far from the Grotta dei Moscerini site used resin adhesives to attach handles to stone tools.
如狩猎、绘制洞穴艺术、用火烹饪、使船和钓鱼。就在去年，Villa等人研究发现，穴居人使用树脂粘合剂将手柄固定在石器上，他们就住在离G.d.M.的遗址附近。
They may have gone extinct some 40,000 years ago, but it’s becoming ever more clear that Neandertals were intelligent, creative people—who led fully human lives.
他们可能在约4万年前就灭绝了，但是，一个越来越清晰的事实是，穴居人是聪明的，富有创造力的人群，他们过着丰富的人类生活。
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