They are often accused of being poor navigators because they can't read maps as well as their male counterparts. But women are actually less likely than men to get lost because they are better at recalling routes, new research has shown.
人们经常说女性因为不能象男性那样看懂地图而经常辨不清方向。但的一项研究表明：女人较男人更不容易迷路，因为她们更擅长记忆路线。
Although men will be better able to use a map, the fairer sex can often can get to their destination quicker on subsequent journies because they remember landmarks.
虽然男性更擅长用地图，但是女性会更快到达目的地，因为她们会记路标。
The study looked at a group of men and women from a Mexican village who were sent to gather mushrooms fitted with satellite positioning systems and heart rate monitors
这项研究从墨西哥的乡村找来一组女性和一组男性，让他们去采摘安装了卫星定位系统和心跳仪的蘑菇。
Although men and women returned with roughly the same amount of mushrooms, the women had expended far less energy because they knew where they were going.
虽然男性和女性采摘的蘑菇数量差不多，但女性消耗的能量要小的多，因为她们知道她们要去哪里。
The men had climbed higher, travelled further and used 70 per cent more energy than the women. Meanwhile the women made more stops but seemed to know where to go.
男性攀爬的更高，走的更远，所以也会比女性多用70%的能量。相比之下，女性有更多的停顿，但是她们似乎更明确怎么走是对的。
They were more likely to recall their routes by using landmarks and retraced paths to the most productive patches of plants
她们更容易通过运用路标和走过的路途标志来回忆起路线，从而到达植物最多产的地方。
Luis Pacheco-Cobos, who led the research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, said: 'These findings show that women perform better and more readily adopt search strategies appropriate to a gathering lifestyle than men.'
墨西哥自主研发大学的路易斯教授领导了这项研究。他说，这些发现表明女性比男性更擅长把搜寻技巧应用在采集生活中。
And scientists said the results are as true of shopping for vegetables in a supermarket as gathering mushrooms in the wild.
科学家们还说这个结果表明在野外摘蘑菇的案例其实和在超市买菜是一样的道理。
Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said: 'Women develop a certain intuition and make better judgment calls. Men make a big thing about it and turn the most basic tasks into a very big deal. They tend to overcomplicate it.'
肯特大学的社会学教授富兰克林说，女性会形成一种特定直觉并且做出较好的判断与调用。男性则会兴师动众，把很基础的任务转化成很大型的事件。他们在试图使之复杂化。
The study confirms the long-held belief that men's and women's skills at route finding developed differently over time because men were the hunters and women the gatherers
这项研究证明了关于男性和女性流传了很久的说法：男人是猎手，而女性则是采集者，他们的发展方式有很大不同。
It is believed that the differences emerged during the Pleistocene age— which began more than 2.5million years ago and ended almost 12,000 years ago
据信这种基于性别的差异在更新世的时期（更新世时代是指250万年前开始，一万二千年前结束的）就产生了。
The male approach is the most useful for hunting down prey but the female approach is better for gathering growing food.
男性特质在打猎捕食方面是很有用处的，而女性特质则更擅长采摘种植食物。
Similar research using 140 volunteers at Queen Mary, University of London, showed that while men were better at discovering hidden objects, women were more successful in tests requiring them to remember where objects lay.
同样的调查也在英国的玛丽皇后大学召集的140个志愿者中进行过。结果表明男性更容易发现隐藏的目标，女性则在记住物体摆放位置方面更胜一筹。
Annabelle Bond, the British mountaineer who was the fastest woman to climb the 'seven summits' - the highest mountains on each continent — said the survey reflected her experience of male and female mountaineers.
英国登山者安娜贝勒?邦德（Annabelle Bond）是攀登七大洲峰的最快女性。她认为玛丽皇后大学的这项研究成果也适用于男女登山者。
'If I have been somewhere before, then I can definitely find that place again very quickly,' she told the Sunday Times. 'But I don’t trust my map-reading skills, and on a mountain I would always rely on a man for that. We are programmed to do things in different ways.
她告诉《周日时代》：“如果我以前去过某一个地方，那么我下次一定会很迅速的找到。但是我并不相信我阅读地图的能力，如果在一座山脉上我一定会依赖一个男人去看地图，我们来分工做不同的事情。”
'That is why men can get lost in a supermarket and women can speed around it in minutes. Of course, most men have no interest in being there and that is why they get lost in the aisles.'
那也是为什么男人很容易在超市迷路，而女性则会几分钟就转了个遍的原因所在。当然了，大多数男人还是对在超市不感兴趣的，这也是为什么他们在过道都会迷路的原因。
The results of the study will be published in the scientific journal Evolution and Human Behaviour later this year。
这项研究结果将在今年晚些时候被登载在《进化与人类行为》科学杂志上面。
