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Mitochondrial DNA is passed intact from mother to offspring.
線粒體DNA會原封不動地由母親遺傳給后代。
It is not involved in sexual mixing, so it changes only by the random process of mutation.
它不參與有性生殖中的基因重組，所以只有在隨機突變中才會發生變化。
The lack of mutations that might have distinguished the DNA of the individuals in question from each other suggests not only a common ancestor, but a relatively recent one.
文中提到的兩個個體的DNA不存在能夠將彼此區分開來的突變，這不僅表明他們有共同的祖先，而且說明這個共同祖先存在的時間并不十分久遠。
Further analysis showed also that two of the mitochondrial DNA samples from Chagyrskaya were closer to the Okladnikov boy than to any of the other Chagyrskayans.
通過進一步的分析，Chagyrskaya洞穴兩個個體的線粒體DNA樣本表明，這兩個個體與Okladnikov洞穴男孩的親緣關系，比他們和同洞穴其他個體的關系都要近。
And when the team looked at data on y-chromosomes, which pass intact from father to son, as well as their mitochondrial data, they were able to draw some tentative conclusions about Neanderthal communities.
研究小組研究了由父親傳給兒子的y染色體的數據，以及樣本中線粒體的數據，得出了一些關于尼安德特人群體的初步結論。
If members of a population mate more or less at random with those of the opposite sex, the so-called coalescence time - how far in the past their most recent common ancestor lived - should be the same for mitochondrial (matrilineal) and y-chromosome (patrilineal) DNA.
如果一個種群的成員在某種程度上隨機與異性進行交配，那么線粒體(在母系中傳遞)DNA和y染色體(在父系中傳遞)DNA的所謂“溯祖時間”，即種群成員最后一個共同祖先出現距今的這段時間，應該是相同的。
The researchers found, however, that the average coalescence time for the y-chromosome was 500 years, while that for the mitochondrial genome was around 5,000 years.
然而，研究人員發現，y染色體的平均溯祖時間為500年，而線粒體基因組的平均溯祖時間約為5000年。
To explain this order-of-magnitude difference, they modelled various possibilities.
為了解釋這種數量級的差異，研究人員對各種可能性進行了模擬。
The one which best fitted the data was that the Neanderthals of the Altai lived in groups of around 20 individuals, with at least 60% of the females in a group having migrated there from elsewhere.
最符合數據結果的情況是，居住在阿爾泰山的尼安德特人組成了很多大約20個人的群體，其中至少有60%的女性是從其他地方遷徙到那里的。
The size of such groups is similar to that deduced for Palaeolithic bands of Homo sapiens, which probably had around 25 members.
群體的大小與推斷得到的舊石器時代大約由25人組成的智人群體類似。
When dealing with humanity's ancestors and cousins it is easy and tempting to over-interpret the scarce data available - and practitioners of the subject have indeed been guilty of doing this in the past.
在研究人類的祖先和近親的課題時，人們很容易過度解讀現有的稀有數據——而這一課題的研究者過去確實犯過這樣的錯誤。
So these conclusions should be treated with care.
因此，我們應該更加謹慎地對待這些結論。
But if nothing else, this study shows that the methods which brought Dr. Paabo his prize have increased the pool of data available for such speculations in an extraordinary way.
但至少，這項研究表明，讓佩博博士獲得諾貝爾獎的研究方法，以一種非同尋常的方式擴充了可用于此類研究推測的數據庫。
