研究人員追蹤了一個遙遠(yuǎn)的狩獵采集部落，以確定古代人類是如何引發(fā)文化革命的

研究人員追蹤了一個遙遠(yuǎn)的狩獵采集部落，以確定古代人類是如何引發(fā)文化革命的

Humans' ability to brainstorm solutions, share them with others, and improve upon them over time sets us apart from even our closest primate relatives. This has allowed us to develop complex learning systems and innovative tools to ensure humanity’s success since the Stone Age.

人類集思廣益、與他人分享解決方案并隨著時間的推移不斷改進(jìn)的能力，使我們與我們最親近的靈長類親戚有所不同。這使我們能夠開發(fā)復(fù)雜的學(xué)習(xí)系統(tǒng)和創(chuàng)新的工具，以確保人類自石器時代以來的成功。

Madison Dapcevich

But just how ancient humans deployed and built upon existing information 300,000 years ago has long mystified scientists, which is why researchers from the University of Zurich and Central European University in Budapest set out to determine how social interactions between various groups of hunter-gatherers helped to spur advanced communication. To do so, the team turned to one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies left in the world: the Agta people in the Philippines.

但是，30萬年前遠(yuǎn)古人類是如何利用和構(gòu)建現(xiàn)有信息的，這一直困擾著科學(xué)家們，這就是為什么來自蘇黎世大學(xué)和布達(dá)佩斯中歐大學(xué)的研究人員開始研究不同狩獵-采集群體之間的社會互動是如何促進(jìn)高級交流的。為了做到這一點(diǎn)，研究小組轉(zhuǎn)向了世界上僅存的幾個狩獵采集社會之一:菲律賓的阿格塔人(Agta)。

The Agta people have a strong social structure built around small family units linked by friendship. Members of various family groups will often travel to neighboring campsites to exchange information and socialize. To see how ideas were spread, tracking devices were put on 53 individuals to record social interactions every hour over the course of one month. Study participants were then paired together and given six medicinal plants that they could use to treat various ailments. They were told to come up with different combinations and share their findings among their connections.

阿格塔人有一個強(qiáng)大的社會結(jié)構(gòu)，圍繞著由友誼聯(lián)系起來的小型家庭單位。各種家庭團(tuán)體的成員經(jīng)常到鄰近的露營地交換信息和社交。為了了解想法是如何傳播的，研究人員讓53名參與者在一個月內(nèi)每小時記錄一次社交互動。然后，研究參與者被分成兩組，并被給予六種可以用來治療各種疾病的藥用植物。他們被要求想出不同的組合，并在他們的聯(lián)系中分享他們的發(fā)現(xiàn)。

The researchers simulated the complex cultural creation of a plant-based medicinal product. UZH

Over the course of the study, the tracking devices documented thousands of interactions both between people of their own camp as well as daily visits to outside camps. Researchers then developed a computer model based on the recorded interactions and simulated what it would look like if a fictitious plant-based medicinal product was created. This coexistence of ideas allowed for a variety of perspectives to offer different medicinal solutions to similar health-related problems; people share knowledge with every encounter, eventually leading to improved remedies over time.

在研究過程中，這些追蹤設(shè)備記錄了數(shù)千次他們自己營地的人們之間的互動，以及他們每天去外面營地的情況。然后，研究人員根據(jù)記錄的相互作用開發(fā)了一個計算機(jī)模型，并模擬了如果虛構(gòu)的基于植物的藥物產(chǎn)品被創(chuàng)造出來會是什么樣子。這種共存的想法允許從不同的角度為類似的健康相關(guān)問題提供不同的醫(yī)療解決方案;人們在每次遭遇時都會分享知識，最終會改善治療方法。

"It is fair to say that 'visits between camps' is the social media of current hunter-gatherers," said study author Andrea Migliano, professor of anthropology at UZH, in a statement. “When we need a new solution for a problem, we go online and use multiple sources to obtain information from a variety of people. Hunter-gatherers use their social network in exactly the same way."

研究報告的作者、烏茲大學(xué)的人類學(xué)教授安德里亞·米格里亞諾在一份聲明中說:“公平地說，‘營地之間的探訪’是當(dāng)前狩獵-采集者的社交媒體。”“當(dāng)我們需要一個新的解決方案時，我們會上網(wǎng)，利用多種渠道從各種各樣的人那里獲取信息。狩獵者和采集者使用社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)的方式完全相同。”

Researchers then created a secondary artificial network that simulated conditions where everyone is connected and information is immediately transmitted, much like the internet. They found that transferring information this way took longer for adaptations to occur because in-person collaboration does not happen simultaneously across different groups.

然后，研究人員創(chuàng)建了一個二級人工網(wǎng)絡(luò)，模擬每個人都被連接起來并立即傳輸信息的條件，就像互聯(lián)網(wǎng)一樣。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，以這種方式傳遞信息需要更長的時間來適應(yīng)，因為人與人之間的合作不會在不同的群體之間同時發(fā)生。

"Our findings indicate that this social structure of small and interconnected bands may have facilitated the sequence of cultural and technological revolutions that characterizes our species as we expanded within and then out of Africa," said author Lucio Vinicius, from UZH's Department of Anthropology.

“我們的發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，當(dāng)我們在非洲內(nèi)外擴(kuò)張時，這種小而相互聯(lián)系的群體的社會結(jié)構(gòu)可能促進(jìn)了我們這個物種特有的文化和技術(shù)革命的進(jìn)程，”來自UZH人類學(xué)部門的作者Lucio Vinicius說。

Study participants were given an initial set of six medicinal plants, which could be combined in triads to generate new drugs. Science Advances

The findings, published in Science Advances, build on previous work that found fluid social structures characterized cultural exchanges in Homo sapiens as long as 320,000 years ago, a connection that may have “facilitated the sequence of cultural and technological revolutions that characterizes our species."

發(fā)表在《科學(xué)進(jìn)展》雜志上的這一發(fā)現(xiàn)，是建立在此前的研究基礎(chǔ)上的。此前的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，早在32萬年前，智人的文化交流就以可變的社會結(jié)構(gòu)為特征，這種聯(lián)系可能“促進(jìn)了構(gòu)成我們這個物種特征的文化和技術(shù)革命的順序”。

"Humans have a unique capacity to create and accumulate culture. From a simple pencil to the International Space Station, human culture is a product of multiple minds over many generations, and cannot be recreated from scratch by one single individual,” said study co-author Dr Mark Dyble.

“人類具有創(chuàng)造和積累文化的獨(dú)特能力。從一支簡單的鉛筆到國際空間站，人類文化是幾代人多思想的產(chǎn)物，不可能由一個人從頭再創(chuàng)造出來。”