第2515期:Ancient Americans Depended Heavily on Mammoth for Food(2)

James Chatters is a professor of Earth, Environment and Society at Canada’s McMaster University. He helped lead the research. Chatters said in a statement that centering on mammoths “helps explain how Clovis people could spread throughout North America and into South America in just a few hundred years.” 詹姆斯·查特斯 (James Chatters) 是加拿大麦克马斯特大学地球、环境与社会教授。他帮助领导了这项研究。查特斯在一份声明中表示，以猛犸象为中心“有助于解释克洛维斯人如何在短短几百年内传播到整个北美并进入南美洲。” The scientists estimated the woman mostly ate meat from a group of animals called megafauna, the largest creatures that existed at the time. The study showed megafauna made up about 96 percent of her diet, with mammoth accounting for about 40 percent of the total. 科学家估计，这名妇女主要吃的是一种叫做巨型动物的动物的肉，这是当时存在的最大的生物。研究显示，巨型动物约占她饮食的 96%，其中猛犸象约占总量的 40%。 Chatters said one mammoth could support “a dependent community of children, care-giving women, and less mobile elders for days or even weeks while the hunters sought their next kill." Mammoths stood to about four meters tall at the shoulder and weighed as much as 11 tons.查特斯说，一头猛犸象可以支撑“一个由儿童、照顾妇女和行动不便的老人组成的依赖社区数天甚至数周，而猎人则寻找下一次猎物。”猛犸象的肩高约四米，体重也同样重。为11吨。 Chatters said the Clovis people were known to be highly skilled hunters with a 10,000-year history of hunting megafauna over wide areas of territory. He added that the great dependence of the Clovis on megafauna likely led to the pressures that later caused the extinction of large ice age animals. 查特斯说，克洛维斯人以狩猎技术高超而闻名，拥有一万年在大片领土上捕猎巨型动物的历史。他补充说，克洛维斯人对巨型动物的高度依赖可能导致了后来导致大型冰河时期动物灭绝的压力。 Chatters noted the latest finding supports past studies that provided "indirect evidence” that Clovis people mainly depended on mammoths and other large animals for food. This evidence included examinations of different artifacts – such as stone tools or the ancient remains of large animals, he said. 查特斯指出，最新发现支持了过去的研究，这些研究提供了克洛维斯人主要依赖猛犸象和其他大型动物作为食物的“间接证据”。他说，这些证据包括对不同文物的检查，例如石器或大型动物的古代遗骸。。 Ben Potter was also a co-writer of the study. He is an archeologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Potter told Reuters, "These results also help us understand megafauna extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age.” He added the findings suggest that humans may have played a more important part in the extinctions than is sometimes thought. 本·波特也是该研究的合著者。他是阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校的考古学家。波特告诉路透社，“这些结果也有助于我们了解上一个冰河时代末期巨型动物的灭绝情况。” 他补充说，研究结果表明，人类在物种灭绝中所扮演的角色可能比有时想象的更重要。