In fact, we are all descended from astronomers. Our survival depended on knowing how to read the stars, in order to predict the coming of the winter and the migration of the wild herds.
事实上,我们都是天文学家的后代,我们生存的关键,就在于掌握如何阅读星辰的知识,以便我们预测冬天何时来到,野生动物何时会迁徙。
The best thing we had going for us was our intelligence, especially our gift for pattern recognition, sharped over eons of evolution. the one who were good at spotting prey and predator, telling poisonous plants from the nourishing ones, they had better chance to live and reproduce. They survived and passed on those genes for pattern recognition with its obvious advantages. Cultures all over the planet looked up at the same stars and found different pictures there. We used this gift for recognizing patterns in nature to read the calendar in the sky.
我们拥有的最美好的,就是智慧,尤其是我们与生俱来的识别模式的天赋。这种天赋在千百万年的进化中越发突显。那些擅长辨识猎物和捕食者,有毒植物和可食用植物的人类,拥有更大的机会生存下来,并繁衍后代,将这种模式识别的优势基因传递下去。不同文明的人类,仰望着同一片星空,却在星空里描绘出不同的图案。我们使用自己模式识别的天赋读取着天空中的历法。
The message written in the stars told our forefathers and mothers when to camp and when to move on; when the migratory herds and when the rains and the cold would come. And when they would cease for a time. When they observed the direct connection between the motions of the stars and the seasonal cycles of life on Earth, they concluded naturally, that what happened up there, must be directed at us down here.
星星中透露出的信息告诉我们的祖先们,何时应该扎营,何时应该出发,野生动物的迁徙,雨雪和寒冷何时会到来,以及他们何时停止。当他们发现星星的运动与地球上四季变换之间的关系时,他们自然而然的得出这样的结论,天之变,致地之变。
————— 摘自Spacetime Odyssey