人类帝国凌驾于自然之上，不只是一副借助隐喻的手法所描绘的生动图像，更是人类对于自然的实际的行为模式：帝国式的征服、掠夺，最终消耗殆尽直至崩溃。

The image of a human empire oppressing the rest of nature is on metaphor. It is an actual pattern of imperial conquest, plunder, eventual exhaustion and collapse.

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像人类一样，虎鲸也在全球范围内开拓了一系列不同的栖息地，占据了地球上的每一个海洋流域，拥有一个从一极延伸到另一极的帝国。

Like humans, killer whales have colonized a range of different habitats across the globe, occupying every ocean basin on the planet, with an empire that extends from pole to pole.

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加拿大帝国商业银行成功地使用了一种原产于墨西哥的以种子为食的象鼻虫来控制讨厌的帕特农杂草，这种杂草已知会对印度和澳大利亚的农业和人类健康产生负面影响。

CIBC successfully used a seed-feeding weevil, native to Mexico, to control the obnoxious parthenium weed, known to exert devious influence on agriculture and human health in both India and Australia.

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Archaeologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were stunned to find the ruins and the records of remarkable peoples and cultures--massive, complex empires in some cases, but some of which had completely disappeared from human memory.

十九和二十世纪的考古学家们,震惊地发现了,古代伟大名族和文化的遗迹，有些还是大规模，复杂的帝国遗迹,但也有一些就完全从人类记忆中消失了。

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