万物简史第644期:永不安分的类人猿(16)（打印版）

But all of this overlooked the more or less infinite capacity for surprise offered by the ancient Mungo people of western New South Wales.

但是，在发生这一切的过程中，人们没有想到新南威尔士州西部的古蒙戈人在某种程度上具有提供大家意想不到的信息的无限本事。

In early 2001, Thorne and his colleagues at the Australian National University reported that

2001年初，澳大利亚国立大学的桑恩和他的同事们宣布，

they had recovered DNA from the oldest of the Mungo specimens—now dated at 62,000 years

他们从一个最古老的蒙戈人标本——生活于62000年前——中提取了DNA，

and that this DNA proved to be "genetically distinct."

研究表明，这种DNA“有着与众不同的基因特点”。

The Mungo Man, according to these findings, was anatomically modern—just like you and me—but carried an extinct genetic lineage.

根据这些发现，蒙戈人在解剖结构上是现代人——就像你和我，却具有一种已经灭绝了的基因系列。

His mitochondrial DNA is no longer found in living humans, as it should be if, like all other modern people,

他的线粒体DNA在活着的人身上再也找不到，而要是他像所有别的现代人

he was descended from people who left Africa in the recent past.

那样是在不太遥远的过去离开非洲的人类的后裔，那是应该找得到的。

"It turned everything upside down again," says Thorne with undisguised delight.

“这再一次使一切都颠倒过来。”桑恩显然很开心。

Then other even more curious anomalies began to turn up.

接着，别的更古怪的异常情况出现了。

Rosalind Harding, a population geneticist at the Institute of Biological Anthropology in Oxford, while studying betaglobin genes in modern people,

牛津大学生物人类学研究所的人类遗传学家罗莎琳德.哈丁在研究现代人类球蛋白基因时发现了两个变异体，

found two variants that are common among Asians and the indigenous people of Australia,

这种变异体在亚洲人和澳大利亚土著人身上很常见，

but hardly exist in Africa.

而在非洲人身上却几乎不存在。

The variant genes, she is certain, arose more than 200,000 years ago not in Africa,

她确信这种不同的基因产生于20万年前，但不是出现在非洲

but in east Asia—long before modern Homo sapiens reached the region.

而是在东亚——远在现代智人到达这一地区之前。

The only way to account for them is to say that ancestors of people now living in Asia included archaic hominids—Java Man and the like.

对此所能作出的惟一合理的解释是，现在的亚洲人的祖先中包括古代人科动物——爪畦人等。

Interestingly, this same variant gene—the Java Man gene, so to speak—turns up in modern populations in Oxfordshire.

有趣的是，同样的变异基因——姑且说成是爪哇人基因——出现在了牛津郡的现代人中。

Confused, I went to see Harding at the institute,

我感到有些困惑，因此我去研究所拜见了哈丁女士。

which inhabits an old brick villa on Banbury Road in Oxford, in more or less the neighborhood where Bill Clinton spent his student days.

研究所设在牛津班伯里德路一所古老的砖型别墅里。