Puberty Hasn't Changed Since the Ice Age
青春期自冰河时代以来未曾改变

「青春期」,从冰河时代以来未曾改变

难度:六级/考研单词:779读后感:18生词过滤:六级
Biological anthropologist April Nowell had been studying the skeletons of Ice Age children for two decades when she began to see her own kids in a new light.They had just hit puberty and her house was suddenly filled with gangly teenagers, who ate voraciously and had to be dragged out of bed most mornings.
生物人类学家艾普丽尔·诺威尔已经研究冰河时代的儿童骨骼二十年了,当她开始以新的视角看待自己的孩子们时,他们刚刚进入青春期,她的家里突然充满了瘦高的青少年,他们食欲旺盛,大多数早上都得被拖出床铺。
It made her want to know more about the fascinating changes we undergo between childhood and adulthood only in her study subjects, most of whom lived thousands or even millions of years ago.
它让她想更多地了解童年到成年之间发生的迷人变化——仅限于她的研究对象,其中大多数生活在数千甚至数百万年前。
So Nowell conducted one of the first studies of puberty in a population from the Paleolithic period.Often referred to as the Ice Age, the Paleolithic period took place during the early phase of the Stone Age, when humans made tools and weapons of stone.
索诺尔对史前时期一个群体进行了关于青春期的首次研究。通常被称为冰河时期,史前时期发生在石器时代的早期阶段,那时人类制作石制工具和武器。
Nowell analyzed the teeth and bones of 13 Paleolithic individuals who died in adolescence around 25,000 years ago, and estimated that for the majority, puberty had begun by 13.5 years of age only slightly later than most humans today.There was some variability, however, with a few individuals taking several years longer than their peers.
诺威尔分析了 13 具约 25000 年前死亡的旧石器时代青少年的牙齿和骨骼,并估计其中大多数人的青春期在 13.5 岁时开始——这比今天的大多数人稍晚一些。然而,也存在一些差异,有些个体的青春期比同龄人晚了几年的时间。
Nowell and her colleagues also examined details of the children's burials and trace DNA.The findings surprised her, Nowell says.
诺威尔及其同事还考察了儿童的墓葬细节并追踪了 DNA。她说,这些发现让她感到惊讶。
"There's this sense in pop culture that adolescents today are entering puberty far earlier than ever," she says some people blame the hormones in milk or environmental chemicals for the perceived change."But much to our surprise, we saw that adolescents today are actually following a blueprint for puberty that was set thousands of years ago."
“流行文化中有一种观点,认为现在的青少年比以往任何时候都更早进入青春期,”她说——“有些人把牛奶中的激素或环境化学物质视为这种变化的原因。但出乎我们意料的是,我们发现现在的青少年实际上正在遵循数千年前就已经设定的青春期蓝图。”
The researchers relied on methods used to analyze skeletons from medieval and certain prehistoric populations.Studying the mineralization of a person's canine teeth, as well as the maturation of the bones of the hand, elbow, wrist, neck, and pelvis, can reveal what stage of puberty an individual had reached at their time of death.
研究人员依赖于分析中世纪和某些史前人群骨骼所使用的方法。通过研究一个人的犬齿矿化以及手、肘、腕、颈和骨盆骨骼的成熟度,可以揭示该个体在死亡时所处的青春期阶段。
Overall, Nowell says the skeletons were healthy, with the obvious exception that these individuals died during adolescence though their bones did exhibit some pathologies, including trauma in at least five of the 11 individuals, suggesting they led a physically demanding and hazardous lifestyle.They also had muscular right arms suggesting that they were participating in the group's hunting and gathering activities.
总体来说,诺威尔说这些骨骼都很健康,唯一的例外是这些个体在青春期就去世了——尽管他们的骨骼显示出一些病理,包括至少五个人有创伤,这表明他们过着一种体力要求高且危险的生活方式。他们还有肌肉发达的右臂——这表明他们参与了群体的狩猎和采集活动。
The data collected also suggests the Paleolithic kids underwent growth spurts similar to those experienced by modern humans, but significantly shorter than those of medieval children in other words, they matured faster, which the researchers took to suggest that the Paleolithic kids lived in a healthier environment.
数据收集还表明,旧石器时代的孩子经历了与现代人类相似的成长爆发期,但比中世纪儿童的生长爆发期要短得多——换句话说,他们成熟得更快,研究人员据此推测旧石器时代的孩子生活在更健康的环境中。
The timing of puberty has long been recognized by biologists and scholars as a sensitive barometer of the kinds of environmental conditions that might contribute to healthy growth as well as an important reflection of longer-term trends in human evolution, says Sharon DeWitte, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
青春期的时间长期以来被生物学家和学者们视为环境条件可能对健康成长产生影响的敏感晴雨表——同时也是人类进化长期趋势的重要反映,科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的人类学家莎伦·德维特(Sharon DeWitte)说道。
"The finding that the timing of certain stages has not changed provides further evidence of how tightly constrained this part of the life course is, from an evolutionary perspective," DeWitte says.
"发现某些阶段的时间并未改变,这进一步证明了从进化角度来看,这一生命历程部分是如何紧密受限的,”德威特说。
Nowell hopes to learn more about how teenager-dom was understood in the culture at the time was it considered a special and rarefied life stage?
Nowell 希望更多地了解当时文化中如何理解青少年期——这是否被视为一个特殊且稀有的生命阶段?
Some hints may emerge from societies outside of the industrialized west.Ethnographic data from hunter-gatherer foraging societies show that teenagers tend to grow up in mixed-age and mixed-gender groups, and that by the time they hit adolescence, their roles are pretty clear.
一些启示可能来自工业化西方以外的社会。来自狩猎采集者和农业社会的民族志数据显示,青少年往往在混合年龄和混合性别的群体中成长,而且当他们进入青春期时,他们的角色非常明确。
"They don't have to try and figure out where they fit into society," Nowell says."Their place in that community is well known, and so they don't go through that kind of teen angst that is the basis of every coming-of-age movie."
“他们不必努力去想自己在社会中的位置,”诺威尔说,“他们在社区中的位置众所周知,所以他们不会经历那种是每部成长电影基础的青少年时期的焦虑。”
Studying teens who lived thousands of years ago has given her a bit more empathy for the habits of the young adults in her own house.Nowell's teens would stay up so late and sleep so late it would make her crazy, she says.
研究了几千年前的青少年,让她对自己的家中年轻人的习惯有了更多的同理心。她说,如果像诺尔那样,青少年会熬夜独处、睡觉独处,她会疯掉的。
But studying the evolution of groups with adolescents made her think of the ways that having someone up late and monitoring safety may have been an evolutionary advantage for small groups in the past.
但是研究青少年群体的进化让她想到了,在过去,拥有一个上位者来监督安全可能对小群体来说是一种进化优势。
Nowell would imagine a paleolithic teen in repose, lying by a crackling fire under a blanket of stars.Maybe there was a dog barking or a baby crying, but most people would be sound asleep, except for a solo teenager who's looking up at the sky and dreaming, she says.
诺威尔想象一个旧石器时代的少年在休息,躺在篝火旁,被繁星织成的毯子覆盖着。也许有狗在吠叫,或者婴儿在哭泣,但大多数人都在沉睡,只有一位孤独的少年仰望星空,她在说。
"I just love that idea, and it really helped to lower my temperature when it came to my own kids sleeping until two in the afternoon."
"我就喜欢这个主意,它真的帮助我降低了温度,当我的孩子们一直睡到下午两点的时候。"
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