By sequencing DNA in Neandertal dental plaque, scientists were able to find out about their diets-and their good relations with modern humans. Christopher Intagliata reports.

通过对尼安德特人牙菌斑进行DNA测序，科学家们能够推测出他们的饮食习惯，以及和现代人之间良好的关系。克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔报道。

撰文/播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)

翻译：郭鑫鹏

审校：杨枭

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?

原始人的饮食习惯可是相当时髦的。穴居人的饮食没有乳制品、谷物、糖类这些。但是在原始人食谱中，你现在找不到的是什么呢？

“Pine nuts and moss 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、树皮以及蘑菇。”澳大利亚阿德莱德大学古微生物学家劳拉·韦里奇（Laura Weyrich）说。“我们把这些称作真正原始人饮食。这基本上是你不吃肉类时在森林里能够找到的东西。”

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

韦里奇和她的同事们清洁了在比利时和西班牙发现的尼安德特人的牙齿。他们找到了一些古牙菌斑，然后对其进行DNA测序，来看看它是否与现在某些已知序列吻合。

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

他们发现，北部尼安德特人吃着富含肉类的饮食：包括披毛犀和野山羊。而他们南部同伴却吃着森林蔬菜食物：蘑菇、坚果和苔藓。在一个西班牙样本中还出现了一种类似于阿司匹林的树提取物止痛药，该样本还可能含具有自我治疗作用的抗菌素青霉菌。

And the Neandertals’ mouth microbiome, on average, resembled that of chimps 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. [Laura S. Weyrich et al., Neanderthal behavior, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus]

总体来讲，尼安德特人的口腔微生物群落比起现代人更像黑猩猩。“他们口腔中有一套更健康的细菌配置而没有那些引起蛀牙和牙周病的细菌。他们真的很健康。”她还表示，他们的牙齿相当地白。这项研究发表在期刊《自然》上。

Perhaps the most intriguing finding though, might be that humans and Neandertals appeared to swap 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，人类和尼安德特人似乎会及时清除口腔细菌……韦里奇认为这不是通过暴力手段，而是通过亲吻和分享食物。

“I think this paper in general just really suggests that Neandertals weren’t like this caveman brute 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.”

“我认为这篇论文指出尼安德特人并不会像野蛮人一样发出粗鲁的声音，像他们曾经被描述的那样。他们拥有关于药品的知识，了解环境，知道他们能吃什么，并且与其他物种友好往来。所以这是关于尼安德特人一幅不同的图景。”

-Christopher Intagliata