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homo floresiensis
Cave where Homo floresiensis was discovered in 2003 (Rosino/CC 2.0).
2003 年发现弗洛勒斯人(Homo floresiensis)的洞穴(Rosino/CC 2.0)。

A Humanlike “Living Fossil” Could Still Be Alive in Indonesia, This Anthropologist Says
一位人类学家称,一种类似人类的“活化石”可能仍在印度尼西亚存活

50,000 years ago, during the heart of the Pleistocene era, a small variety of humans once thrived on the modern island of Flores, Indonesia. Standing at a little more than a meter tall, the fossil remains of one of these diminutive beings discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua were quickly likened to the beloved hobbits from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fantasy novels. Since that initial discovery, remains belonging to nine of these enigmatic ancient dwarfs—formally named homo floresiensis—have been unearthed, offering a rare glimpse of an archaic human cousin that once populated part of the ancient Malay Archipelago.
5 万年前,在更新世时期的核心阶段,一种小型人类曾在现代印度尼西亚的弗洛雷斯岛上繁衍生息。2003 年在梁布亚发现的这些矮小生物的化石遗骸,身高仅略高于一米,很快就被比作 J.R.R.托尔金《指环王》奇幻小说中深受喜爱的霍比特人。自那次初步发现以来,已出土了九具这些神秘古代矮人的遗骸——正式命名为弗洛勒斯人——为我们提供了一个罕见的机会,窥见曾居住在古马来群岛部分地区的远古人类表亲。

Depending on whom you ask, some might even tell you that these rare little humanlike creatures are still there on the island today.
取决于你问的是谁,有些人甚至可能会告诉你,这些稀有的人形小生物今天仍然在岛上。

Gregory Forth, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, was fascinated by the stories of mythical humanlike creatures he began to come across when he began his work on the island in 1984 among the Nagé people of west-central Flores. Having earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford four years earlier, in 1986 he became a professor at the University of Alberta, where he remained for over thirty years. As part of his profession, Forth would also continue to conduct fieldwork in Indonesia, eventually becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a renowned social anthropologist.
Gregory Forth,阿尔伯塔大学人类学退休教授,对他在 1984 年开始在弗洛雷斯岛中西部的纳格人中进行工作时遇到的关于神话类人生物的故事深感着迷。四年前,他在牛津大学获得博士学位,1986 年成为阿尔伯塔大学教授,并在那里工作了三十多年。作为其职业的一部分,Forth 还继续在印度尼西亚进行实地考察,最终成为加拿大皇家学会会员和著名的社会人类学家。

Gregory Forth
Retired anthropologist Gregory Forth.
退休人类学家 Gregory Forth。

Decades after his initial encounters with tales of “ape-men” on Flores, in 2003 his anthropological work on the island brought him among the Lio people around the eastern district of Mego. There, Forth began to hear new stories similar to those he had encountered so many years earlier, this time involving creatures the locals called lai ho’a, a kind of small apelike humanoid that, to Forth’s intrigue, were suspiciously similar in description to the fossil remains of the extinct homo floresiensis.
在与弗洛雷斯岛“猿人”传说初次相遇的数十年后,2003 年,他在该岛进行的人类学工作将他带到了梅戈东部地区的里奥人中间。在那里,福斯开始听到与他多年前所遇相似的新故事,这次涉及当地人称为 lai ho'a 的生物,一种小型类猿人形生物,令福斯感到好奇的是,其描述与已灭绝的弗洛雷斯人化石遗骸惊人地相似。

However, unlike the earlier stories of legendary “ape-men” Forth had encountered in his earlier anthropological work on the island, the Lio spoke of lai ho’a as though it were very much still alive today.
然而,与 Forth 早年在岛上进行人类学研究时遇到的传说中的“猿人”故事不同,Lio 人谈论 lai ho’a 时,仿佛它至今仍然存活于世。

“What really interested me in the lai ho’a is that it was small, like the figures in Nagé country,” Forth said in an interview, “but it was reckoned still to be alive. And indeed, there were a few people around, it seemed, who claimed to have seen one or more.”
“真正让我对 lai ho’a 感兴趣的是它体型很小,就像纳格地区的那些生物一样,”福斯在一次采访中说,“但它被认为仍然活着。而且确实,似乎周围有几个人声称见过一个或多个。”

The modern retellings of encounters with the lai ho’a became so common that Forth began collecting them, and eventually sought out additional witnesses who could provide details about their observations of the creature.
现代关于与 lai ho’a 相遇的重新讲述变得如此普遍,以至于 Forth 开始收集这些故事,并最终寻找能够提供关于他们观察到的这种生物细节的额外目击者。

However, Forth says it had always been the fossil discovery of homo floresiensis on Flores that caused him to consider that the stories could be more than mere folklore, and might instead represent something tangible—albeit remaining largely hidden—on the island in modern times.
然而,福斯表示,正是弗洛勒斯岛上发现的弗洛勒斯人化石使他开始考虑这些故事可能不仅仅是民间传说,而可能代表了现代岛上某种有形的东西——尽管在很大程度上仍然隐藏着。

“Indeed, it was floresiensis the fossil that inclined me to go ahead with this research,” Forth told The Debrief.
“事实上,正是弗洛勒斯人的化石促使我继续这项研究,”福斯告诉《The Debrief》。

homo floresiensis
Facial reconstruction of homo floresiensis (CC 4.0).
弗洛勒斯人(Homo floresiensis)的面部重建(CC 4.0)。

“When the reports started coming out, I was quite amazed,” Forth says, “because what people were describing—what paleoanthropologists were describing, and indeed reconstructing—sounded very much like what the Lio people had been describing to me the previous summer.”
“当报告开始出现时,我感到非常惊讶,”福斯说,“因为人们所描述的——古人类学家所描述的,甚至重建的——听起来非常像前一个夏天里奥人向我描述的那样。”

“Without their having any way of knowing about this paleontological discovery on the western end of the island,” Forth adds.
“他们没有任何途径知道岛西端的这一古生物学发现,”福斯补充道。

“So the timing [of] the dates were important here because otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have proceeded as I did.”
“所以日期的选择在这里很重要,否则我可能不会像当时那样继续下去。”

By 2005, Forth had decided he wanted to examine stories like those he was hearing from the Lio more closely, resulting in an academic publication, Images of the Wild Man in Southeast Asia, that combined his early fieldwork with additional scholarly material he had retrieved during library studies.
到 2005 年,福斯决定更仔细地研究像他从里奥人那里听到的故事,这导致了一篇学术出版物《东南亚野人形象》的诞生,该出版物结合了他早期的田野调查和他在图书馆研究中检索到的额外学术材料。

“I continued being interested in the Lio ‘ape-man’,” Forth says, “and further research that was being published about homo floresiensis.” By the time he left Flores in 2018, Forth had gathered a wealth of information about the lai ho’a and began assembling work that culminated in his latest book, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid
“我一直对 Lio‘猿人’感兴趣,”Forth 说,“以及后来发表的关于弗洛勒斯人的研究。”到 2018 年离开弗洛勒斯时,Forth 已经收集了大量关于 lai ho’a 的信息,并开始整理工作,最终完成了他的新书《猿与人之间:追踪隐藏人科动物的民族学家》。

Between Ape and Human

“Although often described as taller or larger-bodied, humanlike creatures
尽管常被描述为更高大或体型更大的人形生物

like these ape-men have been reported for other parts of Flores Island, Indonesia,
据报道,印度尼西亚弗洛雷斯岛的其他地区也出现过类似这些猿人的生物

and other parts of the world,” Forth writes early in the book. “But adding to the intrigue of the lai ho’a is the fact that—unlike similar beings reported from other parts of Flores, which local people consider extinct—these ape-men are claimed to have survived to the present.”
“以及其他地区,”福斯在书中写道。“但增加 lai ho’a 神秘感的是,与弗洛雷斯岛其他地区报告的类似生物不同,当地人认为这些猿人已经灭绝,而这些猿人据称一直存活至今。”

Forth conveys that in addition to the belief among the Lio that at least a few lai ho’a have persisted into modern times, several accounts he deemed to be credible which involved sightings of living specimens from as far back as the 1960s up until as recently as 2019 provide compelling fodder for paleoanthropologists willing to entertain ideas that a small population of “living fossil” archaic humans might still thrive on Flores.
Forth 传达出,除了 Lio 人相信至少有一些 lai ho’a 延续到了现代之外,他还认为几份可信的目击报告,从 20 世纪 60 年代一直到最近的 2019 年,涉及活体标本的目击,为愿意接受“活化石”古人类可能仍在弗洛雷斯岛上繁衍生息这一观点的古人类学家提供了引人入胜的素材。

In general appearance, Forth told The Debrief that Lio witnesses describe the lai ho’a as being essentially humanlike, although smaller and possessing several animalistic qualities.
总体而言,Forth 告诉 The Debrief,Lio 目击者描述 lai ho’a 基本上像人类,尽管体型较小且具有一些动物特征。

“They stress that it resembles humans in so far as it stands upright, and it walks bipedally.” Forth also says the Lio describe the lai ho’a as being hairier than humans, although “not excessively hairy.”
他们强调,它类似于人类,因为它直立行走,并且是双足行走。Forth 还表示,Lio 人描述 lai ho’a 比人类毛发更多,尽管“并非过度多毛”。

However, the lai ho’a is most greatly distinguished by its facial characteristics, according to Forth.
然而,根据 Forth 的说法,lai ho’a 最显著的特征是其面部特征。

“They say the face looks, well, I would say ape-like,” Forth explained. “But they say monkey-like, because they don’t make a distinction between monkeys and apes.”
“他们说这张脸看起来,嗯,我会说像猿类,”福斯解释道。“但他们说像猴子,因为他们不区分猴子和猿类。”

Amidst the reports Forth has collected, there are three that he says he finds particularly compelling.
在 Forth 收集的报告中,有三份他表示特别引人注目。

“In each case, the hominoid was seen by two or more people at the same time,” Forth told The Debrief.
“在每种情况下,类人猿都被两个或更多人在同一时间看到,”福斯告诉《The Debrief》。

“Also, in two of the three cases, the specimen was dead,” Forth adds, “so people were able to approach it and get a close look.”
“此外,在这三个案例中,有两个标本已经死亡,”福斯补充道,“因此人们能够靠近并仔细观察。”

One of the three cases dates to 1972 as a group of Lio men were traveling through a wooded jungle area in the high mountains of Flores when one of the creatures came down an embankment toward their moving vehicle. One of the witnesses, who was from outside the region, said he learned the local name for the creature from the driver of the vehicle, who had been a Lio man.
三起案例中的一起可追溯至 1972 年,当时一群利奥族男子正驾车穿越弗洛勒斯岛高山中的一片丛林地带,突然其中一个生物从路堤上下来,朝他们行驶的车辆靠近。其中一名目击者来自外地,他说他从司机那里得知了这种生物在当地的名字,而司机是一名利奥族人。

“So it’s not as though he had at that time any prior baggage,” Forth explains, describing the man’s experience as having been unique in that it shared the hallmarks of other stories he had heard from Lio residents while coming from an outsider to their community.
“所以,他当时并没有任何先前的包袱,”福斯解释道,并描述这个人的经历是独特的,因为它既具有他从利奥居民那里听到的其他故事的特征,又来自他们社区的外部人士。

A case that Forth calls among the best that he collected involved a man who, in 2010, discovered the remains of one of the creatures.
Forth 认为他收集的最好的案例之一涉及一名男子,他在 2010 年发现了其中一种生物的遗骸。

“He was able to describe it in some detail,” Forth told The Debrief, adding that the principal witness’s family members also saw the corpse.
“他能够详细描述它,”福斯告诉《简报》,并补充说主要证人的家人也看到了尸体。

“Local people regard these things as real,” Forth says. “And at the same time, they find them quite uncanny.”
“当地人认为这些东西是真实的,”福斯说。“同时,他们也觉得它们非常诡异。”

“They’re scared of us,” Lio locals told Forth, “and we’re scared of them.”
“他们害怕我们,”Lio 当地人告诉 Forth,“我们也害怕他们。”

homo floresiensis
Artistic reconstruction of homo floresiensis, based on fossils recovered on Flores island (CC 4.0).

“Nevertheless,” Forth says, “what they were able to tell me was certainly detailed enough to convince me that they had, in all likelihood, seen something that closely matched their descriptions.”

Described as “the only firsthand investigation by a leading anthropologist into the possible survival of a primitive species of humans,” Forth’s book detailing his work on the island has received praise, in addition to generating some degree of controversy for its unique subject matter. In the absence of physical evidence, making a strong case for the existence of the lai ho’a remains difficult, a challenge that Forth recognizes.

However, in light of the similarity between descriptions of the creatures and fossil remains of homo floresiensis found on the island, the argument that such a creature could persist in modern times—speculative though it remains—is somewhat strengthened.

When it comes to the individual cases he examined, Forth said in a recent interview that perhaps not all of them can be taken as reliable representations of the living reality of the Lai ho’a. Yet if only one or two were valid descriptions of an unrecognized species–a veritable “living fossil”, as past discoveries have been called, it would be a discovery that could fundamentally upend many long-held views in the field of evolution and paleoanthropology.

“Each case, I think, has to be taken on its own merits,” Forth says.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on Twitter: @MicahHanks