[ti:Study: Prehistoric Humans Were Not Very Nutritious+++研究发现史前人类同类相食并无非为了食物] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.16]Prehistoric people may have hunted and killed [00:04.96]other members of their own species and eaten them, [00:09.40]but probably not for food. [00:12.48]That is what a new study written by James Cole of the University of Brighton in England says. [00:23.00]Cole says compared to large animals, humans do not provide much food. [00:31.48]His study was published in the journal Scientific Reports. [00:36.96]Cole studied nine places where fossils have been found [00:42.64]and where researchers have found evidence of cannibalism. [00:49.00]Such signs include cutting marks on the bones. [00:55.16]Scientists dated the sites to between 14,000 and more than 900,000 years ago. [01:06.05]That is the so-called Paleolithic period, also known as the Stone Age. [01:15.24]Five of the sites had Neanderthal fossils, the remains of earlier human ancestors. [01:24.60]Two sites had fossils of prehistoric members of our own species [01:31.64]and the others had fossils from much earlier human ancestors. [01:38.64]Cole estimated how many calories each of the bodies at each site had. [01:47.08]He used earlier studies that found eating an average-sized modern-day human [01:55.00]could provide up to 144,000 calories. [02:01.80]He then made his estimates, based on the ages of the bodies at the sites. [02:09.12]The researcher found that the hunters would not get as much energy [02:14.56]from the humans as they would from one large animal [02:19.76]-- like a mammoth, a woolly rhino or a bear. [02:25.24]So, Cole asked, why would the early humans hunt and kill their own species? [02:34.44]"You're dealing with an animal that is as smart as you are, [02:39.32]as resourceful as you are, and can fight back in the way you fight them," Cole noted. [02:49.24]He says our ancestors may have eaten members of their species [02:54.56]who had died because they did not have to be hunted. [03:00.44]But he says cannibalism probably took place for reasons other than the need for food. [03:10.12]He said it could have happened after times of violence or to defend territory. [03:18.76]Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley [03:23.48]and Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder [03:30.16]said they do not know any scientists [03:34.12]who believe our ancestors hunted each other for food. [03:40.52]In an email, Villa said the new study [03:44.44]"does not change our general understanding of human cannibalism." [03:51.96]But Palmira Saladie, of the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology [03:59.84]and Social Evolution near Barcelona, Spain, said Cole's study [04:06.64]"will undoubtedly be key in the interpretation of new sites [04:12.68]and the reevaluation of old interpretations." [04:18.88]In an email, she wrote that, [04:21.71]to understand why our ancestors sometimes ate each other, [04:27.76]"we still have a long way to go." [04:32.12]I'm Dorothy Gundy. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM