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Science and Technolgy.
科技。
The settlement of Madagascar.
定居馬達加斯加。
Thirty lost souls.
三十個迷失的靈魂。
How Africa's largest island was colonised by Asians.
解讀非洲第一大島成為亞洲人殖民地的歷史。
MADAGASCAR is renowned for its unusual animals, particularly its lemurs, a group of primates extinct elsewhere on the planet. Its human population, though, is equally unusual. The island was one of the last places on Earth to be settled, receiving its earliest migrants in the middle of the first millennium AD. Moreover, despite Madagascar's proximity to Africa (400km, or 250 miles, at the closest point) those settlers have long been suspected of having arrived from the Malay Archipelago-modern Indonesia-more than 6,000km away.
馬達加斯加島因島上的稀有動物而聞名，尤其是世界其他地方已絕跡的靈長類動物——狐猴。人類在該島定居的歷史，也同樣不尋常。該島是最后幾個人類選擇的定居地之一，于公元后頭一個千年的中葉迎來了最早一批到此定居的移民。此外，盡管馬達加斯加島毗鄰非洲大陸（最近距離400公里，合250英里），長久以來外界猜測島上的居民是從馬來群島，即現(xiàn)在的印度尼西亞，這個6000多公里外的地方遷移來的。
There are three reasons for this suspicion. First, it has been recognised for centuries that the Malagasy language, though distinct, borrows a lot of words from Javanese, Malay and the tongues of Borneo and Sulawesi. Second, the islanders' culture includes artefacts ranging from boats with outriggers to xylophones, and crops such as bananas and rice, that are (or, rather, were then) characteristically Asian, not African. And third, genetic evidence has linked the modern Malagasy with people living in eastern Indonesia as well as farther off in Melanesia and Oceania.
作此猜測原因有三。首先，存在了幾個世紀的一種看法認為，該島使用的馬爾加什語，雖然獨特，但很多的詞匯是來自爪哇語、馬來語和一部分口語來自婆羅洲及蘇拉威西島當?shù)胤窖浴Ｆ浯危搷u居民的文化——包括從裝有舷外浮木的小船到木琴等一系列手工制品，還有一些農(nóng)作物，如香蕉和大米——都是（也可以說或多或少是、那時候是）具有亞洲特點的，而不是非洲。再次，基因?qū)W證據(jù)已證明現(xiàn)代的馬達加斯加人與東印尼人以及相距更遙遠的美拉尼西亞人和生活在大洋洲的人都是有聯(lián)系的。
Now, Murray Cox of Massey University in New Zealand and his colleagues have put the matter beyond doubt by showing not only where the first settlers came from, but also how many of them there were. And the answer is surprisingly few. Though Dr Cox is unable, with the method he used, to work out how many men were in the original party, the number of women was 30.
現(xiàn)在，新西蘭梅西大學的Murray Cox和他的同事們不僅科學地展示了首批定居者源自哪里，而且還弄清了定居者的人數(shù)，證據(jù)確鑿。讓人感到吃驚的是已確定的定居者人數(shù)極少。雖然Cox博士使用的方法沒能弄清首批定居者中的男性數(shù)量，但可以確定女性有30人。
He drew this conclusion, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, by sampling the DNA of 266 Malagasy people and comparing it with existing samples from 2,745 Indonesians. He concentrated on DNA from mitochondria. These are cellular components involved in energy production that are descended from bacteria which became symbiotic with humanity's ancestors almost 2 billion years ago, and thus have their own genes. People inherit mitochondria only from their mothers, which is why only the female line of descent can be tracked using them.
Cox博士最近在學術(shù)期刊《皇家學會進展》（Proceedings of the Royal Society ）發(fā)表的文章中對266名馬達加斯加人進行DNA抽樣，同現(xiàn)有的2745名印尼人的DNA樣品進行了比對，得出了以上結(jié)論。他把重點放在對線粒體DNA的研究上。線粒體DNA是一種參與生物體能量制造過程的細胞器，起源于20億年前與人類祖先共生的細菌，因而線粒體有自己的基因。人類僅能從母親身上遺傳線粒體DNA（線粒體DNA是嚴格的母系遺傳），所以只有母系血統(tǒng)能使用追蹤線粒體DNA的方法。
The advantage of studying mitochondrial DNA is that it is not shuffled around by sex. Dr Cox and his colleagues were therefore able to make a statistical comparison of Indonesian and Malagasy mitochondrial genomes knowing that any changes which had occurred since they separated would be the result of rare mutations. These can be spotted and accounted for. Indeed, because they can be tracked they add to the information which can be extracted from a sample.
研究線粒體DNA的優(yōu)點在于它不會被性別打亂。Cox博士和他的同事們因此能進行印尼人和馬達加斯加人線粒體基因組的數(shù)據(jù)比對，從而推斷出原本相同的線粒體DNA天各一方后發(fā)生的任何遺傳變化都是源于一些罕見的基因突變。這些都是可以辨認及作出解釋的，因為科學家可以追蹤線粒體DNA上附加的信息，而這些信息可以從線粒體DNA樣品中提取。
Having confirmed that Malagasy and Indonesian DNA separated about 1,200 years ago, which is statistically close to the date archaeologists suggest Madagascar was colonised, the team then asked their data how many women, drawn at random from the Malay Archipelago of that period, would have been needed to explain the variation in mitochondrial DNA in Madagascar. The answer was about 30.
由于已確定馬達加斯加人和印尼人的DNA是在約1200年前分開的——這與考古學家們統(tǒng)計得出的馬達加斯加成為殖民地的時間相近，接著Cox博士帶領(lǐng)的小組就開始對隨機抽取的那一時期的數(shù)據(jù)進行女性人數(shù)的解析，看需要達到多少人才可以解釋線粒體DNA在馬達加斯加島產(chǎn)生的變異情況。最后得出的女性人數(shù)為30人。
That answer bears on a second question: was the colonisation of Madagascar a deliberate act or an accident? The first is possible. At the time, much of the Malay Archipelago was in the hands of the Srivijayan empire, an entity that could certainly have sent expeditions across the Indian Ocean, had it so willed. But there is no historical evidence that it did. In any case if it had, it is likely that a successful colonisation by one group would have been followed by others, as happened when Europeans discovered the Americas.
由此又產(chǎn)生了第二個疑問：在馬達加斯加進行的殖民活動是蓄意而為還是偶然而為？前者是有可能的。那一時期，馬來群島中的大多數(shù)島嶼都被一個名為Srivijayan的帝國所掌控。該帝國只要愿意，就完全有可能派出遠征隊穿越印度洋。但還沒有史學依據(jù)證明他們派出了遠征隊。不管怎樣，如果他們真的這么做了，那么第一批人殖民成功，就會有其他人緊隨其后，正如歐洲人發(fā)現(xiàn)了美洲大陸后的情況一樣。
Most likely, then, the first Malagasy were accidental castaways, news of whose adventure never made it back home. But there is still a puzzle. Most ships' crews are male. Though the number of men in the original party will remain obscure until an analysis like Dr Cox's is done on the Y-chromosome of Malagasy men (Y-chromosomes include DNA passed exclusively down the male line in the way that mitochondrial DNA is passed down the female line), the presence of women on board a trading vessel would have been unusual. Unless, of course, the women themselves were the objects being traded. Possibly, then, Madagascar was colonised by an errant slave ship. Which would make its history even stranger than anyone had previously thought.
那么，首批馬達加斯加人也很可能是因船只失事而意外漂流到該島的，而這批人后來也沒辦法回到家鄉(xiāng)。可是這種說法仍然讓人困惑，因為大多數(shù)的船員由男性擔任，雖然在對馬達加斯加人男性的Y染色體進行數(shù)據(jù)分析之前（包含DNA的Y染色體單傳男系，同樣的，線粒體DNA單傳女系），例如Cox博士的小組所作的工作，該島首批居民的男性人數(shù)尚未明晰，那一時期在一艘貿(mào)易貨船上出現(xiàn)女性是很罕見的事情。當然，例外情況是，女性本身就是貿(mào)易品。那馬達加斯加島就可能是一艘迷途的奴隸商船的殖民地了。這樣一來，這段歷史就會比先前任何人所想的更加奇特。
