"And there remains the remote possibility that he's right."
“有万分之一的可能性,他是正确的。”
She laughed, then went on more intently: "Data from any single gene cannot really tell you anything so definitive.
她大声笑了笑,接着沉思着说,“任何单个的基因实际上不能说明任何确切的东西。
If you follow the mitochondrial DNA backwards, it will take you to a certain place—to an Ursula or Tara or whatever.
如果你顺着一段线粒体DNA往上推移,它可能把你带到某个地方——乌尔苏拉、杰斯敏,或别的任何人。
But if you take any other bit of DNA, any gene at all, and trace it back, it will take you someplace else altogether."
但是,如果你选择任何另外,一段线粒体DNA,再按同样的方式往上推移,它可能把你带到—个完全不同的地方。”
It was a little, I gathered, like following a road randomly out of London and finding that eventually it ends at John O'Groats,
我想,这有点像沿着随便哪条道路走出伦敦,最后你发现来到了苏格兰最北端的约翰角,
and concluding from this that anyone in London must therefore have come from the north of Scotland.
因此你就得出结论说所有的伦敦人都来自苏格兰北部。
They might have come from there, of course, but equally they could have arrived from any of hundreds of other places.
他们有可能来自那里,但是他们也有可能来自数以百计的别的地方。
In this sense, according to Harding, every gene is a different highway, and we have only barely begun to map the routes.
在这个意义上,按照哈丁的说法,每一个基因都是一条不同的公路,我们只不过刚刚开始绘制它们的路线图。
"No single gene is ever going to tell you the whole story," she said.
“哪一个基因也不能反映全局。”她说。
So genetic studies aren't to be trusted?
那么,基因研究是不是就不可信了呢?
"Oh you can trust the studies well enough, generally speaking.
“噢,一般来说,你可以在相当程度上相信这类研究。
What you can't trust are the sweeping conclusions that people often attach to them."
你不能相信的是那些人们牵强附会得出的一些结论。”
She thinks out-of-Africa is "probably 95 percent correct,"
她认为:“‘走出非洲’也许95%是正确的。”
but adds: "I think both sides have done a bit of a disservice to science by insisting that it must be one thing or the other.
但是她补充说,“我认为,双方都坚持非此即彼的观点,这是违背科学精神的。
Things are likely to turn out to be not so straightforward as either camp would have you believe.
最后证明,事情很可能不是像双方认为的那么简单。
The evidence is clearly starting to suggest that there were multiple migrations and dispersals in different parts of the world going in all kinds of directions and generally mixing up the gene pool.
已经有证据开始显示,在世界不同的地方曾经有过多次不同方向的古人类的迁移和扩散,所在这些都融人了整个人类的基因库当中。
That's never going to be easy to sort out."
要想对之加以分门别类绝不是一件容易的事。”
Just at this time, there were also a number of reports questioning the reliability of claims concerning the recovery of very ancient DNA.
就在这个时候,还出现了不少对提取远古DNA提出质疑的报道。