Iceman Otzi Died with a Bellyache

冰人奥兹死于腹痛

Researchers were able to determine the genome of stomach bacteria that infected the famous Iceman at the time of his death, in the process giving us clues about ancient human migrations.

研究人员分析了在冰人死前所感染的肠胃病毒，分析结果揭示了古人类迁移的线索。

撰文/播音 辛西娅·格雷伯（Cynthia Graber）

翻译 Meatle

审校 李轩

Otzi—or as he's also known, the Iceman—was discovered frozen in the Alps in 1991 by two German tourists. The 5,300-year-old body has been analyzed in various ways and been the subject of numerous scientific publications. And now it's been looked at again. Because scientists realized that the contents of the Iceman’s stomach were still intact. Which gave them the chance to look for evidence of the common stomach bacteria Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori. What they found tells us more about Otzi—and more about how Otzi's ancestors came to Europe. The study is in the journal Science. [Frank Maixner et al, The 5,300-year-oldHelicobacter pylori genome of the Iceman]

奥兹，或称冰人，于1991年被两名德国的游客发现冰封于阿尔卑斯山脉。这具存在了5300年尸体被用于各种各样的分析，作为无数学术论文的研究对象。现在，它再次获得了关注。研究人员发现冰人肠胃的被完整地保存了下来，这使到他们有机会从一种常见的肠胃细菌，幽门螺旋杆菌（Helicobacter pylori, H. pylori）寻找信息。他们的发现揭示了更多与奥兹以及他的祖先如何迁移到欧洲的线索。该研究发表在《科学》杂志上。

The researchers were able to extract genes from H. pylori in the stomach to produce the oldest known genome sequence of a pathogen. The Iceman seems to have been infected with a virulent strain. So in his last days on Earth, Otzi probably had one bad bellyache.

研究人员能够从奥兹的肠胃中提取到幽门螺旋杆菌的基因，这是人类现今所提取到的最为古老的一条病原体基因序列。冰人貌似感染了致命的细菌。因此在他最后的日子里，奥兹可能受到腹痛困扰。

“The strain had already reacted with the Iceman's immune system. This we could show. So we showed the presence of marker proteins which we see today in patients infected with Helicobacter.” The University of Vienna's Frank Maixner.

“这些菌株已经与冰人的免疫系统相互作用。我们能够展现这种相互作用，因为我们发现了从现今感染螺旋菌的病人体内可提取到的标志蛋白。”维亚纳大学的弗兰克·麦克斯纳（Frank Maixner）说。

It's estimated that more than half the world's human population harbors various strains of the ulcer-causing bacteria. And different strains are associated with different places on the globe.

据估计，半数的人类都携带这类能导致肠胃溃疡的细菌。这些菌株因地理位置的不同而略有差异。

"We use then Helicobacter as a surrogate for what humans were doing at various stages of our prehistory." Yoshan Moodley from South Africa's University of Venda.

“我们以螺旋菌为入口，去了解史前不同的时期，人类都在干什么。”南非文达大学的卓山·莫利（Yoshan Moodley）说。

Europeans today mostly harbor H. pylori that's a mix of Indian and North African strains. But Otzi's bacteria matched only the Indian variant.

现今欧洲广泛存在的幽门螺旋菌是印度与北非菌株的杂交体。然而，奥兹体内发现的菌株是印度种。

"This one genome has put things into wonderful perspective for us, answered this question that we've been trying to answer for years. We can say now that the waves of migration that brought these African Helicobacter pylori into Europe had not occurred or at least not occurred in earnest by the time the Ice Man was around."

“对于我们来说，这一条基因信息让我们有了一个绝妙的想法，可以解答我们多年来渴望解答的问题。我们现在有理由认为，给欧洲带来非洲幽门螺旋菌的人口大迁徙，至少在奥兹还活着的那时候还没有发生。”

That finding does not mean that North Africans themselves migrated into Europe after the time of the Iceman. The new strain may have evolved in the Middle East and then been introduced by later waves of farmers migrating out of the Fertile Crescent. More clues into human migration from H. pylori genes may be forthcoming. Just as soon as we find more perfectly preserved stomachs in long-frozen bodies.

这项发现并不意味着北非移民在冰人生后才移居欧洲。这些菌株可能在中东地区经历了长期的演化，之后随着来自新月沃土的农民进入欧洲。从幽门螺旋菌中，我们或许可以得到更多有关人类迁移的信息，我们需要做的仅仅是尽快发现更多长期冰封的尸体中完好保存的肠胃样本。