魚曾經是撒哈拉沙漠人們的主食

魚曾經是撒哈拉沙漠人們的主食

Fish might not be top of the menu in the Sahara Desert today, but that’s exactly what its inhabitants were dining on over 10,000 years ago.

在今天的撒哈拉沙漠，魚可能不是菜單上的首選，但在一萬多年前，這里的居民正是以魚為食。

Archaeologists from the Natural History Museum of Belgium and the Sapienza University of Rome have discovered nearly 18,000 animal bones in a rock shelter known as Takarkori in southwestern Libya. Up to 80 percent of these bones belong to fish, including species like catfish and tilapia, while around 19 percent were mammals, including Barbary sheep, Dorcas gazelle, and rock dassies. The remaining 1.3 percent was made up of bird, reptile, mollusk, and amphibian remains.

比利時自然歷史博物館和羅馬大學的考古學家在利比亞西南部一個名為Takarkori的巖石避難所發(fā)現了近1.8萬具動物骨骼。這些骨頭中多達80%屬于魚類，包括鯰魚和羅非魚，而大約19%屬于哺乳動物，包括巴巴里羊、多卡斯瞪羚和巖羚羊。剩下的1.3%是鳥類、爬行動物、軟體動物和兩棲動物的遺骸。

Tom Hale

This certainly wasn’t a prehistoric zoo or aquarium either. On many of the skeletal remains, the archaeologists discovered the presence of cut marks and burns, showing the animals had been butchered and cooked.

這當然也不是史前的動物園或水族館。在許多遺骸上，考古學家發(fā)現了切割痕跡和燒傷，表明這些動物是被宰殺和烹飪的。

Reported in the journal PLOS ONE, the bones were dated at between 4,650 to 10,200 years old, placing them in an era known as the early Holocene. Around this time, the Sahara was a very different place. Far from being a desert, this strip of North Africa was lusciously green and alive, covered in lakes and plant life. It only started to become a desert environment around 8,000 years ago due to a combination of human activity and wider environmental factors.

據《公共科學圖書館·綜合》雜志報道，這些骨頭的年代在4650年到10200年之間，屬于全新世早期。大約在這個時候，撒哈拉是一個非常不同的地方。北非的這片土地遠非沙漠，而是一片郁郁蔥蔥的綠色，生機勃勃，到處是湖泊和植物。大約8000年前，由于人類活動和更廣泛的環(huán)境因素，它才開始變成沙漠環(huán)境。

So, given this knowledge, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Sahara’s inhabitants ate a lot of fish. Interestingly, the new research also shows that the amount of fishbone appeared to decline over time. Between 8,000 to 10,200 years ago, fish made up over 90 percent of the bones found at Takarkori, while only accounting for 40 percent of all remains traced to 4,650 to 5,900 years ago.

所以，有了這些知識，撒哈拉居民吃魚就不足為奇了。有趣的是，新的研究還表明，魚骨的數量似乎隨著時間的推移而減少。在距今8000年至10200年前，Takarkori發(fā)現的骨頭中90%是魚，而在距今4650年至5900年前的化石中，魚只占40%。

Clearly, there was a gradual diet change from fish to livestock. While it’s not totally clear what prompted the diet change, the researchers strongly suspect that it’s associated with the Sahara turning from a luscious land of lakes to an arid bone-dry desert.

很明顯，從魚到牲畜的飲食逐漸發(fā)生了變化。雖然還不完全清楚是什么導致了飲食的改變，但研究人員強烈懷疑這與撒哈拉沙漠從一個美麗的湖泊變成干旱的沙漠有關。

“The amount of fish is decreasing through time and the contribution of mammals increases, showing that people at Takarkori focussed gradually more on hunting and livestock keeping. It is unclear if this was an intentional process or if this shift could be related to increasing aridity, which made the environment less favorable for fishes,” the researchers write in their paper.

“隨著時間的推移，魚的數量在減少，而哺乳動物的貢獻在增加，這表明高麗的人們越來越重視狩獵和飼養(yǎng)牲畜。”目前還不清楚這是一個有意的過程，還是這種變化可能與日益增加的干旱有關，干旱使環(huán)境對魚類不利，”研究人員在他們的論文中寫道。

Fish was often the go-to meal for prehistoric humans. Another study published this month studied the fish-heavy diet of people living in northern Norway during the Stone Age and found it was riddled with dangerous levels of toxic metals.

魚通常是史前人類的主食。本月發(fā)表的另一項研究，研究了石器時代挪威北部居民以魚類為主的飲食，發(fā)現那里的有毒金屬含量達到了危險水平。