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About 5,000 years ago in Peru, culture kicked into high gear. During what's called the late Archaic period, South Americans formed permanent communities with complex architecture, religion and agriculture. And now scientists have shown that maize played a big part in this development. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
大约五千年前，秘鲁的文化开始高速发展。在古风晚期，南美洲人发展了建筑业，宗教和农业，建立了稳定的社区。如今经科学家证明，玉米在发展中起到了重要的作用。这项研究发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。
For decades, researchers have argued about whether corn was a dietary staple in the late Archaic. The answer, it turns out, was hidden in the turf, tools and toilets of 13 archaeological sites along the coast of Peru. Of 126 soil samples dating back to the late Archaic, 48 percent contained maize pollen. Of 14 stone tools found at one site, 79 percent still carried traces of maize. And finally, scientists analyzed 62 human and canine coprolites, or fossilized feces. Maize was the dominant starch, present in 69 percent of the ancient samples.
几十年来，研究人员一直在争论玉米是否是太古时期餐桌上的主食？事实证明，答案就藏在秘鲁沿海13处考古遗址的草泥地，石具和厕所里。在126种可以追溯到太古时期的土壤样本中，其中48%含有玉米粉；在出自同一处遗址的14个石具中，79%的石具上残留有玉米的痕迹。最后，科学家们分析了62份人类和狗狗的粪便化石，发现玉米是淀粉的主要成分，在化石样本占69%。
Some of the evidence is literally crap, but the conclusion isn't: a corny dietary staple helped drive the growth of civilization in the late Archaic.
有些证据简直就是废话，但结论除外：一个以玉米为主食的饮食文化确实推动了太古文明的发展。
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