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Teeth Hint at a Friendlier Neandertal 牙齿的秘密

The paleo diet—it's pretty trendy. Eat like a caveman, no dairy, grains, sugar and so on. But what you probably won't find on many paleo plates today?

旧石器时代的饮食非常的时髦。吃的就像穴居人，没有乳制品，谷物和糖等等。但是，你可能不会在今天的盘子上找到哪些食物呢?

"Pine nuts and moss¹ and tree bark and mushrooms." Laura Weyrich, a paleomicrobiologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia. "What we would like to call the true paleo diet. It's basically what you could find in a forest if you're not eating meat."

“松子、苔藓、树皮还有蘑菇。”劳拉·温里什(Laura Weyrich)是澳大利亚阿德莱德大学的研究古代的微生物学家。“我们希望将这些食物叫做史前饮食。如果你不吃肉的话，那么这些食物基本上可以从森林里找到。”

Weyrich and her colleagues cleaned the teeth of Neandertals found in Belgium and Spain. They popped off bits of ancient dental plaque², then sequenced the DNA³ contained within, to see if it matched up to any known sequences today.

温里什和自己的同事清理了在比利时和西班牙找到的尼安德特人的牙齿。他们收集了一些古老的牙菌斑，然后对其中包含的DNA序列进行排序，以验证是否和现在已知的DNA序列匹配。

What they found suggests that the northern Neandertals ate a meat-heavy diet: including woolly rhino⁴ and wild sheep. Whereas their southern counterparts ate that forest-foraged vegetarian⁵ fare: mushrooms, nuts and moss. One of the Spanish specimens⁶ also appeared to have taken a tree-derived painkiller⁷, related to aspirin—and might have self-medicated with antibiotic⁸ penicillium bacteria, too.

他们发现，北部的尼安德特人吃大量的肉食，其中包括长毛犀和野羊。而南部的伙伴则吃森林中的一些素食:蘑菇、坚果和苔藓。而在西班牙取得的样本中似乎还含有了从树中提取的止痛药，这种止痛药和阿司匹林有关——和有抗生素性质的特异细菌具有自愈作用。

And the Neandertals' mouth microbiome, on average, resembled that of chimps⁹ more than modern humans. "They have a much healthier set of bacteria in their mouths as well. They don't have the right bacteria in the right proportions to chew holes in their teeth and cause periodontal disease. They really were very healthy." Their teeth, she says, are even sparkly white. The study is in the journal Nature.

与现代人类相比，尼安德特人的口腔微生物与黑猩猩的相似度更高。他们的口中存在更为健康的细菌组。在牙齿咀嚼洞中合适细菌的比例不足，导致牙周疾病。实际上，尼安德特人非常的健康。他们的牙齿，温里什表示，可是是耀眼的白哦。该研究结果发表在《自然》杂志上。

Perhaps the most intriguing¹⁰ finding though, might be that humans and Neandertals appeared to swap¹¹ mouth microbes at one point in time…something that Weyrich says probably happened not through violent interactions, but when kissing or sharing food.

可能最有趣的发现是，在某个时间节点，人类和尼安德特人似乎交换了口腔中的微生物……温里什比表示，可能不是通过暴力相向，而是在接吻或者分享食物的过程中引发了上述现象。

"I think this paper in general just really suggests that Neandertals weren't like this caveman brute¹² grunting-type animal they're often described as. They had knowledge about medicines, they had knowledge about their environments, about what they could eat, and they were having friendly interactions with other species. So it's a very different picture of Neandertals."

“我认为，这篇论文可以表明，尼安德特人并不像之前描述的那样和穴居人一样野蛮。”他们了解药品、周围的环境，也了解自己的食物，同时和其他的物种进行友好互动。所以，尼安德特人呈现的是一个完全不同的画面。