Genetic information from the bones of macaws found in abandoned pueblos suggests they were bred and distributed as a commodity. Christopher Intagliata reports.來自普韋布洛遺址的金剛鸚鵡骨骼遺傳信息表明,它們是作為商品養(yǎng)殖和傳播的。克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔報道。 撰文\播音:克里斯托弗·因塔利亞塔(Christopher Intagliata) 翻譯:張朵兒 審校:許楠 Abandoned pueblos are scattered throughout the southwestern U.S. And at many, archaeologists have uncovered a curious artifact: the skeletons of scarlet macaws. The birds' bright red feathers are known to have been an important status symbol, a signifier of prestige, for people throughout the American tropics and the southwest… both in the ancient world and today. 普韋布洛遺址散落在美國的西南部地區(qū)。在許多地方,考古學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種奇特的制品:猩紅色金剛鸚鵡的骨架。無論是古代還是今天,鳥類的鮮紅色羽毛都是整個美國熱帶地區(qū)和西南地區(qū)人們的重要地位象征,以及威望的象征...... But macaws are a tropical bird, whose range never extended north of today's U.S.-Mexico border. So how did the pueblo people obtain the birds? 但是金剛鸚鵡是一種熱帶鳥類,而且其活動范圍從未到達(dá)過現(xiàn)今美墨邊境的北部。那么普韋布洛人是如何獲得這些鳥類的呢? To examine the birds' origin, scientists sequenced mitochondrial DNA found within macaw bones from two sites in New Mexico: Chaco Canyon and the Mimbres region. Turns out, nearly three quarters of the birds had identical mitochondrial genome sequences—meaning the ancient birds came from the same maternal line. That suggests they were all the products of a breeding operation, perhaps in modern-day northern Mexico, rather than a random collection of wild-caught birds. 為了追蹤其起源,科學(xué)家們對新墨西哥州的Chaco?峽谷和Mimbres兩個地區(qū)發(fā)現(xiàn)的金剛鸚鵡骨骼進(jìn)行了線粒體DNA測序。結(jié)果顯示,其中近四分之三的鳥類具有相同的線粒體基因組序列——這意味著這些古老的鳥類來自同一個母系,同時也說明了它們都是養(yǎng)殖的產(chǎn)物,也許它們來自現(xiàn)今的墨西哥北部,但肯定不是隨機捕捉的野生鳥類。? "If it was just more random, you know, forgive the word, ‘plucking,’ random macaws from the environment, we would have expected to see a type of diversity that you'd see in the wild." “如果它只是更加隨機,不確切地形容——就像從自然界隨機'捕獲'的金剛鸚鵡,那么我們將會看到更多野生動物的多樣性。” Richard George, a PhD candidate in anthropology at Penn State. 賓夕法尼亞州人類學(xué)博士候選人理查德?喬治如是說。 "When we took our results and compared them to macaws distributed throughout the historic and modern ranges, the results were more analogous to other species of animals that were being bred, like turkeys or dogs or pigs." “當(dāng)我們把實驗結(jié)果與金剛鸚鵡在歷史和現(xiàn)代范圍內(nèi)的分布進(jìn)行比較時,會發(fā)現(xiàn)實驗結(jié)果更接近被養(yǎng)殖的物種,如火雞,狗或豬。” The details are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Richard J. George et al., Archaeogenomic evidence from the southwestern US points to a Pre-Hispanic scarlet macaw breeding colony] 詳情見《美國國家科學(xué)院院刊》。 The discovery adds an additional layer of complexity to our understanding of Southwestern and Mesoamerican cultures: they had the sophistication to breed and manage the distribution of these exotic birds. And it's an example, too, of how modern sequencing technology can unlock historical and cultural secrets, that sat waiting in these bones for more than 800 years. 這一發(fā)現(xiàn)為我們理解西南和中美洲文化增添了更多的復(fù)雜性:他們具有養(yǎng)殖和管理這些外來鳥類的能力。這也是現(xiàn)代基因測序技術(shù)如何解鎖歷史和文化秘密的一個案例,即使這些秘密已在骨骼中等待了800多年。