??when did humans start wearing clothes?
人类是从什么时候开始穿上衣服的?
in popular culture, cave men (and women) are often draped in furs, but archaeological evidence of what our stone age ancestors actually wore and how they made clothes is thin.
在主流认知里，穴居男人（以及女人）通常会披着毛皮，但有关我们石器时代祖先的实际穿着以及他们如何制作衣服的考古证据却很少。
fur, leather and other organic materials generally aren’t preserved, especially beyond 100,000 years ago. however, researchers say 62 bone tools used to process and smooth animal skins found in a cave in morocco may be some of the earliest proxy evidence for clothing in the archaeological record. the tools are between 90,000 and 120,000 years old.
毛皮、皮革和其他有机材料通常很难保存下来，尤其是距今10万年前的。然而，研究人员称，在摩洛哥一处洞穴发现了62件用于加工和平整动物毛皮的骨制工具（这些工具距今有9万至12万年的历史），这可能是考古记录中最早关于人类着装的指向性证据。
“i wasn’t expecting to find them. i was studying this assemblage initially to look at the animal bones to reconstruct the human diet,” said emily yuko hallett, a postdoctoral scientist at the max planck institute for the science of human history’s pan african evolution research group.
马克斯·普朗克人类历史科学研究所泛非进化研究小组的博士后科学家艾米丽·尤科·哈雷特说：“我没想到会发现这些骨制工具。我最初的研究目的是为了观察动物骨骼，以重现人类饮食。”
“and when i was going through them — there were around 12,000 animal bones — i started to notice these bones that had a very different shape. it wasn’t a natural shape. and they had sheen on them, and they were shiny, and they had striations (grooves or scratches) on them,” said hallett, who was an author of a study on the findings that published thursday in the journal iscience.
周四，该研究发表在《iscience》杂志上，该研究的作者之一哈利特说：“当我仔细检查着近1.2万块动物骨头时，我开始注意到这些骨头的形状与众不同。那不是自然形成的形状。它们很光滑，并富有光泽，表面有沟槽或划痕。”
unlike the bones discarded after consuming an animal for food, bones used regularly by human hands gain a sheen and polish.
与食用动物后丢弃的骨头不同，人类经常使用的骨头表面很光滑，并且具有光泽。
she also found a pattern of cut marks on other bones in the cave that suggested the humans who lived there were removing the skins of?carnivores?such as sand foxes, golden jackals and wildcats, for their furs. the bones of cattle-like animals showed different markings, suggesting they were processed for meat.
她还在洞穴里的其他骨头上发现了切割的痕迹，这表明居住在那里的人类为了获取食肉动物的皮毛，从沙狐、金豺和野猫的身上割下了皮。牛等动物的骨头则显示出不同的痕迹，表明它们被加工成肉。
“i’m most excited about the skinning marks on the carnivores, because i haven’t seen this pattern described before. and my hope is that archaeologists working in much older sites also start looking for this pattern,” she said.
她说：“最让我兴奋的是食肉动物身上的剥皮痕迹，这是我以前从未见过的。我希望在更古老的遗址工作的考古学家也能发现这样的痕迹。”
it’s challenging to figure out when the use of clothing began. it’s highly likely early humans like neanderthals that lived in cold climates long before homo sapiens arrived on the scene had clothing to protect themselves from the extreme weather, but there’s not much hard evidence.
我们很难弄清楚人类是从什么时候开始穿上衣服的。像尼安德特人这样的早期人类很有可能在智人到来之前很久就生活在寒冷的环境了，他们穿着衣服以抵御寒冷，但这种看法缺乏证据支持。
genetic studies of lice indicate that clothing lice?diverged?from their human head louse ancestors at least 83,000 years ago and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago, which suggests humans were wearing clothes before major migrations out of africa.
对虱子基因的研究表明，衣虱至少在83000年前就出现了，可能早在17万年前就与头虱的祖先分化出来了，这表明人类在走出非洲的大迁徙之前就开始穿上衣服了。
hallett said that one of 98 400,000-year-old tools made from elephant bone and recently discovered in italy may have been used to smooth leather. they were likely used by neanderthals. eyed needles emerge in the archaeological record much later, about 40,0
00 years ago.
哈利特说，最近在意大利发现的98件40万年前用象骨制成的工具可能是尼安德特人用来打磨皮革的。而考古记录中出现缝纫针的时间要晚得多，大约在4万年前。
the bone tools from morocco that hallett discovered were shaped a bit like a spatula and would have been used to remove connective tissue. similar bone tools are still used by some leather workers today, hallett said.
哈利特发现的来自摩洛哥的骨工具形状有点像刮刀，可能是用来去除结缔组织的。哈利特说，如今仍有一些皮匠在使用类似的骨制工具。
“the reason people like using these tools is that they don’t pierce the skin, and so you’re left with an intact skin,” she said.
她说：“人们喜欢使用这些工具的原因是它们不会刺伤皮面，这样才能获得一块完整的皮革。”
the bone tools were found in contrebandiers cave on morocco’s atlantic coast. hallett said the climate 120,000 years ago would have been mild, as it is now, raising the possibility that early clothes could have been for ornamentation as well as protection.
这些骨制工具是在摩洛哥大西洋海岸的孔特雷班迪尔斯洞穴中发现的。哈利特说，那个地方12万年前的气候可能和现在一样温和，这意味着人类早期的衣服可能是为了装饰和防护的。
“there’s really no extreme temperatures or extreme climate conditions there in the past or today. so that makes me wonder was clothing strictly?utilitarian?or was it symbolic or was it a little bit of both?”
“无论过去还是今天，那里确实没有出现极端温度或极端气候。因此，我很好奇，那时的衣服究竟起实用性还是象征性的，抑或两者兼而有之?”
(全文共586个词，标红单词为考研重难点词汇)
重难点词汇：
carnivore?[?kɑ?rn?v??r] n. 食肉动物；食虫植物
diverge?[da??v??rd?] vi. 分歧；偏离；分叉
utilitarian?[,jut?l?’ter??n] adj. 实用的；功利的
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