Datasets:

yufan
/

voice_david

Modalities:

Audio

Text

Formats:

Size:

Libraries:

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Dataset Viewer

Auto-converted to Parquet

Split (1)

train · 969 rows

text stringlengths 22 178	audio audioduration (s) 2.02 12.3
As I write this, I'm ninety-four.
I've had the most extraordinary life.
That I've managed to spend so much of my life doing.
Copying the ideas or actions of others.
Seems to us to be easy.
But that's because we excel at it.
Only a handful of other species show any signs of having a culture.
Chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins are two of them.
But no other species has anything approaching the capacity for culture.
Culture transformed the way we evolved.
It was a new way by which our species became adapted for life on earth.
Whereas other species depended on physical change over generations.
We could produce an idea that brought significant change within a single generation.
When I was eleven years old, I lived in Leicester in the middle of England.
Tricks such as finding the plants that yield water even during a drought.
Crafting a stone tool for skinning a kill.
Lighting a fire or cooking a meal.
Could be passed from one human to another during a single lifetime.
It was a new form of inheritance that didn't rely on the genes which an individual received from its parents.
So now the pace of our change increased.
Our ancestors' brains expanded at extraordinary speed.
Enabling us to learn, store and spread ideas.
But ultimately, the physical changes in their bodies slowed to almost a halt.
Anatomically modern humans, homo sapiens, people like you and me.
At that time, it wasn't unusual for a boy of my age to get on a bicycle, ride off into the countryside.
We've changed physically very little since then.
At the beginning of our existence as a species.
Our culture was centered upon a lifestyle of hunting and gathering.
We were exceptionally good at both.
We equipped ourselves with the material products of our culture, such as hooks to catch fish and knives to butcher deer.
We learned how to control fire for cooking.
And use stones to grind grain.
The environment was harsh and more importantly, unpredictable.
The world in general was a lot colder than now.
The sea level was much lower.
And spend a whole day away from home.
Fresh water was harder to find.
And global temperatures fluctuated greatly within relatively short periods of time.
We may have had bodies and brains very like those we have now but because the environment was so unstable.
Data from genetic studies of modern-day humans suggest that, in fact,
Those climatic hazards left us susceptible to events that nearly exterminated us.
May have been reduced to as few as 20000 fertile adults.
If we were to develop much further.
The retreat of the last glaciers.
The holocene, the part of the earth's history that we think of as our time.
Has been one of the most stable periods in our planet's long history.
And that is exactly what I did.
For 10000 years, the average global temperature.
Did not vary up or down by more than one degree centigrade.
We don't know exactly what produced this stability.
But the richness of the living world.
May well have had something to do with it.
Microscopic plants floating near the ocean's surface.
And vast forests extending right round the globe in the north.
Locked away a great deal of carbon.
And so help to maintain a balanced level.
Of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Every child explores, just turning over a stone and looking at the animals beneath is exploring.
Huge herds of grazing animals kept the grasslands rich and productive by fertilizing the soils and stimulating new growth.
Mangrove swamps and coral reefs along the coast.
Provided nurseries for young fish that when mature ranged into open waters and enriched.
A dense multi-layered belt of rainforest around the equator.
and added moisture and oxygen to the global air currents.
And great wide expanses of snow and ice of the northern and southern ends of the earth.
Cooling the whole earth like a gigantic air conditioner.
So the flourishing biodiversity of the Holocene.
Helped to moderate the global temperatures of the earth.
And the living world settled into a gentle, reliable annual rhythm.
It never occurred to me to be anything other than fascinated.
Dry and rainy seasons alternated with clockwork regularity.
The winds change direction at the same time each year.
In northern regions, the temperatures rose above 15 degrees centigrade in March, triggering the spring.
And then stayed high until October.
When they dipped and brought autumn.
The Holocene was our Garden of Eden.
Was so reliable that it gave our species the opportunities we needed.
And we took advantage of them.
Almost as soon as the environment stabilized, groups of people living in the Middle East.
Began to abandon gathering plants and hunting animals and took to a completely new way of life.
When watching what was going on in the natural world about me.
The path through agriculture was long, haphazard and accidental, and due more to luck than to foresight.
In the Middle East, the lands had all the characteristics needed for such happy accidents.
Between three continents, Africa, Asia and Europe.
The species of plants and animals from all three.
have both passed through and established themselves here.
The hillsides and floodplains were colonized by plants such as the wild ancestors of today's wheat.
So rich in nutriment that they can survive the prolonged dry seasons.
Such edible morsels must have attracted people every year.
If they were able to gather more seeds than they needed immediately, they doubtless stored them.
As some other mammals and birds do.
My older brother had another view.
So that they could be eaten during the winter when food is scarce.
And settle down secure in the knowledge.
That their stored seeds would provide them with food.
When nothing else was easily available.
Wild cattle, goats, sheep and pigs.
Initially, they must have been taken from the wild, but they too became domesticated within a few thousand years.
Again, there will have been many intermediate and doubtless unintentional steps in the journey from wild to tame.
At first, the hunters selected males to kill.
In order to boost the populations.