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Human Remains Double Known Rainforest Occupation Time
【科学60秒】人类开发森林的时间又提前了
People have been living near rainforests for tens of thousands of years, but most available evidence has intense use of forest resources starting just 10,000 years ago. So scientists thought that the dense, tropical forests were so hard to navigate and find food in that humans would have mainly depended on open plains nearby.
人类已经居住在雨林附近几百上千万年了,但是大多的证据都显示在1万年前人们才开始利用森林资源.因此科学家们过去一直认为是茂密的热带林木太容易使进入的人类迷路和找寻食物资源,所以人类也只能在附近的平原上开垦一下了.
But some researchers had doubts. Modern forest foragers do just fine in the rainforest. And some evidence in Africa pointed to humans in rainforests well before the 10,000 year mark.
然而还是有些研究人员们对此表示疑问.现代社会以林为生的人们在雨林里的谋生活动进行的也不错,有些来自于非洲地区的证据还显示人类在1万年后才进行雨林开发活动的.
Now there’s hard evidence, out of Sri Lanka, that people roamed and dined on rainforest offerings at least 10,000 years earlier than we’d thought. The finding is in the journal Science. [Patrick Roberts et al, Direct evidence for human reliance on rainforest resources in late Pleistocene Sri Lanka]
如今,又出现了一个强有力的证据,来自于斯里兰卡,那里的人们在雨林里活动并以此为生大概也至少有1万年以上了,比我们预想的要更久些.该研究已发表在《科学》杂志上.
Researchers measured carbon and oxygen isotopes in the remains of 26 humans found in the Sri Lankan rainforest. The bodies were some 20,000 years old.
研究人员们测算了斯里兰卡雨林中发现的26具人类遗体里面碳和氧的同位素含量。结果显示这些尸体已经存在大约2万年了。
Isotope signatures differ for plants that live beneath the closed rainforest canopy than for plants from the open plains. Any animals that eat those plants then also carry those forest isotopes—as did the remains, showing that these humans subsisted on tropical forest vegetation.
在热带雨林覆盖下的植物中的同位素标识与生长在开放的平原上的植物中的不同。任何使用过这些植物的动物随后也就携带了不同种类的森林同位素标签——就像从上述发现的遗骸中检测到的那样，可以显示出这些人类曾食用过热带森林中的植物作物。
The findings show that humans have been taking advantage of rainforests for at least 20 millennia. Whether our accelerated resource extraction will allow any substantial rainforests to exist even one thousand years from now is a very open question.
该研究的结果显示人类在至少2万年左右就开始有目的的开发利用雨林资源了。是否因我们这些从近一千年前至今的以来的现代人过度开发林木资源才导致了雨林可持续发展出现问题现在还真不好说了呢。
—Cynthia Graber
