科学美国人60秒:Silk Road Transported Goods--and Disease

For thousands of years, what’s called the Silk Road was a group of land and sea trade routes that connected the Far East with South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe. Of course, when humans travel they carry their pathogens with them. So scientists and historians have wondered if the Silk Road was a transmission route not just for goods, but for infectious disease.
千百年以来，丝绸之路由连接远东、南亚、中东、西欧的海上和陆上路线组成。不言而喻，人们旅行的时候，随身携带的还有病原体。所以，科学家和历史学家怀疑，丝绸之路运输的不仅仅是货物，还有传染性疾病。

Now we have the first hard evidence of ancient Silk Road travelers spreading their infections. The find comes from a 2,000-year-old latrine that had first been excavated in 1992. The report is in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
现在，我们有了第一个确凿的证据，证明古代丝绸之路的游客传播了自身的疾病。这项结果来自于在1992年发掘的一个有2000年历史的茅厕。该项研究结果发表在《考古科学：报告》杂志上。

“So the site is a relay station on the Silk Road in northwest China. It's just to the eastern end of the Tarim Basin, which is a large arid area just to the east of the Taklamakan desert, and not far from the Gobi Desert. So this is a dry part of China.”
“这里是中国西北部丝绸之路的一个中转站。其位于塔里木盆地的东端。塔里木盆地这块广阔干旱的地区位于塔克拉玛干沙漠的东部，距离戈壁沙漠不远。是中国的一个干旱地带。”

Piers Mitchell, paleopathologist at the University of Cambridge, and one of the study’s authors, along with his student Ivy Yeh and colleagues in China.
皮尔斯·米切尔是剑桥大学的研究古代疾病的病理学家，同时也是该报告的作者之一。他和自己的学生艾薇以及来自中国的同事们一同进行了该项研究。

In the latrine, archaeologists found used hygiene sticks wrapped with cloth. These were used for what you think they were used for.
在挖掘的茅厕里，考古学家发现了用过的用布包裹的木棍。当然，它的用途呢~，想想就知道啦~

“This excavation was great because the cloth was still preserved and the feces was still adherent to the cloth on some of the sticks. So the archaeologist kept these sticks in the museum. And so my Ph.D. student, Ivy Yeh, who’s first author on the paper, she went out to China took some scrapings from the feces adherent to the cloth. So we were then able to analyze that down the microscope when she brought it back to Cambridge.”
这个发现非常的伟大，因为这些布仍然完整保存，同时粪便还附着在一些棍子的布上。所以，考古学家将这些棍子保存在了博物馆。所以，我的博士学生，艾薇，同时也是该论文的第一作者，去了中国刮取了布上一些粪便。这样，我们就能够在显微镜上进析她带回剑桥的样本。

Where they found eggs from parasites—including one from a liver fluke.
他们发现了寄生虫的卵，还有肝吸虫的卵。

“And that's the exciting one because that's only found in eastern and southern China and in Korea, where they have marshy areas that have the right snails and the right fish.”
这些发现，让我们非常的兴奋，因为，这些病原体仅存在于中国东部和南部以及韩国，那里的沼泽地有含有这些病原体的蜗牛和鱼类。

The fluke needs snails and fish for its lifecycle, but there were no such snails or fish in this dry region of china. So the unlucky traveler who harbored the parasite had to have transported the disease to that spot.
肝吸虫需要依靠蜗牛和鱼类进行生命循环，但是在中国干旱地区并不存在这些病原体所需要的蜗牛和鱼类。所以，携带这些病原体的倒霉游客，将这些疾病带到了该地区。

“Well firstly it tells us that people were doing very long journeys along the Silk Road and you might think that's obvious. But no one really knew how long people were traveling. Some people may have been trading, only going short distances selling their goods on to the next person. And so the goods might have gone all the way along the Silk Road, but people might not. But we know that some people were doing huge distances….
首先，这告诉我们人们沿着丝绸之路跋涉千里，可能你认为，这是非常明显的。但是，对于人们跋涉的多远的路程，无人可知。有些人，可能只需要行进较短的距离，将自己的货物卖给下一个人。所以，货物可能经长途跋涉，但是人可就不一定了啊~但是我们知道，有些人的确长途跋涉，不远万里~

“Secondly it shows that this was, would be a viable route for the spread of those other infectious diseases like Bubonic plague and leprosy and anthrax that people had previously suggested might have been spread between East Asia and Europe along the Silk Road. Because modern genetic analyses have shown similarities between the strains of one end and the other.”
其次，这项发现告诉我们，之前人们认为黑死病、麻风病和炭疽已经传播到丝绸之路沿途的东亚以及欧洲。可能存在某种合理路径来供疾病传播。因为，现代基因分析表明，不同地区的菌株存在相似性。

Mitchell says there’s much more work to be done to better understand the spread of diseases around the world. Perhaps from analyzing skeletons—or various other kinds of remains—to be found along the Silk Road.
米切尔表示，为了更好的了解疾病是如何在世界范围传播的，还有很多工作需要去做。可能分析丝绸之路沿途的尸体骨骼——或者各种各样的其他的残骸吧!