2021年经济学人 南美洲的一个葬礼面具引发了有趣的问题

（单词翻译）

Science and Technology

科技版块

Funerary rituals

葬礼仪式

Blood not so simple

血不是那么简单

A South American funeral mask raises intriguing¹ questions

南美洲的一个葬礼面具引发了有趣的问题

A funeral mask, photographed by Yoshii Yutaka of the Sicán Archaeological Project, in Peru, was discovered 30 years ago, 800km to the north of Lima.

这幅丧葬面具由秘鲁西坎考古项目的吉井丰拍摄的，30年前在利马以北800公里处发现的。

The Sicán were a group who flourished around 500 years before the arrival, in the 1500s, of Europeans.

西坎人是大约500年前，在16世纪欧洲人到来之前就已经繁荣昌盛的一个群体。

The red paint adorning² the mask is made of cinnabar, a compound of mercury and sulphur.

面具上的红色颜料是由朱砂制成的，朱砂是汞和硫的化合物。

But turning cinnabar into paint requires a binding⁴ agent—and in this case it must have been a good one, to keep the paint attached to the mask for so long.

但是把朱砂变成颜料需要一种粘合剂，在这种情况下，必定是一种很好的粘合剂，才能让颜料附着在面具上这么长时间。

Luciana da Costa Carvalho of Oxford⁵ University therefore set out to discover what it was.

因此，牛津大学的卢西亚娜·达·科斯塔·卡瓦略开始探索这种粘合剂到底是什么。

Initial mass spectroscopy suggested proteins were involved, but shed no light on which.

最初的质谱分析表明涉及蛋白质，但并没有阐明具体是哪种。

A follow-up study, however, produced the astonishing suggestion that the binder⁶ in question was chimpanzee blood—astonishing because chimps⁷ are African, not American animals.

然而，一项后续研究得出了一个令人咋舌的结论，即所讨论的粘合剂是黑猩猩的血液，令人惊讶的是，黑猩猩是非洲动物，而不是美洲动物。

Further investigation⁸ revealed the mistake.

进一步调查发现了这个错误。

The blood was actually from chimps' close relatives, Homo sapiens.

这些血液实际上来自黑猩猩的近亲——智人。

Human blood is sticky when it clots⁹, and would certainly bind³ cinnabar to gold for a millennium—but so would that of many other species.

人类血液凝结时是粘性的，可以将朱砂和黄金粘合长达一千年，但许多其他物种的血液也是如此。

This suggests human blood in particular was chosen for another, presumably ritual, reason.

这表明，特别选择了人类的血液，大概是仪式原因。

Being picked as the donor¹⁰ of this blood may well have been an honour, though that is impossible to tell.

尽管这很难说明白，但是被选为这种血液的捐献者可能是一种荣誉。

But given many pre-Columbian peoples' proclivity¹¹ for human sacrifice, rather than mere¹² bloodletting, it might not have been an honour that was highly sought after.

但考虑到许多前哥伦布时代，人们倾向于活人献祭，而不仅仅是放血，这可能不是一项备受追捧的荣誉。