双语：最古老的面包现身中东约有14000年历史

　　Historians and archaeologists have traditionally linked bread to the dawn of agriculture, when people domesticated plants such as wheat, cultivated them and ground them into flour.

　　传统意义上，历史学家和考古学家都认为面包出现于农业诞生初期，那个时候人们才开始种植作物，再把粮食研磨成粉。

　　But a new discovery of blackened crumbs at an ancient stone building in the Middle East indicates that people were baking bread thousands of years earlier. Based on the radiocarbon dates of charred plants in nearby fireplaces, the food scraps are about 14,400 years old. That’s about 4,000 years before agriculture emerged, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

　　然而，但是，在中东一幢古老的石头建筑中发现的一些黑色的碎屑表明，人们早在数千年前就会做面包了。根据放射性碳定年法，旁边的壁炉里燃烧物有14400年的历史，比农业的出现早了4000年，据星期一发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》的一篇文章报道。

　　“Our work shows that bread was not a product of settled, complex societies but a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society,” said study author Amaia Arranz Otaegui, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen.

　　文章作者、哥本哈根大学博士后研究员阿马娅·阿兰斯·奥泰吉说：“我们的研究表明，面包不是定居、复杂社会的产物，而是旧石器狩猎采集时代的产物。”

　　Archaeologists found the bread remains in sediment samples at a site named Shubayqa 1 in Jordan. The structure was oval with a fireplace in the center. Arranz Otaegui said she did not know whether the building was a dwelling or had other, perhaps ceremonial, purposes.

　　考古学家在约旦Shubayqa 1遗址地区发现的这些仍是沉积物样本的面包。这座建筑呈椭圆形，中间有一座壁炉。奥泰吉说她不知道这个建筑是用于居住还是有其他用处，也许是用于祭祀仪式。

　　Sifting through the sediment, Arranz Otaegui noticed samples she couldn’t place at first; they were not seeds, nuts or charred wood. Instead, they looked just like the crumbs that accumulate at the bottom of a toaster. Study author and University College London graduate student Lara Gonzalez Carretero, using Natufian technology, has been experimentally re-creating the flour and dough. Pores in the samples mimicked the bubbles that appeared in the re-created bread.

　　通过对沉积物的过滤，奥泰吉注意到一些她一开始无法确定的样本：它们不是种子、坚果或烧焦的木头，却很像是面包炉底部累积的面包屑。另一位研究人员、伦敦大学学院的拉腊·冈萨雷斯·卡雷特罗通过纳吐夫技术再造了面粉和生面团，样本中的气孔和再造面包上的气泡很像。

　　“The main criteria on the identification of bread is its porous texture,” Arranz Otaegui said. “If we take other foodstuffs like porridge or gruel, we will see pieces of grain but not all these micro-pores.” She said the closest common bread to these crumbs might be a pita, but she also said the Natufian bread was probably unleavened, like matzoh or tortillas.

　　奥泰吉称：“确定其为面包的主要依据就是它的多孔构造，如果是麦片粥或燕麦粥之类的食物，碎屑中会有谷物的碎片而不是这些细孔。”奥泰吉说有这种碎屑的面包应该很像皮塔饼，不过她也说这些纳吐夫面包是未发酵的，像犹太逾越节薄饼和墨西哥玉米面饼那样。

　　Archaeologists knew that hunter-gatherers in this region could grind and bake food, “The Shubayqa breadlike find is, however, the first of its kind,” he said.

　　考古学家们知道，该地区的狩猎采集者可以研磨和烘烤食物。他说：“这种舒巴卡式面包的发现尚系首例。”

　　Cereal plants are high in calories. The traditional view was that early farmers domesticated those plants first, and then bakers began to turn cereals into bread. Study author Dorian Fuller, a professor of archaeobotany at University College London, said the discovery made him question “whether domestication was really driven by caloric necessity,” as has been claimed.

　　谷类植物的热量很高。传统观点认为，早期的农民首先驯化了这些植物，然后面包师开始把谷物变成面包。该研究的作者、伦敦大学学院的植物考古学教授多里安·富勒说，这一发现让他质疑“人们可能不是因为要获得身体的热量才开始种植作物。”

　　It was unclear to the study authors whether these breads were regularly eaten or occasional meals, or perhaps even luxury foods; other researchers have suggested that bread and beer were consumed during Natufian feasts.

　　这些研究人员们还不能确定这些面包是日常食用还是偶尔吃，或者是否是一种奢侈品。其他研究人员认为，只有在纳图夫人(注：约公元1万年前的史前人)的宴会上人们才会吃面包和啤酒。