一个男人的骸骨在肯尼亚图尔卡纳湖沿岸发现。科学家称，骸骨有一万年前之久，有明显被钝工具击伤的痕迹。

The scene was a lagoon on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The time about 10,000 years ago. One group of hunter-gatherers attacked and slaughtered another, leaving the dead with crushed skulls, embedded arrow or spear points, and other devastating wounds.

事发地点是肯尼亚图尔卡纳湖沿岸的某个潟湖；时间则是大约1万年前。一个狩猎–采集部族袭击、屠杀了另一个狩猎–采集部族，留在那里的死者尸骸头骨碎裂、身插箭头矛尖，还有其它严重的创伤。

The dead, said the scientists who reported the discovery Wednesday in the journal Nature, seem to have been scattered in no apparent order, and eventually covered and preserved by sediment from the lake. Of 12 relatively complete skeletons, 10 showed unmistakable signs of violent death, the scientists said. Partial remains of at least 15 other persons were found at the site and are thought to have died in the same attack.

这项研究成果发表在了《自然》杂志上。科学家们表示，这些骨骸四散在周围，看来没有什么明显的摆放规律；他们最终被湖中的沉积物覆盖并保存了下来。这些科学家又说，在12具相对完整的骨骸中，有10具带有确凿的受创痕迹，看得出来他们死得很惨。在这个考古遗址还找到了另外至少15个人残缺的遗骸，科学家认为这些人也在同一次攻击中丧生。

The bones at the lake, in northern Kenya, tell a tale of ferocity. One man was hit twice in the head by arrows or small spears and in the knee by a club. A woman, pregnant with a 6- to 9-month-old fetus, was killed by a blow to the head, the fetal skeleton preserved in her abdomen. The position of her hands and feet suggest that she may have been tied up before she was killed.

在肯尼亚北部，这些湖滨的骨骸诉说着一则残暴的故事。一名男子的头部被箭或小型的矛击中两次，他的膝盖则被棍棒打伤。一名女子怀着六到九个月的身孕，头部受重击身亡，胎儿的骨架还保存在她的腹腔里。从她手脚的位置可以推测，她在罹难前可能遭到捆绑。

Violence has always been part of human behavior, but the origins of war are hotly debated. Some experts see it as deeply rooted in evolution, pointing to violent confrontations among groups of chimpanzees as clues to an ancestral predilection. Others emphasize the influence of complex and hierarchical human societies, and agricultural surpluses to be raided.

暴力向来是人类天生行为的一部分，不过这场史前战争是如何起源的，还有诸多争论。有些专家认为战争深深植根于生物的演化过程中， 他们认为黑猩猩群落间就存在暴力对抗，这暗示了人类的祖先就有暴力冲突的倾向。另一些专家则强调人类社会的复杂性和等级制度造成的影响，以及为了生存而互相抢掠农产品。

Marta Mirazon Lahr and Robert A. Foley, of Cambridge University and the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, and a team of other scientists, concluded in Nature that the find represented warfare among prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

玛塔‧米拉松‧拉尔和罗伯特‧A‧弗利任职于剑桥大学与肯尼亚内罗毕的图尔卡纳盆地研究所，他们与团队中其他科学家在《自然》期刊上总结道，肯尼亚的这个发现，体现了史前时代狩猎–采集部落之间的战争。

Luke A. Glowacki, a postdoctoral researcher in human evolutionary biology at Harvard University not involved with the discovery, agreed. “There’s no other find like it,” he said.

哈佛大学人类演化生物学博士后研究员卢克‧A‧葛洛瓦基也认同这个说法。他说，“他们发现的这个遗迹是独一无二的。”

With Richard Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard, Dr. Glowacki has traced the evolutionary roots of human warfare in chimpanzee behavior. And, he said, this find “shows warfare occurred before the invention of agriculture.”

葛洛瓦基曾与哈佛大学的生物人类学教授理查德‧兰厄姆合作，通过黑猩猩的行为追溯人类战争的演化根源。葛洛瓦基表示，图尔卡纳的这个发现，“显示出人类战争在农业产生以前就出现了”。

Douglas P. Fry, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, who was not involved in the research, agreed that the evidence looked like a massacre of one group by another but said that “based on skeletal evidence from one site in an area, it may be jumping the gun to call this ‘war.’”

阿拉巴马大学的人类学教授道格拉斯‧P‧弗莱认为，这些骨骸看起来像是一个部族遭到了另一个部族屠杀。但弗莱又表示，“凭一个地区、单一遗址的骨骼证据就说这是‘战争’，可能操之过急了。”

Dr. Fry said in an email that nomadic foragers were unlikely to practice war, which tends to arise in more complex societies and that these foragers may have already been in transition to a more settled life.

弗莱在一封电邮里写道，四处迁徙的采集部族，不太可能会去打仗。因为战争通常发生在更复杂的社会里，而这些采集者，可能处在向一种趋于定居的生活型态转变的过程中。

The first person to spot the bones, some of which were lying on the surface, said Dr. Lahr, was Pedro Ebeya, one of the fossil hunters who work with the Turkana Basin Institute.

拉尔博士透露，第一个见到这些骨骸的人是与图尔卡纳盆地研究所合作的化石收集者彼得罗·艾贝亚。其中的一些骨骸当时就暴露在地面上。

Researchers have been exploring a large area there since 2009 that is rich in fossils, remnants of tools like harpoons, and some evidence of pottery.

自2009年开始，研究人员就在当地的一片区域进行勘察，那里有大量的化石、有鱼叉等工具的残留物、也有陶器存在的迹象。

At the site, she saw broken human bones on the surface mixed with gravel. “Then I saw the back of a skull,” which turned out to have major injuries. Further digging uncovered one violent death after another. The injuries showed no signs of having healed, which means that they had occurred at the time of death. And the position of the bodies showed no effort at burial.

在现场，研究员看到地面上露出了破碎的人类骨骼，与沙砾混合在一起。“之后我看到了头骨的后部”，上面有大块的伤痕。继续挖掘，就发现受到暴力攻击而死的骨骸一个接一个。创伤没有愈合的痕迹，意味着它们是在死亡时发生的。而且，在发现骨骸的现场，没有殡葬迹象。

The injuries, she said, showed that two different size clubs were used, as well as arrows. Deep cuts to foreheads, jaws and hands, she said, meant that a third type of weapon, with embedded stone blades must have been used.

研究员表示，这些伤痕显示出攻击时使用了两种大小的棍棒，还有箭。她说，额头上、下巴上、手上有深深地伤痕，这意味着肯定也使用了第三种装了石刀的武器。

The stone remnants were obsidian, which is rare in that area, and, she said, they “suggest the attackers were coming from somewhere else.”

她说，残留的石屑是黑曜石，在这一地区相当罕见，这表明“袭击者来自其他地方”。

The authors of the Nature report say the attack could have been a raid for resources, or it could be an example of organized violence that was common among ancient hunter-gatherers, but rarely preserved.

《自然》杂志上发表的报告的作者表示，此次袭击可能是为了劫掠资源，也可能是古时候狩猎–采集部落之间常见的有组织暴力行为的一个例子。这种事件的例子很少能保存下来。

This was a highly fertile time in the Lake Turkana area. Pottery found in the region suggests that some groups of foragers at that time may have been storing food — resources worth stealing. Or the attackers may have been after captives. Bones from one young teenager were found at the site, and remains of adults and children under 6, but no remains of older children, who might have been taken by the attackers.

那时图尔卡纳湖地区十分肥沃，在该地区发现了陶器，这显示出，当时的一些采集者可能在贮藏粮食，这种资源值得劫掠。袭击者想要掠夺的也可能是人口，现场发现了一名十几岁少年、一些成人和不足六岁的儿童的骨骸，但没有发现年龄更大的孩子们的骨骸，他们可能被袭击者掳掠走了。

Dr. Lahr said the population of the area may have been expanding at the time, causing conflict as new bands formed and sought territory. There are conditions that lead to warfare, she said, “and those conditions I think applied in moments of the past to hunter-gatherers.”

拉尔表示，该地区的人口可能正在扩张，随着新部落形成并开始攫取领土，也就引发了冲突。这些都是引发战争的条件，她说，“我想这些条件适用于过去的狩猎–采集部落所处的时代。”