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Science and Technolgy.
科技。
The settlement of Madagascar.
定居马达加斯加。
Thirty lost souls.
三十个迷失的灵魂。
How Africa's largest island was colonised by Asians.
解读非洲第一大岛成为亚洲人殖民地的历史。
MADAGASCAR is renowned for its unusual animals, particularly its lemurs, a group of primates extinct elsewhere on the planet. Its human population, though, is equally unusual. The island was one of the last places on Earth to be settled, receiving its earliest migrants in the middle of the first millennium AD. Moreover, despite Madagascar's proximity to Africa (400km, or 250 miles, at the closest point) those settlers have long been suspected of having arrived from the Malay Archipelago-modern Indonesia-more than 6,000km away.
马达加斯加岛因岛上的稀有动物而闻名，尤其是世界其他地方已绝迹的灵长类动物——狐猴。人类在该岛定居的历史，也同样不寻常。该岛是最后几个人类选择的定居地之一，于公元后头一个千年的中叶迎来了最早一批到此定居的移民。此外，尽管马达加斯加岛毗邻非洲大陆（最近距离400公里，合250英里），长久以来外界猜测岛上的居民是从马来群岛，即现在的印度尼西亚，这个6000多公里外的地方迁移来的。
There are three reasons for this suspicion. First, it has been recognised for centuries that the Malagasy language, though distinct, borrows a lot of words from Javanese, Malay and the tongues of Borneo and Sulawesi. Second, the islanders' culture includes artefacts ranging from boats with outriggers to xylophones, and crops such as bananas and rice, that are (or, rather, were then) characteristically Asian, not African. And third, genetic evidence has linked the modern Malagasy with people living in eastern Indonesia as well as farther off in Melanesia and Oceania.
作此猜测原因有三。首先，存在了几个世纪的一种看法认为，该岛使用的马尔加什语，虽然独特，但很多的词汇是来自爪哇语、马来语和一部分口语来自婆罗洲及苏拉威西岛当地方言。其次，该岛居民的文化——包括从装有舷外浮木的小船到木琴等一系列手工制品，还有一些农作物，如香蕉和大米——都是（也可以说或多或少是、那时候是）具有亚洲特点的，而不是非洲。再次，基因学证据已证明现代的马达加斯加人与东印尼人以及相距更遥远的美拉尼西亚人和生活在大洋洲的人都是有联系的。
Now, Murray Cox of Massey University in New Zealand and his colleagues have put the matter beyond doubt by showing not only where the first settlers came from, but also how many of them there were. And the answer is surprisingly few. Though Dr Cox is unable, with the method he used, to work out how many men were in the original party, the number of women was 30.
现在，新西兰梅西大学的Murray Cox和他的同事们不仅科学地展示了首批定居者源自哪里，而且还弄清了定居者的人数，证据确凿。让人感到吃惊的是已确定的定居者人数极少。虽然Cox博士使用的方法没能弄清首批定居者中的男性数量，但可以确定女性有30人。
He drew this conclusion, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, by sampling the DNA of 266 Malagasy people and comparing it with existing samples from 2,745 Indonesians. He concentrated on DNA from mitochondria. These are cellular components involved in energy production that are descended from bacteria which became symbiotic with humanity's ancestors almost 2 billion years ago, and thus have their own genes. People inherit mitochondria only from their mothers, which is why only the female line of descent can be tracked using them.
Cox博士最近在学术期刊《皇家学会进展》（Proceedings of the Royal Society ）发表的文章中对266名马达加斯加人进行DNA抽样，同现有的2745名印尼人的DNA样品进行了比对，得出了以上结论。他把重点放在对线粒体DNA的研究上。线粒体DNA是一种参与生物体能量制造过程的细胞器，起源于20亿年前与人类祖先共生的细菌，因而线粒体有自己的基因。人类仅能从母亲身上遗传线粒体DNA（线粒体DNA是严格的母系遗传），所以只有母系血统能使用追踪线粒体DNA的方法。
The advantage of studying mitochondrial DNA is that it is not shuffled around by sex. Dr Cox and his colleagues were therefore able to make a statistical comparison of Indonesian and Malagasy mitochondrial genomes knowing that any changes which had occurred since they separated would be the result of rare mutations. These can be spotted and accounted for. Indeed, because they can be tracked they add to the information which can be extracted from a sample.
研究线粒体DNA的优点在于它不会被性别打乱。Cox博士和他的同事们因此能进行印尼人和马达加斯加人线粒体基因组的数据比对，从而推断出原本相同的线粒体DNA天各一方后发生的任何遗传变化都是源于一些罕见的基因突变。这些都是可以辨认及作出解释的，因为科学家可以追踪线粒体DNA上附加的信息，而这些信息可以从线粒体DNA样品中提取。
Having confirmed that Malagasy and Indonesian DNA separated about 1,200 years ago, which is statistically close to the date archaeologists suggest Madagascar was colonised, the team then asked their data how many women, drawn at random from the Malay Archipelago of that period, would have been needed to explain the variation in mitochondrial DNA in Madagascar. The answer was about 30.
由于已确定马达加斯加人和印尼人的DNA是在约1200年前分开的——这与考古学家们统计得出的马达加斯加成为殖民地的时间相近，接着Cox博士带领的小组就开始对随机抽取的那一时期的数据进行女性人数的解析，看需要达到多少人才可以解释线粒体DNA在马达加斯加岛产生的变异情况。最后得出的女性人数为30人。
That answer bears on a second question: was the colonisation of Madagascar a deliberate act or an accident? The first is possible. At the time, much of the Malay Archipelago was in the hands of the Srivijayan empire, an entity that could certainly have sent expeditions across the Indian Ocean, had it so willed. But there is no historical evidence that it did. In any case if it had, it is likely that a successful colonisation by one group would have been followed by others, as happened when Europeans discovered the Americas.
由此又产生了第二个疑问：在马达加斯加进行的殖民活动是蓄意而为还是偶然而为？前者是有可能的。那一时期，马来群岛中的大多数岛屿都被一个名为Srivijayan的帝国所掌控。该帝国只要愿意，就完全有可能派出远征队穿越印度洋。但还没有史学依据证明他们派出了远征队。不管怎样，如果他们真的这么做了，那么第一批人殖民成功，就会有其他人紧随其后，正如欧洲人发现了美洲大陆后的情况一样。
Most likely, then, the first Malagasy were accidental castaways, news of whose adventure never made it back home. But there is still a puzzle. Most ships' crews are male. Though the number of men in the original party will remain obscure until an analysis like Dr Cox's is done on the Y-chromosome of Malagasy men (Y-chromosomes include DNA passed exclusively down the male line in the way that mitochondrial DNA is passed down the female line), the presence of women on board a trading vessel would have been unusual. Unless, of course, the women themselves were the objects being traded. Possibly, then, Madagascar was colonised by an errant slave ship. Which would make its history even stranger than anyone had previously thought.
那么，首批马达加斯加人也很可能是因船只失事而意外漂流到该岛的，而这批人后来也没办法回到家乡。可是这种说法仍然让人困惑，因为大多数的船员由男性担任，虽然在对马达加斯加人男性的Y染色体进行数据分析之前（包含DNA的Y染色体单传男系，同样的，线粒体DNA单传女系），例如Cox博士的小组所作的工作，该岛首批居民的男性人数尚未明晰，那一时期在一艘贸易货船上出现女性是很罕见的事情。当然，例外情况是，女性本身就是贸易品。那马达加斯加岛就可能是一艘迷途的奴隶商船的殖民地了。这样一来，这段历史就会比先前任何人所想的更加奇特。
