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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔。

The paleo diet is a popular high-protein diet that aims to mimic¹ what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate. But what we buy at the supermarket doesn't quite approximate those ancient foods. Take for example, star lily roots. Heard of those?

“原始人饮食法”是一种流行的高蛋白饮食法，旨在模仿我们狩猎采集祖先的饮食。但是我们在超市买到的东西和那些古代食物不太一样。以星百合根为例。你听说过这种食物吗？

"They taste a bit like yams."

“味道有点像山药。”

Lyn Wadley is an archaeologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Her team recently discovered the charred² remains³ of star lily roots in South Africa's Border Cave—hunks of roasted root that date to 170,000 years ago.

南非威特沃特斯兰德大学的考古学家林·瓦德利说到。她的团队最近在南非边界洞穴中发现了烧焦的星百合根遗迹，这些大块烤根可追溯到17万年前。

"And there's greater glucose⁴ availability once the root vegetables were cooked. And they knew that nearly 200,000 years ago, which I think is extraordinary. Or maybe they didn't know the chemistry of it, but they would have realized they felt far more satisfied after eating a meal that's cooked rather than one that is raw."

“块根类蔬菜经过烹饪后，葡萄糖的利用率就会上升。他们早在20万年前就知道了这一点，我认为这非常了不起。或许他们不知道其中的化学成分，但他们会意识到，食用烹饪过的食物比吃生食要令人心满意足得多。”

It's not easy to identify a charred chunk⁵ of ancient food, though. So Wadley's team gathered an array of raw ancient foodstuffs⁶ and roasted and charred them in ovens and campfires. They then did visual comparisons to the ancient sample and observed them both in a scanning electron microscope—which revealed that the charred leftovers⁷ from that meal, 170,000 years ago, were probably chunks⁸ of star lily root.

不过，要辨认出大块烧焦的古代食物并不容易。因此，瓦德利的团队收集了大量古代生食，在烤炉和营火中烘烤烧焦。之后，他们将其与古代样本进行目视比对，并用扫描电子显微镜进行观察，结果显示，17万年前那顿饭烧焦的剩饭，很可能是星百合根块。

Details and photos of those roots are in the journal Science.

这些根茎的细节和图片刊登在《科学》期刊上。

Wadley says the find also provides a better view of what the ancients ate. "I think the people who assume the paleo diet was based on protein simply haven't done their homework properly."

瓦德利表示，这项研究也让我们对古代人的饮食有了更深入的了解。“我认为那些认为原始人饮食是以蛋白质为基础的人，根本没有做好功课。”

Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。