They had bodies similar to modern humans, could make tools, and were possibly the first to cook. Now one expert is arguing that Homo erectus might have been a mariner – complete with sailing lingo.
直立人的身體和現代人相似，可以製造工具，也可能是第一個會做飯的人種。現有專家認為，直立人可能出過海——還會航海術語。
Homo erectus first appeared in Africa more than 1.8m years ago and is thought to be the first archaic human to leave the continent.
直立人最早出現於180多萬年前的非洲，被認為是第一個離開非洲大陸的古人類。
H. erectus fossils have turned up not only in Southern Europe, but as far afield as China and Indonesia. Some argue that the mysterious hominid Homo floresiensis, discovered on the island of Flores, could be descended from H. erectus – although others disagree.
直立人化石不僅出現在南歐，遠在中國和印度尼西亞也有他們的蹤跡。雖存爭議，但有人認為，在弗洛雷斯島發現的神秘類人弗洛勒斯人（Homo floresiensis）可能是直立人的後裔。
「Oceans were never a barrier to the travels of Erectus. He travelled all over the world, travelled to the island of Flores, across one of the greatest ocean currents in the world,」 said Daniel Everett, professor of global studies at Bentley University, and author of How Language Began. 「They sailed to the island of Crete and various other islands. It was intentional: they needed craft and they needed to take groups of twenty or so at least to get to those places.」
丹尼爾·埃弗雷特（ Daniel Everett）是本特利大學從事全球研究的教授，也是《語言的起源》（How Language Began）一書的作者。他說：「海洋從來就不是直立人旅行途中的阻礙。他們（直立人）週遊世界，穿越世界上最大的洋流之一，來到弗洛雷斯島。這些直立人曾前往克裡特島和眾多其他的島嶼。這是有備而來的：為抵達目的地，他們需要技藝，而且至少要帶二十人左右的團隊。」
While Everett is not the first to raise the controversial possibility that H. erectus might have fashioned some sort of seagoing vessel, he believes that such capabilities mean that H. erectus must also have had another skill: language.
埃弗雷特（Everett）並不是第一個提出「直立人可能製造出了某種海船」這樣富有爭議論題的人，但他相信這種能力意味著直立人必須掌握另一種技能：語言。
「Erectus needed language when they were sailing to the island of Flores. They couldn’t have simply caught a ride on a floating log because then they would have been washed out to sea when they hit the current,」 said Everett, presenting his thesis at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin. 「They needed to be able to paddle. And if they paddled they needed to be able to say 『paddle there』 or 『don’t paddle.』 You need communication with symbols not just grunts.」
在奧斯汀舉行的美國科學促進協會會議上，埃弗雷特就其論文進行匯報，「他們在駛往弗洛雷斯島的過程中需要語言。他們不可能只是簡單地在浮動圓木上漂流，因為如果這樣當他們遇到洋流就會被衝到海裡去。」
「他們得會划槳。如果他們划船的話，他們得會說 『划船』或『別劃了』。溝通過程需要用一些有意義的代號，而不僅僅是含渾不清的聲音。」
It is unknown when language emerged among hominids; some argue that it is a feature only of our own species, Homo sapiens, which suggests a timing of no earlier than 200,000 years ago. But Everett believes it goes back further than that.
人類語言何時出現還不得而知；有人認為語言是我們智人獨有的一個特徵，這意味著語言的誕生不早於20萬年前。但埃弗雷特·貝爾認為，語言早在這之前就已經誕生了。
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Everett says that H. erectus would have been unable to make the same range of sounds as we do, not least because they lacked the version of a gene necessary for speech and language to develop – known as FOXP2 – found in modern humans and Neanderthals, although it is not clear whether Neanderthals had language. But he argues that as few as two sounds are needed for a language, and that it is likely H.erectus could make more than that.
埃弗雷特說，直立人也許並不能和我們發出相同的聲音，尤其是因為他們缺乏說話和語言發展所必需的基因——FOXP2。這個基因存在於現代人和尼安德特人體內，雖然並不清楚尼安德特人是否有語言。但他認為，一種語言至少只需要兩種聲音，而直立人可能會發出更多種。
「They had what it took to invent language – and language is not as hard as many linguists have led us to believe. If you have symbols in a linear order then you have a grammar,」 said Everett. 「Homo erectus spoke and invented the Model T Ford of language. We speak the Tesla form, but their Model T form was not a proto-language it was a real language.」
埃弗雷特（Everett）說，「他們擁有發明語言所需的條件--語言並不像許多語言學家說的那樣難。」。有一串線性順序的符號，就有了語法規則。」「直立人發明並使用的語言就像福特T型，而我們說的就像特斯拉。但他們的語言不是原始語，而是一種真正的語言。」
「Everybody talks about Homo erectus as a stupid ape-like creature, which of course describes us just as well, and yet what I want to emphasise is that Erectus was the smartest creature that had ever walked the Earth,」 he said.
他說，「人們都把直立人說成是愚蠢的類人猿，這種說法的對象當然也包括了我們。但我想強調的是，直立人是地球上有史以來最聰明的動物。 」
The theory received mixed reactions from others. Kevin Laland, professor of behavioural and evolutionary biology at the University of St Andrews, said he agreed with Everett. 「The important thing to recognise is that language did not appear in modern form all at once, but gradually evolved from a protoculture comprising just a handful of words with little grammatical structure. Certainly, it is highly plausible that Homo erectus had a protolinguistic capability,」 he said, adding that work by his own team hinted it was possible. 「Our experiment suggests that it would have been very difficult for knowledge of how to manufacture Homo erectus’s Acheulian stone tools to spread without a simple form of language. The study also demonstrates that stone toolmaking would had created a selection pressure favouring increased linguistic capabilities,」 he said.
其他人對這個理論反響各異。聖安德魯斯大學行為和進化生物學教授凱文·拉蘭德（Kevin Laland）表示，他同意埃弗雷特的觀點。他說，「我們需要認識到，現代語言的形成並非一蹴而就，而是從一種由少數幾個單詞組成的、語法結構較簡單的原始文化中逐漸演化而來的。當然，直立人很可能具備原始語言能力。」而且他的團隊也暗示了這種可能性的存在。「我們的實驗表明，如果連簡單的語言交流都沒有，直立人製造阿丘利亞石器的知識將難以傳播。這項研究還表明，石器製造還會產生物競天擇的生存壓力，定向提高該人種的語言能力 。」
But others say that there is little evidence that H. erectus was a sophisticated seafarer, let alone had a language. 「I don’t accept that, for example, [Homo] erectus must have had boats to get to Flores,」 said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. 「Tsunamis could have moved early humans on rafts of vegetation.」
但也有人說，鮮有證據表明直立人在涉海方面有豐富經驗，更不用說掌握一種語言了。倫敦自然歷史博物館的人類起源研究負責人克裡斯·斯特林格（Chris Stringer）說，「我不認可這種理論，比如說，直立人必須有船才能到達弗洛雷斯。也許是海嘯促使早期人類以植物作筏（開始遠航）。」
That said, Stringer notes that Homo heidelbergensis, another extinct relative of ours that lived between 700,000 and 300,000 years ago, might have been capable of some sort of chat. 「I think [Homo] heidelbergensis had a complex enough life to require speech, though not at the level of modern human language. With [Homo] erectus, I’m not so sure,」 said Stringer, adding that the ability of H. erectus to make and use tools is not, as some have argued, convincing evidence. 「Chimps and crows make and use tools without a human kind of language,」 he said.
斯特林格指出，這表明，人類另一個生活在約70萬年到30萬年前的「親戚」海德堡人，或許能夠進行某種對話。斯特林格說，「我認為海德堡人的生活已經複雜到需要使用語言，儘管這種語言還達不到現代人類語言的水平。但我不太確定直立人是否也會使用語言，」他還說，直立人製造和使用工具的能力並不像一些人所認為的那樣，是他們掌握語言的有力證據。他表示，「黑猩猩和烏鴉在沒有人類這樣的語言的情況下也能製造和使用工具。」