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音頻科普：史前女人的堅實臂膀
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音頻科普：史前女人的堅實臂膀
?For thousands of years, women in agricultural societies seem to have had arms stronger than members of modern rowing teams.數(shù)千年前，農(nóng)耕社會時期的女性似乎擁有比現(xiàn)在的賽艇選手更為強(qiáng)壯的手臂。
?
撰文\播音：卡倫·霍普金（Karen?Hopkin）
翻譯：張藝簫
審閱：潘磊
?
Picture a women’s crew team.Training 18 hours and covering 75 miles in an average week, these athletes are pretty ripped. Yet they don’t hold a bicep to prehistoric female farmers. Because a new study shows that, based on upper arm strength, the Neolithic ladies leave?modern women—even elite athletes—in the dust. The work appears in the journal?Science Advances. [Alison A. Macintosh, Ron Pinhasi and Jay T. Stock,Prehistoric women’s manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 5,500 years of farming in Central Europe]
想像一支女子賽艇隊伍。平均每周訓(xùn)練18個小時，訓(xùn)練里程75英里，這些專業(yè)運動員都非常強(qiáng)壯。但是她們也沒有古代的女農(nóng)民那樣的肱二頭肌。根據(jù)一項新的研究，就上臂力量而言，新石器時代的女性使現(xiàn)代女性甚至精英運動員難以望其項背。
The study’s researchers had previously examined the bones of prehistoric men. Because bones adapt to the load they bear, they can provide a record of the sort of activities in which an individual regularly engages. So, at the dawn of agriculture, men’s leg bones were strong, like today’s cross-country runners. But by the late Iron Age, their leg bones looked more like that of the average couch potato.
相關(guān)研究人員曾研究過古代男性的骨骼。因為骨骼結(jié)構(gòu)會發(fā)生變化來承受負(fù)擔(dān)，所以它們“記錄”下了一個人會周期性進(jìn)行的那類活動。所以，在農(nóng)耕文明初期，男人的腿骨就像今天的越野賽跑者一樣強(qiáng)壯。但到了后鐵器時代，他們的腿骨看起來和整天躺在沙發(fā)上看電視的現(xiàn)代人差不多。
“So this kind of matched with declines in mobility as people became more sedentary through time.”
這種退化在一定程度上和人們活動量的減少一致，因為慢慢地人們坐的時候越來越多。
Alison Macintosh, who did that work when she was an undergraduate student in archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Alison Macintosh在她還是劍橋大學(xué)考古學(xué)專業(yè)學(xué)生的時候已經(jīng)完成了這項研究。
“But we didn’t see these drops in women. Their leg bone strength was consistently lower than men’s, it didn’t change significantly through time. So really the women just looked quite sedentary pretty much right from the get-go. And we didn’t think that was very probably necessarily a very accurate representation of what they had been doing.”
“但是在女性中我們看不到這樣的退化。女性的骨骼力量一直弱于男人，這在長期演化中并沒有明顯改變。所以女性似乎從一開始活動量就比男性少得多。而我們不認(rèn)為那是一種有必要聯(lián)系起來的具體現(xiàn)象指向古代女性到底從事什么勞動。“
Now, it could be that prehistoric housewives sat around and lunched their way through the Neolithic. But Macintosh thought that unlikely. Instead, she and her colleagues figured that the bones of men and women react differently under pressure. So Macintosh, now a postdoctoral fellow with the same group, decided to look at the limbs of some ladies.
可能在新石器時代，那些史前主婦們圍坐在一起，用她們的方式享用午餐。但是Macintosh認(rèn)為這不可能。相對的，她和她的同事們認(rèn)為男性和女性的骨骼對壓力的響應(yīng)不同。所以，Macintosh（現(xiàn)在是同團(tuán)隊中的博士后），決定去考察一些女性的四肢情況。
She recruited 18 championship rowers, 11 soccer players, 17 runners and 37 somewhat less sporty undergrads. And she scanned their upper arms and lower legs. What she found is that the leg bone strength of prehistoric women was as variable as that of her living subjects, running the gamut from those who run marathons to those who engage in marathon study sessions. But the arms were a different story.
她招募了18名冠軍賽艇選手，11名足球運動員，17名賽跑選手和37名相對鍛煉少的在校學(xué)生做志愿者。通過掃描她們的上臂和下腿組織，她發(fā)現(xiàn)史前女人的腿骨力量和這些志愿者的一樣呈現(xiàn)分布，覆蓋了從馬拉松選手到馬拉松初學(xué)者整個范圍。但是手臂力量就是另一回事了。
“We found that prehistoric women had stronger arm bones on average than most living women. That was pretty consistent through the first 5,500 years of farming or so. So this was even stronger than the arm bones of the rowers. So for example women in the earliest time period that we looked at, which is the early Neolithic period about 7,000 years ago, they had arm bones that were 30 percent stronger than nonathletes today, so just recreationally active women in Cambridge. And they’re about 16 percent stronger bones than those of the living rowers.”
“我們發(fā)現(xiàn)史前女性的手臂總的來說比大多數(shù)現(xiàn)代女性要強(qiáng)壯。在農(nóng)耕開始的五千五百年里，這一點是相當(dāng)一致的。史前女性的手臂骨骼甚至比賽艇選手的更加強(qiáng)健。比如，我們所考察的最早（大約7000年前，新石器時代早期）的女性樣本，她們的手臂骨骼比現(xiàn)今的非運動員（比如劍橋大學(xué)里游憩活動的女性）強(qiáng)30％，比現(xiàn)代的女子艦艇手強(qiáng)約16％。“
That power most likely came from tilling the soil, harvesting crops, and spending hours a day milling grain to make flour with a stone-age mortar and pestle. The findings shed light on the daily duties of our female ancestors—manual labor that was a total grind.
這種力量很可能來源于耕作土壤，收割莊稼，每天大量時間用在推石墨、搗杵碾碎谷物生產(chǎn)面粉的勞作。這項研究結(jié)果揭示了我們女性祖先的日常事務(wù)——繁重的體力勞動。
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?For thousands of years, women in agricultural societies seem to have had arms stronger than members of modern rowing teams.數(shù)千年前，農(nóng)耕社會時期的女性似乎擁有比現(xiàn)在的賽艇選手更為強(qiáng)壯的手臂。
?
撰文\播音：卡倫·霍普金（Karen?Hopkin）
翻譯：張藝簫
審閱：潘磊
?
Picture a women’s crew team.Training 18 hours and covering 75 miles in an average week, these athletes are pretty ripped. Yet they don’t hold a bicep to prehistoric female farmers. Because a new study shows that, based on upper arm strength, the Neolithic ladies leave?modern women—even elite athletes—in the dust. The work appears in the journal?Science Advances. [Alison A. Macintosh, Ron Pinhasi and Jay T. Stock,Prehistoric women’s manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 5,500 years of farming in Central Europe]
想像一支女子賽艇隊伍。平均每周訓(xùn)練18個小時，訓(xùn)練里程75英里，這些專業(yè)運動員都非常強(qiáng)壯。但是她們也沒有古代的女農(nóng)民那樣的肱二頭肌。根據(jù)一項新的研究，就上臂力量而言，新石器時代的女性使現(xiàn)代女性甚至精英運動員難以望其項背。
The study’s researchers had previously examined the bones of prehistoric men. Because bones adapt to the load they bear, they can provide a record of the sort of activities in which an individual regularly engages. So, at the dawn of agriculture, men’s leg bones were strong, like today’s cross-country runners. But by the late Iron Age, their leg bones looked more like that of the average couch potato.
相關(guān)研究人員曾研究過古代男性的骨骼。因為骨骼結(jié)構(gòu)會發(fā)生變化來承受負(fù)擔(dān)，所以它們“記錄”下了一個人會周期性進(jìn)行的那類活動。所以，在農(nóng)耕文明初期，男人的腿骨就像今天的越野賽跑者一樣強(qiáng)壯。但到了后鐵器時代，他們的腿骨看起來和整天躺在沙發(fā)上看電視的現(xiàn)代人差不多。
“So this kind of matched with declines in mobility as people became more sedentary through time.”
這種退化在一定程度上和人們活動量的減少一致，因為慢慢地人們坐的時候越來越多。
Alison Macintosh, who did that work when she was an undergraduate student in archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Alison Macintosh在她還是劍橋大學(xué)考古學(xué)專業(yè)學(xué)生的時候已經(jīng)完成了這項研究。
“But we didn’t see these drops in women. Their leg bone strength was consistently lower than men’s, it didn’t change significantly through time. So really the women just looked quite sedentary pretty much right from the get-go. And we didn’t think that was very probably necessarily a very accurate representation of what they had been doing.”
“但是在女性中我們看不到這樣的退化。女性的骨骼力量一直弱于男人，這在長期演化中并沒有明顯改變。所以女性似乎從一開始活動量就比男性少得多。而我們不認(rèn)為那是一種有必要聯(lián)系起來的具體現(xiàn)象指向古代女性到底從事什么勞動。“
Now, it could be that prehistoric housewives sat around and lunched their way through the Neolithic. But Macintosh thought that unlikely. Instead, she and her colleagues figured that the bones of men and women react differently under pressure. So Macintosh, now a postdoctoral fellow with the same group, decided to look at the limbs of some ladies.
可能在新石器時代，那些史前主婦們圍坐在一起，用她們的方式享用午餐。但是Macintosh認(rèn)為這不可能。相對的，她和她的同事們認(rèn)為男性和女性的骨骼對壓力的響應(yīng)不同。所以，Macintosh（現(xiàn)在是同團(tuán)隊中的博士后），決定去考察一些女性的四肢情況。
She recruited 18 championship rowers, 11 soccer players, 17 runners and 37 somewhat less sporty undergrads. And she scanned their upper arms and lower legs. What she found is that the leg bone strength of prehistoric women was as variable as that of her living subjects, running the gamut from those who run marathons to those who engage in marathon study sessions. But the arms were a different story.
她招募了18名冠軍賽艇選手，11名足球運動員，17名賽跑選手和37名相對鍛煉少的在校學(xué)生做志愿者。通過掃描她們的上臂和下腿組織，她發(fā)現(xiàn)史前女人的腿骨力量和這些志愿者的一樣呈現(xiàn)分布，覆蓋了從馬拉松選手到馬拉松初學(xué)者整個范圍。但是手臂力量就是另一回事了。
“We found that prehistoric women had stronger arm bones on average than most living women. That was pretty consistent through the first 5,500 years of farming or so. So this was even stronger than the arm bones of the rowers. So for example women in the earliest time period that we looked at, which is the early Neolithic period about 7,000 years ago, they had arm bones that were 30 percent stronger than nonathletes today, so just recreationally active women in Cambridge. And they’re about 16 percent stronger bones than those of the living rowers.”
“我們發(fā)現(xiàn)史前女性的手臂總的來說比大多數(shù)現(xiàn)代女性要強(qiáng)壯。在農(nóng)耕開始的五千五百年里，這一點是相當(dāng)一致的。史前女性的手臂骨骼甚至比賽艇選手的更加強(qiáng)健。比如，我們所考察的最早（大約7000年前，新石器時代早期）的女性樣本，她們的手臂骨骼比現(xiàn)今的非運動員（比如劍橋大學(xué)里游憩活動的女性）強(qiáng)30％，比現(xiàn)代的女子艦艇手強(qiáng)約16％。“
That power most likely came from tilling the soil, harvesting crops, and spending hours a day milling grain to make flour with a stone-age mortar and pestle. The findings shed light on the daily duties of our female ancestors—manual labor that was a total grind.
這種力量很可能來源于耕作土壤，收割莊稼，每天大量時間用在推石墨、搗杵碾碎谷物生產(chǎn)面粉的勞作。這項研究結(jié)果揭示了我們女性祖先的日常事務(wù)——繁重的體力勞動。
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回復(fù)【博物學(xué)院】，了解更多博物學(xué)院活動詳情
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