DNA reveals surprise ancestry of mysterious Chinese mummies

The genomes of 13 remarkably preserved 4,000-year-old mummies from the Tarim Basin suggest they weren’t migrants who brought technology from the west, as previously supposed.

13号染色体的显著证明表明，塔里木盆地保存下来的4000年的干尸并不是之前报道的那样是带来技术的西方的移民者。

Cemeteries in the Taklaman Desert, China, hold human remains up to 4,000 years old.

中国的塔克拉玛干沙漠的墓地，保存着4000年前的人类尸骨。

Since their discovery a century ago, hundreds of naturally preserved mummies found in China’s Tarim Basin have been a mystery to archaeologists.

自从一个世纪前被发现以来，在中国的塔里木盆地发现数百具自然保存的木乃伊对考古学家来说是个谜。

Some thought the Bronze Age remains were from migrants from thousands of kilometres to the west, who had brought farming practices to the area.

有一些认为在青铜器时代保存下来的来自几千公里之外的西方移民，给这片地区带来了农业技术。

But now, a genomic analysis suggests they were indigenous people who may have adopted agricultural methods from neighbouring groups.

但是现在，染色体分析表明，这些土著居民可能从邻近群体那里学会了农耕技术。

As they report today in Nature1, researchers have traced the ancestry of these early Chinese farmers to Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived in Asia some 9,000 years ago.

正如今天发表在nature上的文章，研究人员追踪这些早期中国农民的祖先到生活在亚洲9000年前的石器时代的狩猎采集者。

They seem to have been genetically isolated, but despite this had learnt to raise livestock and grow grains in the same way as other groups.

他们似乎基因上是隔离的，但尽管如此，他们和其他族群一样学会饲养牲畜和种植谷物。

The study hints at “the really diverse ways in which populations move and don’t move, and how ideas can spread with, but also through, populations”, says co-author Christina Warinner, a molecular archaeologist at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.

研究表明：人口迁移和不迁移的真正不同的方式，以及想法的传播都是通过人口？？？？？

什么玩意？？？

The finding demonstrates that cultural exchange doesn’t always go hand in hand with genetic ties, says Michael Frachetti, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. “Just because those people are trading, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are marrying one another or having children,” he says.

这一发现表明，文化的交流并不总是和基因绑在一起，Michael Frachetti说。“仅仅因为这些人在交易，并不意味着他们和另一个人结婚或者有后代。”

Perfect preservation environment

完美的保存环境

Starting in the early twentieth century, the mummies were found in cemeteries belonging to the so-called Xiaohe culture, which are scattered across the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region of China.

在二十世纪初开始，在称为小河文化的墓地中发现的木乃伊，分散在中国新疆地区的塔克拉玛干沙漠中。

The desert “is one of the most hostile places on Earth”, says Alison Betts, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney in Australia.

沙漠是地球上最不利的地方之一。

Here, bodies had been buried in boat-shaped coffins wrapped in cattle hide.

在这里，尸骨被埋在包着牛皮的船形棺材里。

The hot, arid and salty environment of the desert naturally preserved them, keeping everything from hair to clothing perfectly intact.

沙漠里炎热，干燥又咸的环境自然保存了它们，从头发到衣服完美的原封不动的保存下来。

Before the latest study, “we knew an awful lot about these people, physically, but we knew nothing about who they were and why they were there”, says Betts.

在最近的研究之前，“我们在身体上对这些人了解很多，但是对于它们是谁以及为什么在这里却知之甚少，”Betts说。

The mummies — which were buried over a period of 2,000 years or more — date to a significant time in Xinjiang’s history, when ancient communities were shifting from hunter-gatherers to farmers, she adds.

这些被埋超过2000年甚至更久的尸骨，可以追溯到新疆历史上的一个重要时期，那时候古代的社区从狩猎过渡到农业，她补充到。

Some of the later mummies were buried with woollen fabrics and clothing similar to those of cultures found to the west.

一些后期的尸骨身上还有羊毛制品，这些衣服和西方文化服饰有些相似。

The graves also contained millet, wheat, animal bones and dairy products — evidence of agricultural and pastoral technologies characteristic of cultures in other regions of Eurasia, which led researchers to hypothesize that these people were originally migrants from the west, who had passed through Siberia, Afghanistan or Central Asia.

墓地里包含小米、小麦、动物尸骨以及奶制品----这些都是欧亚大陆其他地区拥有地区文化特征的农业和田园技术的证据，但这些也让研究人员猜测这些人是穿过西伯利亚，阿富汗或中亚的最初来自西方的移民。

The researchers behind the latest study — based in China, South Korea, Germany and the United States — took DNA from the mummies to test these ideas, but found no evidence to support them.

最近的研究背后来自中国、南韩、德国及美国的研究人员从干尸上采集了DNA测试这些想法，但并未找到支持这些想法的证据。

They sequenced the genomes of 13 individuals who lived between 4,100 and 3,700 years ago and whose bodies were found in the lowest layers of the Tarim Basin cemeteries in southern Xinjiang, as well as another 5 mummies from hundreds of kilometres away in northern Xinjiang, who lived between 5,000 and 4,800 years ago.

他们对13个生活在3700-4100年前的个体的基因进行了测序，他们的尸骨在新疆南部的塔里木盆地墓地的最底层被发现，同时也测试了另外5具在几百公里之外的新疆北部的生活在4800-5000年前的尸骨。

They then compared the genetic profiles of these people with previously sequenced genomes from more than 100 ancient groups of people, and those of more than 200 modern populations, from around the world.

接着他们将这些人的基因数据和之前100多个古代群体的基因序列以及200多个来自世界各地的现代人群的基因序列进行了对比。

Two groups of people

They found that the northern Xinjiang individuals shared some parts of their genomes with Bronze Age migrants from the Altai Mountains of Central Asia who lived about 5,000 years ago — supporting an earlier hypothesis.

他们发现这些新疆北部的个体有一部分基因和生活在5000年前青铜时代的来自中亚的阿尔泰山脉的移民一样，这验证了之前的猜测。

But the 13 people from the Tarim Basin did not share this ancestry.

但是塔里木盆地的13具尸骨和他们的祖先不同。

They seem to be solely related to hunter-gatherers who lived in southern Siberia and what is now northern Kazakhstan some 9,000 years ago, says co-author Choongwon Jeong, a population and evolutionary geneticist at Seoul National University. The northern Xinjiang individuals also shared some of this ancestry.

他们似乎只和9000年前生活在南部西伯利亚即现在的哈萨克斯坦北部的狩猎者集群有关系。

新疆北部的个体也有一部分这种基因。

Evidence of dairy products was found alongside the youngest mummies from the upper layers of cemeteries in the Tarim Basin, so the researchers analysed calcified dental plaque on the teeth of some of the older mummies to see how far back dairy farming went.

在塔里木盆地上层的最年轻的尸骨旁边的奶制品的发现，使得研究人员可以分析一些老的尸骨上的牙齿上的牙菌斑的钙化情况，去溯源奶牛养殖的开始时间。

In the plaque, they found milk proteins from cattle, sheep and goats, suggesting that even the earliest settlers here consumed dairy products. “This founding population had already incorporated dairy pastoralism into their way of life,” says Warinner.

在牙菌斑上，他们发现了来自牛、羊和山羊的奶蛋白，表明这里即使最早的居民都在食用奶制品。“这种原始族群已经将乳制品融入到了他们的生活中。”

But the study raises many more questions about how the people of the Xiaohe culture got these technologies, from where and from whom, says Betts. “That’s the next thing we need to try and resolve.”

但是研究也带来了更多的疑问，关于小河文化的人类是如何得到这些技术的，从哪里获取的？从谁那里获取的？这是接下来我们需要尝试解决的。