经济学人下载:狗的起源--汪!汪!

The origin of dogs 

狗的起源

Woof! Woof! 

汪！汪！

A new idea about how dogs were domesticated 

新观点：狗是如何被驯化的

Man's best friend is also his oldest. The partnership between dogs and people may go back as much as 40,000 years—long predating any other domestication. And it is based not, as is the case with many subsequent domestications, on a human desire to eat the animal concerned, or to consume some associated product such as milk or eggs, but rather on genuine companionship, albeit with a little work- and hunting-related exploitation on the side. 

人类最好的朋友也是人类最老的朋友。人类和狗之间的友谊大概要追溯到4万年前——比任何其他动物的驯化都要早。和后来的很多驯化不同，人类对狗的驯化并非基于其想吃动物或者想吃一些相关产品(比如牛奶或鸡蛋)的欲望，而是建立在二者真正的友谊之上，虽说其中牵涉到一丝与工作和狩猎相关的剥削。How this partnership got going, though, is debated. In particular, unlike other domestications, which involved groups of people who had taken up farming, the domestication of the wolves that became dogs happened while all human beings were still hunter-gatherers. The two species were, in other words, competitors. Yet they managed to become soul mates. 

不过，这段友谊是如何发展起来的？这一问题仍存争议。尤其是，其他动物的驯化和一群开始从事农业的人相关，狗则不同，狗的驯化是在所有人类仍以狩猎采集为生的时期从狼的驯化开始的。换句话说，人类和狗本是竞争对手，最后却成了灵魂伴侣。

One popular theory is that the wolves which became dogs acted as rubbish-disposal agents for groups of people, by eating their waste, possibly including their faeces. That, though, would be a service more useful to settled farmers than mobile hunter-gatherers. As she writes in Scientific Reports, however, Maria Lahtinen of the Finnish Museum of Natural History thinks she might have the answer as to how wolves and people squared the competitive circle while both species were still hunters. It was, she and her colleagues suggest, simply a matter of surplus calories. 

一种比较普遍的说法是：变成狗的狼充当了部分人的垃圾处理员这一角色，吃人类的排泄物，可能还包括他们的粪便。不过，比起居无定所的狩猎采集者，垃圾处理这一服务对有固定住所的农民用处更大。然而，来自芬兰自然历史博物馆的玛丽亚·拉赫蒂宁在《科学报告》中写道，她或许知道在狼和人类都是捕猎者时这一竞争循环是如何被打破的，她和她的同事们认为纯粹就是卡路里过剩问题。

The archaeological evidence suggests that wolves were domesticated in woodlands fringing the ice sheets of the last ice age, since that is where almost all Palaeolithic dog remains have been found. Dr Lahtinen calculates that, given the large size of prey animals in this environment, and humans' need to eat a balanced diet with plenty of plant matter in it as well as flesh, there would have been a lot of surplus meat around from kills. What better way to use some of it than to feed a few wolf cubs to provide entertainment and companionship? And thus, she suggests, were dogs born. 

考古证据表明，狼是在上一个冰河时代在冰原边缘的林地被驯养的，因为几乎所有旧石器时代的狗的遗骸都是在那里被发现的。拉赫蒂宁博士计算出，人类需要均衡饮食，既要摄取大量的植物也要摄取大量的肉类，考虑到这种环境下猎物的庞大体型，那么人类在捕杀猎物后周围就会有大量剩肉，还有什么能比喂几只小狼来娱乐和陪伴的更好的办法呢？她认为狗就是这样诞生的。