好英语网数万年前的洞穴壁画
Stone Age artists were painting red disks, handprints, clublike symbols and geometric patterns on European cave walls long before previously thought, in some cases more than 40,000 years ago, scientists reported on Thursday, after completing more reliable dating tests that raised a possibility that Neanderthals were the artists.
石器时代的艺术家已经开始在欧洲洞穴的石壁上绘制红色圆饼，留下手印、几何图案和类似梅花的图形。而周四发布的一份科学研究报告则指出，这些岩画的起始年代，可能比我们此前所认为的更早，有的竟已经有了4万多年的历史。而且，经过更可靠的测年，科学家认为，创作这些岩画的，有可能是尼安德特人(Neanderthals)。
A more likely situation, the researchers said, is that the art — 50 samples from 11 caves in northwestern Spain — was created by anatomically modern humans fairly soon after their arrival in Europe.
研究人员从西班牙西北部的11座岩洞里提取了50个样本。他们认为，更有可能的一种假设是：这些绘画是由解剖学意义上的现代人类在抵达欧洲后不久创作的。
The findings seem to put an exclamation point to a run of recent discoveries: direct evidence from fossils that Homo sapiens populations were living in England 41,500 to 44,200 years ago and in Italy 43,000 to 45,000 years ago, and that they were making flutes in German caves about 42,000 years ago. Then there is the new genetic evidence of modern human-Neanderthal interbreeding, suggesting a closer relationship than had been generally thought.
这个结论似乎给最近的一系列发现划上了一个感叹号：直接的化石证据已表明，在4.15万年到4.42万年以前就有智人居住在英格兰；在意大利，他们出现于4.3万年到4.5万年前；而大约4.2年前，德国岩洞里的智人就已经开始制做笛子。此外，新的基因证据则表明，现代人和尼安德特人之间曾出现过杂交，这表明他们的关系比此前普遍认为的更近。
The successful application of a newly refined uranium-thorium dating technique is also expected to send other scientists to other caves to see if they can reclaim prehistoric bragging rights.
最新改进的铀钍测年技术的成功应用，也将鼓舞其他科学家去继续探索更多的岩洞，以期确立新的史前发现记录。
In the new research, an international team led by Alistair W. G. Pike of the University of Bristol in England determined that the red disk in the cave known as El Castillo was part of the earliest known wall decorations, at a minimum of 40,800 years old. That makes it the earliest cave art found so far in Europe, perhaps 4,000 years older than the paintings at Grotte Chauvet in France.
由英国布里斯托大学的阿里斯泰尔·派克（Alistair W.G. Pike）带领的国际考古团队在最新研究中确定，这些来自卡斯蒂略岩洞（El Castillo）的红色圆饼是迄今为止为人所知的最早墙壁装饰，至少有4.08万年的历史。这使它成为欧洲发现的最早的岩洞艺术，比法国的肖维岩洞（Grotte Chauvet）壁画约早4000年左右。
The handprints common at several of the Spanish caves were stencils, probably made by blowing pigment on a hand placed against the cave wall. The oldest example, at El Castillo, proved to be at least 37,300 years old, which the scientists said “considerably increases the antiquity of this motif and implies that depictions of the human hand were among the oldest art known in Europe.”
手印在这些西班牙岩洞中比较常见，属于吹印技术，可能是把手放在岩壁然后吹上颜料形成的。卡斯蒂略岩洞中最早的手印被证实有3.73万年历史。科学家认为这个发现“大大延长了这种图案的历史，表明描绘人手是欧洲最古老的艺术形式之一。”
At Altamira, the researchers obtained a date of at least 35,600 years for a red club-shaped symbol. Archaeologists said this indicated that Altamira’s artistic tradition started about 10,000 years earlier than once estimated, and the cave appeared to have been revisited and painted many times over a span of 20,000 years.
学者还在阿尔塔米拉洞穴（Altamira）找到一个至少有3.56万年历史的红色梅花性质的符号。考古学家认为，这说明阿尔塔米拉岩洞艺术的起源比此前估计的还要早1万年。在随后的2万年中，这个洞穴似乎又多次有人进入，并创作绘画。
In a report published online in the journal Science, Dr. Pike and his colleagues noted that the oldest dated art is “nonfigurative and monochrome (red), supporting the notion that the earliest expression of art in Western Europe was less concerned with animal depiction and characterized by red dots, disks, line and hand stencils.” The more stunning murals of bison and horses came gradually, later.
派克和同事在《科学》杂志网站发表的一份报告称，他们测得的最古老的艺术是“抽象、单色（红色）的，证明了西欧最早的艺术表达不太注重描绘动物，而是以红色点、盘、线和手印为特点的。”更令人叹为观止的壁画，如水牛和马，是后来才逐渐出现的。
Although the early dates coincide with recent evidence of a Homo sapiens presence in Europe, the scientists wrote that because 40,800 is only a minimum age, “it cannot be ruled out that the earliest paintings were symbolic expressions of the Neanderthals,” who were living in that part of Spain until at least 42,000 years ago.
尽管这些发现的最早年代与近期证据显示的欧洲智人出现时间一致，但是科学家认为，4.08万年只是一个最近时间，“不能排除这些最早的绘画是尼安德特人的符号表达。”尼安德特人至少在4.2万年以前还生活在西班牙的这个地区。
These close relatives of modern humans had lived in Europe and parts of Asia since at least 250,000 years ago, becoming extinct about 30,000 years ago.
尼安德特人是现代人的近亲，他们至少从距今25万年前开始，就生活在欧洲和部分亚洲地区，并在约3万年前灭绝。
In another article for the journal, John Hellstrom of the University of Melbourne in Australia, an authority on dating prehistoric artifacts, praised the research. “The scope of their study has allowed them to unambiguously identify a number of examples that challenge and overturn the previous understanding of that art’s origin,” he wrote.
史前遗物断代权威、澳大利亚墨尔本大学的约翰·赫尔斯特伦（John Hellstrom）在该杂志的另一篇文章中肯定了这项研究。“该研究的范围之广，使他们能够准确地锁定一些标本，去挑战甚至颠覆了此前对岩洞艺术起源的理解。”他写道。
Dr. Hellstrom said that “3 of the 50 examples dated show art to have been created in Spain at around (indeed possibly before) the time of the arrival of modern humans, bringing current ideas of the prehistory of human art in southern Europe into question.”
赫尔斯特伦博士称：“在这50个经过测年的样本中，有3个显示这种艺术大约在现代人到来时（甚至很可能是在那之前）就出现在西班牙。这不禁让我们对当前有关南欧史前人类艺术的理论产生了疑问。”
In a teleconference for reporters on Wednesday, Dr. Pike said the older dates suggested three possible interpretations. One: Homo sapiens entered Europe with the tradition of cave art already part of the culture. There is increasing evidence that the African ancestors of Homo sapiens had for thousands of years developed expressions of symbolic thinking in the form of perforated beads, engraved eggshells and decorative pigments. Such has been the standard hypothesis.
派克在周三的电话会议上对记者说， 更早年代的测定有三种可能的解释。一，智人到达欧洲时，岩洞艺术已经是他们文化传统的一部分。已经有越来越多的证据显示，非洲的智人祖先已经在几千年的进化中发展了表达符号性思维的能力，表现为在珠子上穿孔、蛋壳雕刻和装饰性颜料。这已经成为一种经典假设。
Another possibility is that this artistic culture arose shortly after modern humans reached Europe. “It might have been the result of competition for resources with Neanderthals,” Dr. Pike said. “The rate of cultural innovation was accelerating, and this was a byproduct.”
另一种可能是这种艺术文化是现代人类达到欧洲以后不久产生的。“这可能是与尼安德特人争夺资源的结果，”派克说。“文化创新的速度在加快，而这只是一种附带产物。”
The third possibility, which the scientists said they had not anticipated at the start of their project, is that some of these earliest works of cave art might be attributed to Neanderthals. Until recently, archaeologists usually saw Neanderthals as incapable of creating artistic works much beyond simple abstract markings and personal ornamentation.
第三种可能性，也是科学家们在项目一开始所没有预料到的，就是这些早期岩洞艺术中有一部分可能出自尼安德特人之手。直到最近，考古学家还通常认为，除了简单抽象的标记和个人装饰，尼安德特人不会创作艺术。
Other scientists were expected to be skeptical, pending more evidence of even earlier dates for cave art or of painting associated with Neanderthal tools or fossils. Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, said, “There is no need to hypothesize that Neanderthals created these paintings, as we have evidence of artistic Homo sapiens already in Western Europe.”
其他科学家可能会对此持怀疑态度，还需要看到更多证据，不管是更早的壁画，或是与尼安德特人工具或化石有关的画作。纽约市立大学莱曼学院的古人类学者埃里克·德尔森（Eric Delson）认为：“没有必要假设尼安德特人创作了这些绘画，因为我们已经有证据证明，在西欧的智人已经可以进行艺术创作了。”
But João Zilhão, a prehistorian and Neanderthal specialist at the University of Barcelona and a member of the research team, made a forceful defense of the hypothesis in the teleconference.
但是研究小组中来自巴塞罗那大学的史前学家和尼安德特人专家若昂·齐良（João Zilhão） 在电话会议中为这个假设进行了有力的辩护。
“We have sufficient evidence to the effect that Neanderthals possessed a symbolic culture,” Dr. Zilhão said. “They are close enough to modern humans to have interbred with us. This is sufficient to think about Neanderthals as fundamentally human beings with perhaps racial differences.”
“我们有足够的证据证明，尼安德特人已经有了一种符号化的文化，”齐良说。“他们与现代人类很接近，可以和现代人杂交。这已经足以使我们相信，尼安德特人基本与现代人一样，可能只有种族的差别。”
Saying that Neanderthals were “more advanced than they have been given credit” for, Dr. Zilhão conceded that their identification with any of the cave art “cannot be proven at this time. It’s just my gut feeling, and needs dates older than 42-, 43-, 44,000 years to sort it out.”
虽说尼安德特人比“此前认为的更先进”，但齐良也承认，岩洞艺术和他们之间的联系“还不能通过这次研究来证明。但这只是我的直觉，因而需要测到比4.2万年，4.3万年，4.4万年更早的年代才能确定。”
The research is “most important,” Dr. Delson said, because it introduces a significant advance in techniques for more reliable, precise and older dating of antiquities, especially cave art that in most cases does not lend itself to reliable dating by radiocarbon methods. Dr. Hellstrom, in his article, recommended a wider application of the improved uranium-thorium dating method.
德尔森认为，这项研究“最重要”的意义，在于它引入了一项重要技术，用来对古代遗物的年代进行更可靠、更精确以及年代更久远的测定。这尤其适用于岩洞艺术，因为放射性碳的测年方法在检测大多数岩洞艺术时并不可靠。赫尔斯特伦在他的文章中建议更广泛地使用这种改良后的铀钍测年方法。
It is actually a 50-year-old technique, but a vastly improved one. Cave art is typically found in limestone terrain. Water seeping into caves leaves deposits of calcium carbonate, or calcite, as stalactites and stalagmites or simpler crusts cover cave surfaces. To date a painting under such a crust, researchers remove a piece of the calcite, dissolve the sample and extract the traces of uranium and thorium atoms. Over time, the uranium in the crust decays into thorium. A measure of the ratio of uranium to thorium gives the minimum age of the art beneath the crust.
事实上，铀钍测年技术已有50年历史，只是现在经过了大幅改良。岩洞艺术一般出现在石灰岩地形中。岩洞内壁覆盖着钟乳石和石笋或者较简单的外壳，水滴进岩洞后留下碳酸钙或者方解石沉淀。要对这种岩壳覆盖下的壁画进行测年，研究者需要取一块方解石，融化样本，然后萃取铀钍原子。岩壳中的铀会随时间衰减成钍。根据样本中铀和钍的比例，就可以推断出壁画在岩洞壳下保存的最近年代。
This is an improvement over radiocarbon dating, which becomes less reliable at ages over 30,000 years and is not usable in dating art unless the pigment contained carbon. The uranium-thorium method has been made more sensitive, so that calcite samples about as small as a grain of rice can do the job.
这项技术是对放射性碳元素测年法的改进。放射性碳测年法在对3万年以上的古代遗物进行检测时不太可靠，而且除非艺术作品的颜料含有碳元素，否则无法使用 。铀钍技术则更敏感，能对哪怕是约一粒米大小的方解石样本进行检测。
Asked how the Neanderthal question could be resolved, Dr. Pike said, “Simply go back and date more of these samples and find something that predates modern humans in Europe.”
在回答如何解决尼安德特人的问题时，派克说：“很简单，再回去做更多检测，并找到一些现代人进入欧洲之前的样本。”