ancestor

柯林斯词典

1. N-COUNT Your ancestors are the people from whom you are descended. 祖先[usu pl, with poss]
...our daily lives, so different from those of our ancestors. …我们的日常生活，与我们祖先的生活如此不同。
2. N-COUNT An ancestor of something modern is an earlier thing from which it developed. 物种原型
The direct ancestor of the modern cat was the Kaffir cat of ancient Egypt. 现代猫的直系物种原型是古代埃及的卡菲尔猫。

Twelve thousand years ago, our ancestors were primitive savages living in caves .
Apparently his ancestors came over from France in the 11th century .
She claims that Mary Queen of Scots is one of her distant ancestors.
These bones come from an animal that is the ancestor of the modern horse .
Archaeology can tell us a lot about how our Iron-Age ancestors lived .