达尔文和生命之树（2009）

我们的地球是已知的唯一有生命存在的行星
Our Earth is the only known planet that sustains life,
而且它的生命非常丰富
and it does so in abundance.
这些年来，我很幸运地
I have been fortunate enough, over the years,
游历了地球上一些最特别、最偏远的地方
to travel to some of the most extraordinary
and remote places on Earth
去寻找并拍摄动物
to find and film animals.
这是世界上最大的花
This is the biggest flower in the world.
蓝鲸!
The blue whale!
这颗行星上最大型的动物
It’s the biggest creature that exists on the planet.
动物与植物的数量和种类之多是惊人的
The sheer number and variety of
animals and plants is astonishing.
不同物种的数目估计有600万到1亿不等
Estimates of the number of different species vary
from six million to 100 million.
没有人知道这里有多少不同种类的动物
Nobody knows how many different
kinds of animals there are here.
无论你在哪里，都有生命存在
Wherever you look, there’s life.
在一个单一的模式上经常有很多变化
There are often a multitude of
variations on a single pattern –
例如，猴子有将近200个不同的类型
nearly 200 different kinds of monkeys, for example.
蜂鸟有315种
And 315 hummingbirds.
蝙蝠将近1000种
Nearly a thousand bats.
而甲虫…至少有35万种
And beetles…at least 350,000 species of them.
更不用说25万种不同的开花植物了
Not to mention a quarter of a million
different kinds of flowering plants.
这种变化令人震惊
The variety is astounding.
甚至在英国这一块小小的树林里
Even in this one small English woodland,
你也可能见到4或5个不同类型的雀鸟
you might see four or five different kinds of finches.
为什么生物的多样性如此令人眼花撩乱
Why should there be such a dazzling variety?
我们如何理解如此广泛的生物体呢?
And how can we make sense of such
a huge range of living organisms?
200年前
200 years ago,
一个将解释生命为何如此的惊人不同的人诞生了
a man was born who was to explain
this astonishing diversity of life.
他的出现，彻底改变了我们看待世界的方式
In doing so, he revolutionised
the way in which we see the world
和我们在其中的位置
and our place in it.
他的名字叫查尔斯·达尔文
His name was Charles Darwin.
查尔斯·达尔文和生命之树
解说及旁白：大卫·爱登堡
这本书，《圣经》
This book, the Holy Bible,
解释了这种奇妙的多样性是如何产生的
explains how this wonderful diversity came about.
在创造世界之后的第三天，上帝创造了植物
On the third day after the creation
of the world, God created plants.
第五天，鱼和鸟
On the fifth day, fish and birds,
然后第六天，哺乳动物
and then on the sixth day, mammals,
最后是人类
and finally, man.
从字面上讲，这种解释是可信的
That explanation was believed, literally,
整个西欧在2000年的大部分时间里都是如此
by pretty well the whole of Western Europe
for the best part of 2,000 years,
一代又一代的画家为信徒描绘了这一解释
and generations of painters pictured it for the faithful.
这个版本是16世纪在意大利画的
This version was painted in Italy in the 16th century.
这是伊甸园里的上帝
Here is God in the Garden of Eden,
现在伊甸园充满了各种各样的动物
which is now filled with all kinds of animals.
他正把亚当从地上拉起来
Here he is pulling Adam out of the Earth.
在这里，通过让亚当入睡创造出第一个女人
And here, creating the first woman
by putting Adam to sleep,
然后取下他的一根肋骨把夏娃从他身体一侧抽出
and then taking one of his ribs
and extracting Eve from his side.
她在两个天使的帮助下走了出来
She comes out, assisted by two angels.
当上帝完成这些的时候，他对亚当和夏娃说
And when God had finished, he said to Adam and Eve,
“你们要生养众多，充满大地，治理大地
“Be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the earth and subdue it,
“我要你们管理海里的鱼，天上的飞鸟
“and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the fowl of the air,
“和地上一切有生命的物”
“and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth.”
这清楚地表明，根据《圣经》
That made it clear that, according to the Bible,
人类可以按他们的意愿开♥发♥利用自然世界
humanity could exploit
the natural world as they wished.
这种人类优越性的观点一直持续到1831年
This view of mankind’s superiority
still stood when, in 1831,
一艘英国测量船“小猎犬”号♥进行了一次环球航行
a British surveying ship, the Beagle,
set off on a voyage around the world.
在船上，与船长随行的
On board, as a companion to the captain,
是22岁的查尔斯·达尔文
was the 22-year-old Charles Darwin.
他们横渡大西洋，在巴西海岸登陆
They crossed the Atlantic and made
landfall on the coast of Brazil.
在那里，热带丰富的自然资源让新来的人感到惊讶
There, the sheer abundance of tropical nature
astonishes the newcomer,
正如我在30年前追溯达尔文的足迹时所发现的那样
as I discovered when I retraced Darwin’s steps 30 years ago
当时是为了拍摄一系列关于大自然多样性的电视节目
for a television series about the diversity of nature.
当达尔文还是个孩子的时候，他就是一个狂热的昆虫收集者
Darwin, as a boy, had been a fanatical collector of insects,
在这里他被迷住了，几乎到了欣喜若狂的地步
and here he was enthralled,almost to the point of ecstasy.
一天中，在一片小小的地方
In one day, in a small area,
他发现了69种不同的甲虫
he discovered 69 different species of beetle.
正如他在日记中所写的：
As he wrote in his journal,
“这足以打破昆虫学家头脑的平静
“It’s enough to disturb the
composure of the entomologist’s mind
“在他们考虑一个完整的目录的未来维度时”
“to contemplate the future
dimension of a complete catalogue.”
他们向南走，绕过合恩角，到达太平洋
They went south, rounded Cape Horn
and so reached the Pacific.
然后，在1835年9月
And then, in September 1835,
在他们出航将近4年之后
after they had been away for almost four years,
他们在鲜为人知的加拉帕戈斯群岛登陆
they landed on the little-known islands of the Galapagos.
在这里他们发现了世界上其他地方没有的生物
Here they found creatures that
existed nowhere else in the world.
失去了飞行能力的鸬鹚
Cormorants that had lost the power of flight.
从海浪中游出来的蜥蜴
Lizards that swam out through the surf
在海底吃草
to graze on the bottom of the sea.
达尔文曾在剑桥大学学习植物学和地质学
Darwin, who had studied botany and
geology at Cambridge University,
他收集了动物和植物的标本
collected specimens of the animals and plants,
像往常一样，当他上岸调查的时候
and as usual, when he went ashore to investigate,
他在日记中描述了他的发现
described what he found in his journal.
“我的仆人和我在东北几英里的地方登陆
“My servant and self were landed
a few miles to the northeast,
“以便我可以把上面提到的那个区域
“in order that I might examine
the district mentioned above
“像烟囱似的地方”
“as resembling chimneys.”
大概是火山烟囱
Volcanic chimneys, presumably.
“如果要比喻得更恰当的话
“The comparison would have been more exact
“我该说’伍尔弗汉普顿附近的铁炉’
“if I had said, ‘the iron furnaces near Wolverhampton.’ ”
居住在加拉帕戈斯群岛的英国人
The British resident in the Galapagos
声称他能根据大乌龟的龟壳形状上
claimed that he knew from the
shape of a giant tortoise’s shell,
就知道它来自哪个岛屿
which island it had come from.
如果它有一个圆形的前缘
If it had a rounded front,
它来自一个水源充足的岛屿，以茂盛的地面植物为食
it came from a well-watered island,
where it fed on lush ground plants.
壳前缘有翘起的则来自干旱的岛屿
Whereas one from a drier island had a peak at the front,
这使它能够吃到比较高的植物
which enabled it to reach up to higher vegetation.
这些陆龟，在各自的岛屿上，是不同的物种吗?
Were these tortoises, each on their
separate islands, different species?
如果是这样的话，每一个都是神造物的单独行为吗？
And if so, was each one a separate act of divine creation?
达尔文注意到的
The differences that Darwin had noticed
这些加拉帕戈斯动物之间的差异，当然，都很细微
amongst these Galapagos animals were, of course, all tiny,
但是如果他们能够进化
but if they could develop,
难道在数千年或数百万年的时间里
wasn’t it possible that over the thousands or millions of years
一系列这样的差异加起来就不可能
a whole series of such differences might add up
产生一个革命性的变化吗?
to one revolutionary change?
在回家的旅途中，达尔文有时间思考这些问题
On his voyage home, Darwin had
time to ponder on these things.
有没有可能物种并不是一成不变的，而事实上在慢慢地演变？
Could it be that species were not fixed for all time,
but could, in fact, slowly change?
回国后，他将标本分门别类寄给相关专家那里
On his return, he sorted out
his specimens and sent them off
以便对每一个标本进行鉴定和分类
to relevant experts so that each
could be identified and classified.
他寄给理查德·欧文大部分的哺乳动物的骨头和化石
Most of the mammal bones and fossils
he sent to Richard Owen.
欧文是他那个时代最杰出的动物学家之一
Owen was one of the most brilliant zoologists of his time.
他是第一个辨别出恐龙的人
He was the first to recognise dinosaurs,
而且确实是他发明了恐龙的名字
and indeed had invented their very name,
他后来成为伦敦自然历史博物馆的创建者和第一任馆长
and he would later become the creator and first director
of the Natural History Museum in London.
达尔文收集的许多标本至今仍被保存下来
Many of the specimens that Darwin
collected are still preserved and treasured
与欧文建立的博物馆中收藏的7000万件标本一起珍藏在这里
here among the 70 million other specimens housed
in the museum that Owen founded.
这是其中一个
And here is one of them.