考古发现最早关于人类着装的指向性证据

据美国有线电视新闻网报道，考古学家近日在摩洛哥的一个洞穴中发现了62件用于处理和打磨动物皮革的骨器，这可能是考古发现中最早关于人类着装的指向性证据之一。这些工具距今有9万至12万年的历史。

 

In popular culture, cave men (and women) are often draped in furs, but archaeological evidence of what our Stone Age ancestors actually wore and how they made clothes is thin.

在现代人的认知里，穴居人通常披着毛皮，但石器时代我们的祖先究竟穿什么，关于这方面的考古证据并不多。

 

Fur, leather and other organic materials generally aren't preserved, especially beyond 100,000 years ago. However, researchers say 62 bone tools used to process and smooth animal skins found in a cave in Morocco may be some of the earliest proxy¹ evidence for clothing in the archaeological record. The tools are between 90,000 and 120,000 years old.

10万年前的毛皮、皮革和其他有机材料通常无法保存下来。然而，研究人员称，在摩洛哥的一个洞穴中发现了62件用于处理和打磨动物皮革的骨器，这可能是考古发现中的最早关于人类着装的指向性证据之一。这些工具距今有9万至12万年的历史。

 

"I wasn't expecting to find them. I was studying this assemblage initially² to look at the animal bones to reconstruct the human diet," said Emily Yuko Hallett, a postdoctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History's Pan African Evolution Research Group.

马克斯·普朗克人类历史科学研究所泛非进化研究小组的博士后科学家艾米莉·尤科·哈利特称：“我没想到会发现这些骨器。我研究这堆化石最初是为了观察动物骨骼，以重现人类的饮食。”

 

"And when I was going through them -- there were around 12,000 animal bones -- I started to notice these bones that had a very different shape. It wasn't a natural shape. And they had sheen on them, and they were shiny, and they had striations (grooves or scratches) on them," said Hallett, who was an author of a study on the findings that published Thursday in the journal iScience.

研究作者之一哈利特说：“当我检查这12000多块动物骨头时，我开始注意到这些骨头的形状非常不同。这不是自然的形状。它们很光滑，有光泽，表面有微小的擦痕。”9月16日，《iScience》杂志发表了这些研究结果。

 

Unlike the bones discarded after consuming an animal for food, bones used regularly by human hands gain a sheen and polish.

与食用动物后丢弃的骨头不同，人手经常使用的骨头表面光滑、有光泽。

 

She also found a pattern of cut marks on other bones in the cave that suggested the humans who lived there were removing the skins of carnivores such as sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats, for their furs. The bones of cattle-like animals showed different markings, suggesting they were processed for meat.

哈利特还在洞穴中的其他骨骼上发现了一种切割痕迹，这表明居住在那里的人类会剥掉沙狐、金豺和野猫等食肉动物的皮毛。牛骨等动物骨头则显示出不同的痕迹，表明它们是加工取肉的来源。

 

"I'm most excited about the skinning marks on the carnivores, because I haven't seen this pattern described before. And my hope is that archaeologists working in much older sites also start looking for this pattern," she said.

哈利特说：“食肉动物身上的剥皮痕迹让我很兴奋，因为此前我从未见过这种痕迹。我希望在更古老的遗址工作的考古学家也开始寻找这样的痕迹。”

 

It's challenging to figure out when the use of clothing began. It's highly likely early humans like Neanderthals that lived in cold climates long before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene had clothing to protect themselves from the extreme weather, but there's not much hard evidence.

我们很难弄清楚人类究竟是从什么时候开始穿衣服的。很可能在智人出现之前，像尼安德特人这样生活在寒冷环境的早期人类就已经开始穿衣御寒了，但是没有确凿证据。

 

Genetic³ studies of lice indicate that clothing lice diverged⁴ from their human head louse ancestors at least 83,000 years ago and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago, which suggests humans were wearing clothes before major migrations⁵ out of Africa.

对虱子的基因研究表明，从头虱分化出来的衣虱至少在83000年前就出现了，也可能早在17万年前就存在，这表明人类在大规模迁出非洲之前就已经穿上了衣服。

 

Hallett said that one of 98 400,000-year-old tools made from elephant bone and recently discovered in Italy may have been used to smooth leather. They were likely used by Neanderthals. Eyed needles emerge in the archaeological record much later, about 40,000 years ago.

哈利特说，最近在意大利发现的98件40万年前用大象骨头制成的工具中，有一种可能是用来打磨皮革的，很可能是尼安德特人使用的。缝纫针出现在考古记录中的时间要晚得多，距今约4万年前。

 

The bone tools from Morocco that Hallett discovered were shaped a bit like a spatula⁶ and would have been used to remove connective tissue. Similar bone tools are still used by some leather workers today, Hallett said.

哈利特在摩洛哥发现的骨器形状有点像刮刀，可以用来去除结缔组织。哈利特说，今天一些皮匠仍在使用类似的骨制品。

 

"The reason people like using these tools is that they don't pierce the skin, and so you're left with an intact skin," she said.

她说：“人们喜欢使用这些工具的原因是它们不会刺伤皮面，这样能获得一块完好无损的皮革。”

 

The bone tools were found in Contrebandiers Cave on Morocco's Atlantic coast. Hallett said the climate 120,000 years ago would have been mild, as it is now, raising the possibility that early clothes could have been for ornamentation as well as protection.

这些骨器在摩洛哥大西洋海岸的孔特雷班迪尔斯洞穴中发现。哈利特说，12万年前这里的气候应该很温和，就像现在一样，因此很可能早期的衣物是用于装饰和防护的。

 

"There's really no extreme temperatures or extreme climate conditions there in the past or today. So that makes me wonder was clothing strictly⁷ utilitarian⁸ or was it symbolic⁹ or was it a little bit of both?"

“在过去或今天，那里真的不存在极端温度或极端天气。因此，我很好奇，衣物是完全实用性的，还是象征性的装饰，或是两者兼而有之呢？”

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