America’s first fisherman bagged Alaskan salmon 11,500 years ago
11500年前，阿拉斯加渔民的鲑鱼
If you think most fish stinks after 3 days, try 11,500 years: That’s the age of salmon bones that archaeologists have uncovered at the Upward Sun River site, one of Alaska’s oldest human settlements.
如果你觉得大部分鱼放三天就会发臭，试试放11500年，考古学家在在向阳河遗址中发掘出的鲑鱼骨头就有这么古老，那里是阿拉斯加最早的人类聚居点之一。
They say the cooked bones provide the first clear evidence of salmon fishing among the earliest Americans, Paleoindians, who crossed from Siberia into Alaska over the Bering Land Bridge more than 13,000 years ago.
他们说，这些经过烹制的骨头首次明确证实了早期美洲人的鲑鱼捕捞活动；这些古印第安人于13000多年前跨过白令陆桥，由西伯利亚进入阿拉斯加。
The finding, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps debunk the idea that America’s first fishermen relied primarily on big game for food. It also explains how they managed to survive in an ice age Arctic environment and adapt to life on a new continent.
这一发现已于今日【译注：9月21日】在线发表于《美国国家科学院院刊》，有助于驳倒认为美洲最早的渔民主要以大型猎物为捕食对象的观点。它也解释了这些人如何在冰河时期的北极世界中维持生存，并使自己适应一个全新大陆上的生活。
These days, salmon is a staple for native Alaskans, but evidence for the origins of salmon fishing has been hard to come by. Wood and rope fishing tools decompose quickly, as do salmon bones. And until recently, most researchers hadn’t been doing the kind of careful excavation necessary for discovering fragile fish skeletons.
目前，鲑鱼是阿拉斯加原住民的一种主食，不过有关鲑鱼捕捞起源的证据一直难以找到。木与绳制成的捕捞工具极易腐化，鲑鱼骨也是如此。并且，要发现易于破碎的鱼类骨骸，必须进行小心细致的发掘，而直至近期，大多数研究者都不曾做过此类发掘。
But building on recent work that suggests big-game hunting was just one part of a “broad-spectrum” strategy among America’s first people, researchers have begun searching for other remains. These include creatures like migratory waterfowl, small mammals, and salmon that would have been part of a more seasonally based diet.
但近期的研究提出，捕杀大型猎物可能只是早期美洲人“宽谱”策略【编注：指将较多种类的食物来源纳入食谱的取食策略，生物学的最优取食理论以一组条件因子来解释或推测动物在特定约束条件下如何选择最优食谱宽度，参见wikipadia词条：optimal foraging theory。】的一部分，有鉴于此，研究者近来已开始搜寻其它残骸。其中包括迁徙性的水禽，小型哺乳动物及鲑鱼等生物，它们都可能构成一个更为季节性的食谱的一部分。
Archaeological sites across the Bering Strait region—including Siberia—support this idea, says John Hoffecker, a University of Colorado, Boulder, archaeologist who specializes in the region.
科罗拉多大学波德分校专门研究这一区域的考古学家John Hoffecker说，遍及白令海峡地区——包括西伯利亚——的考古遗址为上述看法提供了依据。
But finding ancient salmon leftovers has been a challenge. “It’s difficult to capture ancient fishing because of the nature of fish bones—they’re small, fragile bones,” says Carrin Halffman, a biological anthropologist at the University of Alaska (UA), Fairbanks, and the lead author of the new study. And if archaeologists do turn up any fishy remains, she says, it’s hard to know just what kind of fish it was.
不过，寻找古代鲑鱼残留物一直是个挑战。“古代渔猎活动的发现之难源于鱼骨的特性——这种骨头小而脆”，阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校的生物人类学家Carrin Halffman如是说，她是上述研究的发起人。她还说，即便考古学家确实发现了一丁点鱼类残骸，也很难知道那到底是何种鱼类。
As the team tried to find out how the people at Upward Sun River used the resources of the nearby Tanana River, they carefully excavated parts of the site, sifting soil through fine-meshed screens. In the same fire pit where they found the buried remains of two infants, they discovered the salmon bones.
在尝试查明向阳河的人们如何利用附近的塔纳纳河资源时，这个团队小心地发掘了这一遗址的部分区域，用网眼细小的筛子翻检泥巴。在同一个火坑中，他们找到了两具婴儿遗骨，还发现了这些鲑鱼骨头。
Analyzing DNA in a piece of uncooked fish bone, Halffman and her team found that it was chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta), a hefty fish that weighs 5 to 10 kilograms and grows roughly 60 centimeters long. Thousands of chum salmon still swim up the Tanana River every summer to spawn, and the run remains a central cultural event for the indigenous Athabascan people who live there today.
通过对一份未经烹制的鱼骨进行DNA分析，Halffman及其团队发现它是大马哈鱼（学名Oncorhynchus keta），这是一种重达5-10公斤、长约60公分的大型鱼类。直至今日，每年夏天仍有成千上万大马哈鱼沿塔纳纳河溯游产卵，而且这种洄游至今仍是当地原住民阿萨巴斯卡人的一项核心文化活动。
But could the find be evidence for the beginnings of this annual ritual? It was possible that the salmon were not part of the annual saltwater-to-freshwater migration, but instead were freshwater fish that lived in the river their entire lives. To find out, Halffman analyzed carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the fish bones. Because different versions of the two elements—both with different weights—are found in varying concentrations in seawater and fresh water, that compositions is reflected in the fish bones.
但这一发现是否就是这种年度仪式的起源证据呢？另有一种可能性存在：鲑鱼过去并非每年定期从咸水洄游到淡水，而是终生存活于河流中的淡水鱼。为了查明这一点，Halffman分析了鱼骨中的碳、氮同位素。因为这两种元素的不同同位素——其重量各不相同——在海水和淡水中分别有着不同的富集度，而这一成分差异会体现在鱼骨中。
The bones that Halffman analyzed had higher ratios of heavier carbon and nitrogen isotopes, meaning the fish had lived in the ocean and must have been caught during a spawning run. “What we’re looking at is probably the beginnings of the utilization of salmon,” says Ben Potter, an archaeologist at UA Fairbanks, and a co-author of the study.
在Halffman所分析的鱼骨中，较重的碳、氮同位素占比更大，这意味着这些鱼曾经生活于海洋，必定是在产卵洄游时被人捕捞的。阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校的考古学家、本研究的共同作者Ben Potter说：“我们看到的可能是鲑鱼被人利用的开端。”
The discovery boosts the view of Paleoindians as generalists who ate a variety of foods, Hoffecker says. “I don’t think it was possible for people to occupy these environments without this broad-based diet and without this kind of high-tech economy,” he says.
Hoffecker说，这一发现为古印第安人是饮食种类繁多的多面手这一观点提供了支撑。“如果没有这种宽泛的食谱，没有这种高技术的经济，我不认为这些人有可能占领这样的自然环境”。
Herb Maschner, an Arctic archaeologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, agrees and says the careful excavation methods and analysis serve as a good example of what archaeologists need to do to answer questions about ancient people living in central Alaska where the conditions for preserving bones and artifacts are “notoriously” bad.
坦帕市南佛罗里达大学的北极考古学家Herb Maschner对此表示赞同并说，骨头和人工制品在阿拉斯加中部地区的保存环境之恶劣“臭名昭著”，为了回答与生活于此地的古代人有关的问题，考古学家要怎么做？这种细心的发掘方法和分析为此树立了一个良好典范。
Potter and the other researchers are already busy answering other questions. Eventually, they say, the abundance of salmon and the ability to store fish allowed the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest to settle in large permanent villages, a lifestyle that typically requires agriculture.
Potter及其他研究者已经开始忙于回答其它问题。他们说，鲑鱼数量之丰富以及储存鱼类的能力，最终让太平洋西北地区的原住民得以定居于大型永久性村落，而这种生活方式通常要求农业的出现。
The team suspects that salmon fishing became more important over time as big game became scarcer in central Alaska, an idea they hope to test with further excavations. For now, little is known about salmon fishing in the period between 11,500 and 1000 years ago, but Upward Sun River gives the research team a start. Potter says: “You need that beginning to see how the end came about.”
该团队推测，随着阿拉斯加中部地区大型猎物日益稀少，鲑鱼捕捞的重要性可能也日益增加，团队并希望能通过进一步的发掘来验证这一想法。目前而言，人们对于从11500年前到1000年前这一时期的鲑鱼捕捞活动所知甚少，但向阳河给了这个研究团队一个起点。Potter说：“欲知晓终点如何而来，你需要这个开端。”
翻译：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
校对：龟海海
编辑：辉格@whigzhou