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DNA grants researchers a glimpse of Neanderthal family life.
DNA讓研究人員得以一窺尼安德特人的家族生活。
Fresh from his award a couple of weeks ago of a Nobel prize for his work on the DNA of early human species, including Neanderthals, Svante Paabo (or, more accurately, he and a group of his acolytes) have just published in Nature one of the biggest genetic studies yet of that species.
幾周前，諾貝爾獎頒給了斯萬特·佩博(或者更準確地說，他和他的團隊)，以表彰其在例如尼安德特人等早期人類物種的DNA方面所做出的貢獻，斯萬特·佩博不久前在《自然》雜志上發表了迄今為止關于尼安德特人最重要的基因研究之一。
These Neanderthals lived 50,000 years ago in the Altai mountains of Russia.
這些尼安德特人于5萬年前生活在俄羅斯阿爾泰山區域。
The remains under study - 17 bone and tooth samples belonging to 13 individuals - came from two caves about 100km apart.
用于研究的遺骸——屬于13個個體的17份骨骼和牙齒樣本——來自相距約100公里的兩個洞穴。
One, called Chagyrskaya, yielded 11 individuals (three boys, three girls, three men and two women).
其中11個個體來自Chagyrskaya洞穴(包括三個男孩、三個女孩、三個男人和兩個女人)。
The other, Okladnikov, yielded two (a boy and a woman).
兩個個體來自Okladnikov洞穴(一個男孩和一個女人)。
Taken together, this work almost doubles the number of Neanderthal genomes that have been described.
這項工作中13個個體的基因加起來，幾乎能讓目前已知的尼安德特人基因組的數量翻一番。
It also gives a tantalising glimpse into Neanderthal social lives.
它還讓我們得以一窺尼安德特人未知且誘人的社交生活。
It is extremely unlikely that all of these individuals were contemporaries.
所有這些個體同屬一個時代的可能性極小。
But the researchers think they have found both a trio and a pair of relatives.
但研究人員認為，他們發現了一個有親緣關系的三人組和一個兩人組。
They did this by computing a value called DNA divergence.
方法是計算DNA位點差異。
DNA divergence compares nuclear genomes by choosing sections of their DNA at random and checking if, for each chosen section, the two genomes match.
DNA位點差異的計算需要比較不同個體的核基因組，也就是隨機選擇個體的核基因組DNA片段，并檢查選擇的兩個片段的基因組是否匹配。
The more similar the DNA sequences are, the more closely, it can be presumed, the two individuals are related.
兩個個體的DNA序列越相似，他們在親緣關系上則越接近。
Applying this approach to the Chagyrskaya remains revealed a father, his daughter and a close maternal relative who probably shared a grandmother with the father.
將這種方法應用到Chagyrskaya洞穴的遺骸中，發現了三個存在親緣關系的個體：包括一位父親、他的女兒和他的一位母系近親，這位母系近親很可能與他是同祖母的關系。
Separately, it matched a young boy to an adult female relative, potentially a cousin, aunt or grandmother.
此外，研究還發現一名年幼的男孩與一名成年女性有親緣關系，這位成年女性可能是男孩的表親、阿姨或祖母。
The individuals in the Okladnikov cave were related closely neither to each other nor to anyone from Chagyrskaya.
Okladnikov洞穴中的個體彼此之間親緣關系不近，和Chagyrskaya洞穴的個體聯系也不緊密。
Yet the researchers found an intriguing connection.
但是，研究人員發現了一個有趣的聯系。
The woman's mitochondrial DNA matched that of a man from Chagyrskaya.
Okladnikov洞穴中女子的線粒體DNA與Chagyrskaya洞穴一名男子的線粒體DNA相匹配。
