How human disease changed history, with Dr Jonathan Kennedy
发布时间 2023-04-02 23:00:00 来源
Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-size masterclass in podcast form. I'm Alice Lipscomb-Southwell, the managing editor at BBC Science Focus magazine.
大家好，欢迎来到“即刻天才”，这是一个以播客形式呈现的精简版大师课堂。我是《BBC科学焦点》杂志的管理编辑艾丽斯·利普斯科姆-南威尔。
In this episode, I talked to Dr Jonathan Kennedy, a reeder in politics and global health at Queen Mary University of London. He's just written a book, Pathogenesis, which explores the impact of disease on human history. He tells you about the close links between disease and colonialism, how infections shape the migration of humans out of Africa, and what we can all learn from the COVID pandemic.
在这一集中，我和乔纳森·肯尼迪博士交谈，他是伦敦玛丽皇后大学的政治和全球健康读者。他刚刚出版了一本书《发病机理》，探讨了疾病对人类历史的影响。他告诉您疾病与殖民主义之间的密切联系，感染如何塑造人类从非洲迁徙的过程，以及我们可以从COVID大流行中学到什么。
Hello, my name's Jonathan Kennedy, and I'm an academic. My day job is at Queen Mary University of London, where I'm a reeder, so that's a slightly archaic job title somewhere between Senior Lecturer and Professor, and I'm reeder in politics and global public health. And you've just written a book called Pathogenesis, so just to start off, can you explain to our listeners what exactly Pathogenesis is?
你好，我的名字是乔纳森·肯尼迪，我是一名学者。我的日常工作是在伦敦玛丽皇后大学任职，我是一名读者，所以我的工作职位有些古老了，介于高级讲师和教授之间，我在政治和全球公共卫生方面担任读者。你刚刚出版了一本名为《病原发生学》的书，那么，为了开始我们的访谈，你可以向我们的听众解释一下什么是病原发生学吗？
The book basically aims to transform the way that we think about history. Most histories see the natural world as a kind of stage on which humans play out their roles, but I think, you know, if you look at science over the last few centuries, the more we learn about the world, the more we learn that the natural world isn't just some inanimate stage.
这本书的主要目的是改变我们思考历史的方式。很多历史都把自然界看作是人类扮演角色的舞台，但我想你知道，如果你看看过去几个世纪的科学发展，我们越学习世界，就越了解自然界并不是无生命的舞台。
In fact, humans are part of this massive system, an ecosystem, and we're of course a big part of that, but we interact with a variety of other animals and inanimate parts of this system, including infectious diseases. And so basically what Pathogenesis the book does is it goes back through history, and it looks at really quite a large number of cases from the extension of the Neanderthals all the way up to COVID, really, to show how infectious diseases, pathogens have really played a crucial role in history, have really been a driving force in some of the major political, social, and economic transformations in the past.
事实上，人类是这个庞大的系统——生态系统的一部分，我们当然是其中重要的一部分，但我们与其他动物和无生命的系统中的各种元素，包括传染病相互作用。因此，《发病机制》这本书基本上就是回顾历史，从尼安德特人的发展一直到COVID，展示了传染病和病原体在历史上扮演了至关重要的角色，其实已经成为了过去一些重大政治，社会和经济转变的驱动力。
And I think the first thing that really amazed me when I was reading the book is that the only reason humans don't lay eggs and we give birth to live young is because of a virus. Now, how could our evolution have been different if that virus had never infected us?
我觉得当我读这本书的时候，最让我惊奇的第一件事是，人类不下蛋，我们生养活的小动物只是因为病毒的缘故。现在，如果那种病毒从没有感染我们，我们的进化会有什么不同呢？
Yeah, I mean, this absolutely blew my mind because my background is in history and sociology. And, you know, I have always had an interest in science. I studied biology and chemistry at A level, and I'm married to a doctor, and I teach in a medical school. So, I do have an interest in these things, but around about the time of the COVID pandemic, I started to read a lot more about microbes and their impact on humans and human evolution.
是的，我是说，这让我非常惊讶，因为我的背景是历史和社会学。而且，你知道，我一直对科学很感兴趣。我在中学时学过生物和化学，并且我嫁给了一名医生，我在一所医学院教书。所以，我确实对这些事情有兴趣，但大约在COVID大流行期间，我开始更多地阅读关于微生物及其对人类和人类进化的影响的文章。
This was one thing that really, really kind of blew my mind, the idea that, you know, retroviruses reproduce by inserting their DNA into our genome. And if they manage to infect either our sperm or our egg cells, then these genes are passed on to all subsequent generations. So, when you look at the human genome, you actually see that something like 8% of all our DNA comes from these infections.
这是一件真的，真的相当让我震惊的事情，这个想法是逆转录病毒通过将它们的 DNA 插入到我们的基因组中进行复制。如果它们成功感染到我们的精子或卵子细胞，那么这些基因就会传递给所有随后的代际。因此，当你观察人类基因组时，实际上可以看到约 8% 的 DNA 是来自这些感染。
So it kind of raises some pretty, pretty crazy, crazy questions. But as you said, humans have been able to acquire kind of wholesale from virus infections, various capabilities that we think as being fundamental to being human. So one of these is the ability to give birth, because if we look at how the placenta binds to the womb, the cell lining is very similar to the way that a virus would bind to a cell when it's trying to infect it.
所以这引起了一些相当疯狂的问题。但正如你所说，人类已经能够从病毒感染中取得种种能力，我们认为这些能力是成为人类的基础。其中之一就是生育能力，因为如果我们看看胎盘如何与子宫结合，细胞壁的方式与病毒感染细胞时结合的方式非常相似。
And this makes sense in a way, because, you know, it's really phenomenal that mammals are able to carry young inside their bodies. It's much, much safer than laying some eggs and leaving them somewhere and possibly being chased chased away. But, you know, it also causes problems for the immune system, because you basically have a genetically different parasites, you know, we could see your young as a parasite growing inside our body.
这种做法在某种程度上是有道理的，因为，你知道，哺乳动物能够在其身体内孕育幼崽，这真的非常神奇。这比让一些蛋卵在某个地方产出并离开更为安全，否则可能会被追赶赶走。但是，你知道，它也会给免疫系统带来问题，因为基本上你有了一个基因不同的寄生虫，我们可能会把你的小家伙看作我们体内正在生长的寄生虫。
So how do we avoid the immune system reacting and destroying this? And this is only because we have inherited these genes from a viral infection that basically allows the placenta to bind to the mother. And there's other examples of capabilities being acquired from retroviruses too. So the other one that really, really struck me when I was researching for the book was the ability to form memories.
那么我们如何避免免疫系统的反应并摧毁胎盘呢？这仅仅是因为我们从病毒感染中继承了这些基因，这基本上允许胎盘与母亲结合。还有其他的例子表明，也可以从逆转录病毒中获取能力。所以，在为这本书进行研究时，另一个真正打动我的例子是形成记忆的能力。
So the way in which kind of memories pass from one cell to another seems to be very, very similar to the way that viruses pass their genetic information from one cell to the other. And it seems that this gene is inherited from another viral infection. In fact, scientists have bred mice where they've removed this gene. And the mice don't seem to be able to form to form memories. So yeah, it really kind of, I found that really, really surprising as a layperson delving into the kind of science of retroviruses infections.
所以，记忆从一个细胞传递到另一个细胞的方式似乎非常类似于病毒将其基因信息从一个细胞传递到另一个细胞的方式。而且，这一基因似乎是从另一次病毒感染中遗传而来的。事实上，科学家已经培育出了去除了这个基因的老鼠。这些老鼠似乎无法形成记忆。所以，作为一个外行人对逆转录病毒感染科学的探究，我觉得这真的非常令人惊讶。
Yes, we definitely tend to think of viruses as bad things, don't we? But in those cases, it seems that they've actually been really useful and have really shaped our evolution in that sense.
是的，我们通常会认为病毒是坏东西，不是吗？但是在那些情况下，它们似乎实际上非常有用，真正塑造了我们的进化。
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, viruses play an enormously important role in the in the whole of the ecosystem. There are viruses everywhere that there's life on the on the planet, basically.
对的，确实如此。你知道的，病毒在整个生态系统中发挥着极其重要的作用。基本上在这个星球上有生命的地方都有病毒。
So someone once calculated that if you put all the viruses on Earth end to end, they would reach for a hundred million light years, which I find it hard to comprehend that as a distance. But most of these viruses aren't aren't infecting humans aren't capable of infecting humans. Only about 200 or so are capable of infecting us.
有人曾经计算过，如果你把地球上所有的病毒排列在一起，它们的长度可以达到一亿光年，这个距离对我来说有点难以理解。但是，大部分病毒都不能感染人类，只有约200种病毒能够感染我们。
Most of these are so called bacteria phages. So from the Greek to to devour. So they they eat, eat bacteria. And in fact, again, it's another another fact that really, really stunned me. But these viruses kill about 20% of all bacteria every day. So they play a really important role in the natural world, basically maintaining balance and making sure that no one species of bacteria or no one strain of bacteria becomes too, too dominant.
大部分是所谓的细菌噬菌体，源自希腊语 devour，也就是它们噬食细菌。实际上，它们每天会杀死约20%的细菌，这个事实让我非常震惊。它们在自然界中扮演着非常重要的角色，保持生态的平衡，确保没有一种细菌或一种细菌菌株过于优势。
And thinking about history a bit more here as well. One thing that was really interesting was that you said how disease could have kept home osapiens in Africa for longer and kept the Neanderthals in the Mediterranean for longer. And there was a sort of poison antidote effect where they couldn't really mix because they would end up getting ill if they did. And so that kept them in their sort of separate regions for a really long time.
再来思考一下历史。一个非常有趣的事情是，你说过疾病可能让早期人类在非洲停留更久，让尼安德特人在地中海区域停留更久。有一种毒药解药的效应，他们不能真正地混在一起，因为如果这样做，他们就会生病。因此，这让它们在各自的地区停留了很长时间。
Yeah, yeah. Again, this was this was this was a really fascinating chapter to to write. And I guess, you know, it starts with one of the great mysteries of the Paleolithic era, you know, basically if we go back to something like 60,000 years ago, the world was very, very different to the way it is today. Home osapiens had perhaps been around for 150, maybe even 250,000,000 years, but we lived exclusively in the African continent.
啊，是啊，这真的是一章非常有趣的写作体裁。我想，你知道，它始于旧石器时代的一个伟大的谜团，基本上如果我们回到大约6万年前这样的时间，世界与今天很是不同。智人可能已经存在了150年甚至250万年，但我们仅在非洲大陆上生活。
And there were a variety of other human species on the planet. So Neanderthals in Western Eurasia, Denisovans in Eastern Eurasia, and a variety of other human human species in in Southeast Asia. So I mean, I like to think about it almost as being quite similar to to middle earth to, you know, kind of Tolkien's Tolkien's world where you, you know, you don't just have one species of human, you have all sorts of different human.
在这个星球上还有各种其他的人类物种。因此，西欧亚地区有尼安德特人，东欧亚地区有丹尼索万人，东南亚则有各种其他人类物种。我是说，我喜欢将其想象成中土大陆，就像托尔金的世界一样，你不只有一种人类物种，而有各种不同的人类。
And then all of a sudden around 50,000 years ago, this this changes. Homo sapiens burst out of out of Africa and really very quickly spread throughout the whole of the so-called old world and even get as far as Australia. And all other species of human seem to seem to disappear.
然后突然在大约五万年前，一切都改变了。智人突然从非洲爆发出来，非常快速地传播到所谓的旧世界，甚至到达了澳大利亚。其他人类物种似乎都消失了。
And there's a variety of theories for why that is. If we go to, you know, something like sapiens, the incredibly famous famous recent, or not, yeah, not so recent book about the history of mankind, the argument is that that our species went out because we were the wisest, because we were more intelligent and capable of kind of outcompeting other species of humans, which is important because Neanderthals were certainly bigger and stronger stronger than us.
有许多理论解释这个现象。如果我们拿出《智人》，那本非常著名的关于人类历史的书，那个作者认为，我们人类能够生存下来是因为我们更充满智慧、更聪明，能够比其他人类物种更好地竞争，这很重要，因为尼安德特人比我们更高大强壮。
But, you know, there are certain problems with this this theory, not least the last couple of years, you know, there's been a lot of research that shows that Neanderthals are really seem to be, you know, kind of very intelligent and capable of all sorts of complex behaviors similar to our own species. So they appear to have produced some pretty basic cave art. They appear to have sailed between islands in the Mediterranean. They very clearly were able to cultivate fire. They even seem to have been able to use kind of mesidinal plants to treat various, various kind of maladies.
你知道，这个理论存在一些问题，尤其是在过去的几年里，有很多研究表明，尼安德特人看起来非常聪明，能够展现出与我们自己物种相似的各种复杂行为。他们似乎能够制作一些相当基础的洞穴艺术品。他们似乎能够在地中海之间航行。他们显然能够燃起火并加以利用。他们甚至似乎能够使用各种草药来治疗不同种类的疾病。
So this doesn't really make sense, but the theory that I think is most promising is that it was infectious diseases that wiped out the Neanderthals. You know, I'm sure your listeners will know that certainly people of European, Asian and Native American descent have between 2 and 4% Neanderthal DNA in our genes.
所以这个说法实际上是没有什么道理的，但我认为最有前途的理论是感染性疾病灭绝了尼安德特人。你知道的，我相信你的听众们肯定知道，欧洲、亚洲和北美土著人的后代在我们的基因中有2%至4%的尼安德特DNA。
And I think it's really important to point out that the genes that we retained from the Anderthals are not just are not just random. They are genes that gave us an advantage or gene variants that gave us an advantage as we were migrating out of out of the African continent. And so some of these relate to skin and eye color, others to body hair because obviously it would be a big challenge for our species having evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in Africa to arrive in cold, dark, dark Europe.
我认为非常重要的是，我们从尼安德特人遗传下来的基因并不是随机的，它们是给我们带来了优势的基因或突变后的基因。当我们从非洲大陆迁徙时，这些基因为我们提供了优势。因此，其中一些与皮肤和眼睛的颜色有关，而其他一些与身体毛发有关，显然，对于我们这个物种在非洲演化了数十万年，到达寒冷、黑暗的欧洲是一个巨大的挑战。
But also a lot of these genes seem to be related to the immune system. And this makes sense because Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were perhaps separated for 500,000 years. We lived in Africa. They lived in Western Eurasia. And we would have both evolved to survive in different disease environments and developed immunity to the pathogens that we came across in the areas that we lived.
还有很多这些基因似乎与免疫系统有关。这是有道理的，因为尼安德特人和智人可能分离了50万年。我们生活在非洲，他们生活在西欧亚。我们都会进化出不同的免疫力来应对不同疾病环境，并在我们所生活的地区中研发出对病原体的免疫力。
And then when we first started to meet 100,000 or so years ago, this would have really created a massive problem because certainly Neanderthals wouldn't have developed immunity to pathogens that we carried and vice versa. And so it's kind of a similar process to what we would see, for example, with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas when it just devastated the indigenous population when the population of the Americas fell by 90% within 100 years of the arrival of Columbus.
当我们大约在10万年前开始相遇时，这实际上会造成一个巨大的问题，因为尼安德特人肯定没有对我们携带的病原体发展出免疫力，反之亦然。这有点类似于欧洲人到达美洲时的情况，当时就摧毁了土著人口，哥伦布到达后的100年内，美洲人口减少了90％。
It would have been something like that. But basically, as we know, we know now that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred and exchanged genes. And scientists call this the poison antidote model of adaptive integration. And the idea is that when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals met, they gave each other a poison because they would exchange pathogens that they didn't have they didn't have resistance to. But also when they reproduced, they would provide each other with the antidote because they would exchange genes.
大概就是这样。但我们现在知道，海蒂人和尼安德特人交配并交换了基因。科学家将其称为“毒药解毒剂模型”的适应性整合。其思想是，当海蒂人和尼安德特人相遇时，因为他们会交换彼此没有抵抗力的病原体，所以他们会相互给对方一种毒药。但也因为他们会交换基因，所以当他们繁殖时，他们会互相提供解毒剂。
And so they wouldn't have to evolve immune responses through the painstakingly slow process of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. They would gain these gene variants immediately through reproduction. And so this happened both ways, but the reason why Homo sapiens went out was because we had evolved in tropical Africa. And even today, the closer one gets to the equator, the more of the sun's energy reaches the earth.
所以，他们不需要通过达尔文进化的缓慢、费力的自然选择过程来进化免疫反应。他们会立即通过繁殖获得这些基因变异。这种情况双方都会发生，但智人之所以走出去，是因为我们在热带非洲进化了。即使在今天，越靠近赤道，越能接收到太阳能的更多能量。
And so this means that there's more vegetation, there's more animals that feed them at vegetation, and there's more microbes that live on the vegetation and the animal life. So you tend to get more and more deadly infectious diseases. Homo sapiens were able to overcome Neanderthal pathogens faster than the other way around. So as soon as this happened, they managed to burst out of Africa and spread very quickly across the world.
这意味着有更多的植被，更多以植被为食的动物，还有更多生活在植被和动物身上的微生物。因此，我们越来越容易接触到致命的传染病。而智人比尼安德特人更能抵御病菌的侵袭。这就是为什么他们能够很快地从非洲扩散到世界各地的原因之一。
And you touched on it briefly there, and I know a lot of people will be familiar with the fact that when Europeans went into South America, then the native population just got wiped out essentially. We brought all these germs with us. So in what other ways is disease linked with colonialism? What are some other examples of that?
你之前稍微提到了这一点，我知道很多人都熟知这个事实，就是欧洲人进入南美洲后，当地的原住民基本上被灭绝了。我们带来了所有这些病菌。那么除此之外，疾病与殖民主义还有哪些联系呢？还有哪些其他的例子？
Yes, I think it's really interesting to compare the difference between the colonization of the Americas and the attempt colonization of the African continent. So Europeans colonize the Americas incredibly easily. You see hernan Cortes, the Spanish conquistador, go to Mesoamerica in the early 1520s and conquer this vast empire, the Mexico or the Aztec civilization with about a thousand a thousand troops and not just conquer it, the Spanish ruled it for centuries afterwards. And then you see an even more remarkable incident 10 years later when Francisco Pizzaro goes to the South American continent and conquers the great Inca empire that ran more or less the whole length of South America. And he did this with 168 troops.
我认为比较美洲殖民和尝试殖民非洲大陆的差异非常有趣。欧洲殖民美洲非常容易。你们看到西班牙征服者赫尔南·科尔特斯在1520年代初期前往中美洲，只带着大约一千名士兵征服了这个巨大的帝国——墨西哥或阿兹特克文明，并且不仅征服了它，而且西班牙人在之后的几个世纪里都掌控着这个地区。然后你们看到10年后更令人惊异的事情发生了，弗朗西斯科·皮萨罗前往南美大陆，用168名士兵征服了横跨南美大陆的伟大印加帝国。
And traditionally we've thought that germs might have played a role, but also as Jared Diamond says, the conquest of the Americas by the Spanish would have been inevitable anyway because we had better weapons and we had guns and and steel. But I mean, I think this is really, really unlikely. If we look at how much difficulty, you know, the American-led alliance had tried to really kind of achieve very modest aims in Afghanistan. The last 20, 20 years, they sent 130,000 troops. The most advanced weaponry the world has ever seen. They spent trillions and trillions of dollars and, you know, ultimately nothing, nothing changed.
传统上我们认为病菌可能有所作为，但如贾里德·戴蒙德所说，西班牙人征服美洲是不可避免的，因为我们拥有更好的武器和枪支和钢铁。但是，我认为这真的非常不可能。如果我们看看美国领导的联盟在阿富汗尝试实现非常温和的目标时遇到了多大的困难，过去20年他们派遣了13万士兵。这是世界上最先进的武器。他们花费了数万亿美元，最终什么也没有改变。
So I think we really have to challenge this hubristic idea that European society was better developed and that's why we defeated the Indigenous populations of the America. It's very clear to me that infectious diseases were by far the most important factor. And if they hadn't acted as an unwitting secret weapon, then the European conquest of the Americas would not have been possible. And we can see this when we compare what happened in the Americas to sub-Saharan Africa.
我认为我们真正必须对这种自以为是的思想提出挑战，即欧洲社会更为发达，这就是为什么我们击败了美洲原住民。对我来说，明显的是传染病是最重要的因素。如果它们没有作为无意中的秘密武器发挥作用，欧洲征服美洲将是不可能的。如果我们比较美洲与撒哈拉以南非洲的情况，我们可以看到这一点。
And, you know, these days we kind of trained to think of sub-Saharan Africa as a poor place. But in the middle ages, it was actually seen as very, very wealthy. It was the source of the vast majority of gold that flowed into Europe.
你知道吗，现在我们会有点被训练去认为撒哈拉以南非洲是一个贫穷的地方。但是在中世纪，它实际上被视为非常非常富裕的地方。那里是流向欧洲的绝大部分黄金的来源。
If you look at medieval maps like the Catalan Atlas, you see, you know, rivers of gold flowing through West Africa, you see Mansa Musa, the Marlion Emperor sitting on a gold throne and handing out discs of gold to Berber camel herders. And so, European certainly coveted these natural resources.
如果你看中世纪的地图，比如加泰罗尼亚地图，你会看到金河流过西非，你会看到曼萨·穆萨，马里帝国的皇帝坐在金色宝座上，给柏柏尔族骆驼牧民分发金盘子。因此，欧洲人当然渴望这些自然资源。
They wanted to colonize Africa, but they couldn't manage. And, you know, a big part of that is the the fact that, you know, we were part of the same trade networks, as I said, gold went over the Sahara to Europe. And so, the same kind of old world pathogens that infected Europeans. And that Europeans have developed immunity to also affected the vast majority of the African continent.
他们想殖民非洲，但他们不能成功。你知道，其中一个很大的原因是我们与他们同属于同一贸易网络，像我说的，黄金经过撒哈拉到达欧洲。因此，影响欧洲人的旧世界病源也同样影响了非洲大部分地区，欧洲人已经对这些病毒产生了免疫力。
But I think another important factor is the role of malaria and the role of yellow fever. And so, this, I guess, kind of worked as a defensive force field that made it almost impossible for for the Europeans to conquer West Africa.
但我认为另一个重要因素是疟疾和黄热病的作用。这些病症起到了防御作用，使欧洲人几乎不可能征服西非。
Even in the 18th, 19th century, something between 40 and 70 percent of Europeans or European would be settlers would die within a year of arriving in West Africa, mostly from malaria. And if you go further inland to places like Marley, the death rate would be even higher. It would be kind of 300 percent, which is hard to get your head around, but basically that means that you'd, on average, you'd survive for about four months before before being killed.
即使在18、19世纪，约40%到70%的欧洲人或欧洲移民到西非后一年内会死亡，大多数是因为疟疾。如果你前往更内陆的地区，比如马里，死亡率会更高，可能高达300%。这很难理解，但基本上意味着你平均只能活四个月就会被杀害。
So, the British at the time referred to the region as the white man's the white man's grave. And I think, you know, often we forget that even as late as 1870, so that's the past century after the Americas were conquered. The vast majority of Africa was still independent.
所以，当时的英国人称这个地区为白人的坟墓。我认为，我们经常忘记即使在1870年，也就是美洲被征服一个世纪之后，绝大部分非洲仍然是独立的。
You had the French colony of Algeria in the temperate north and in the temperate south, you had the the British and Dutch colonies in in what's now South Africa. But the vast majority of the continent was not colonized. And it was only towards the very end of the 19th century with the scramble for Africa that you have this colonization of the region.
你们在温带北部拥有法属阿尔及利亚殖民地，在温带南部，你们有现在的南非的英国和荷兰殖民地。但大多数非洲大陆并未被殖民。直到19世纪末的非洲瓜分才出现了这个地区的殖民。
And this was made possible by quinine. So, Europeans had known about quinine for centuries, but they only began to use it systematically towards the end of the 19th century. And this this lower death rate to a level that made the colonization of the African continent possible.
这都要归功于奎宁。欧洲人有几个世纪都知道奎宁，但直到19世纪末才开始系统地使用它。这项措施降低了死亡率，使得殖民非洲大陆成为可能。
So, how come the local population in Africa wouldn't have been as affected by malaria and yellow fever? Is it because they would have been exposed to these illnesses from a very early age and they would have built that immunity to it? And yet when European people went down there, they just didn't have that in built immunity almost.
那么，为什么非洲当地人没有像疟疾和黄热病那样受到很大影响呢？是因为他们从很小的时候就暴露在这些疾病中，建立了对此的免疫性吗？然而，当欧洲人前往那里时，他们几乎没有这种免疫力。
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, the epidemiology of malaria and yellow fever are slightly different, but the outcome is the outcome is the same. So, malaria killed and it still kills large numbers of young people in West Africa. It still kills several hundred thousand young children a year. But if one's exposed repeatedly, then one's body builds up resistance. And so, adults from the region have only quite minor symptoms when they're when they're reinfected.
是的，完全正确。疟疾和黄热病的流行病学有些不同，但结果是一样的。疟疾在西非杀死了很多年轻人，现在仍然如此。每年仍有数十万名幼儿死于疟疾。但是，如果一个人反复暴露在疟疾下，那么他的身体就会建立起抵抗力。因此，该地区的成年人在再次感染时只会有轻微的症状。
So, malaria doesn't really seem to like the impression one would get as a European traveling to West Africa and the in the 1500s or the 1800s would be that African adults aren't really affected by this. And with yellow fever, basically, if you're infected as a child, you tend to get pretty minor symptoms and once you've been infected, you are immune for life. But when you're infected as an adult, the symptoms are much, much more serious and a third of people who develop symptoms will die.
所以，疟疾似乎并不像欧洲人在前往西非旅行时所认为的那样不良影响成年非洲人。并且对于黄热病，如果你在儿童时期感染，你往往会有比较轻微的症状，并且一旦感染，就终身免疫。但是当你成年时感染，症状会严重得多，而且有三分之一的人会死亡。
So, again, you have the same general effect that it would seem like it doesn't affect adults that have grown up in the in the West African region, but for the European would be settlers who were coming and being infected for the first time they would die in in their droves.
所以，你又得到了同样的一般效应，似乎它不会影响在西非地区长大的成年人，但对于第一次被感染的欧洲殖民者来说，他们会大量死亡。
Now, one disease that many people will be familiar with is the plague we learned about it in school. We know it appeared during the medieval times and also in the 1600s in London. But according to your book, it appeared much sooner than that in human history, like 5,000 years ago.
现在，有一种疾病，很多人都很熟悉，那就是我们在学校里学过的瘟疫。我们知道它出现在中世纪和17世纪的伦敦。但根据你的书，它在人类历史上出现得比那还要早得多，大约在5000年前。
I knew the recent history of infectious diseases pretty well, but it was something that really kind of I was stunned by when I started looking at the latest research by scientists who have kind of basically tried to extract DNA from human skeletons and then not just identify the human DNA, but also see what kind of microorganisms were in the blood at the time that people died.
我对传染病最近的历史有着相当好的了解，但当我开始看科学家最新的研究时，我还是有些震惊。他们基本上是试图从人类骨骼中提取DNA，然后不仅确定人类的DNA，还要看看当时人们死亡时血液中有什么微生物。
And that gives you a pretty good impression of what they were to died from. So, the earliest sample of plague bacteria is from about 5,000 years ago in West and Sweden. So, it was extracted from the dental pulp of a 5,000 year old skeleton.
那样你就可以比较清楚地了解他们死于什么了。所以，鼠疫细菌的最早样本约有 5000 年前出现在西班牙和瑞典。因此，它是从一具5000岁的骨架的牙髓中提取的。
And I mean, this is fascinating in and of itself that we can we can kind of look so far back into the past and see what people were dying from and people were getting sick from. But I think what's really interesting is when we relate this to other kind of other facts and other sources of information and we can really build an idea of what was going on around this time.
我觉得这真的很有趣，我们可以回顾过去，看看人们是因为什么而死亡或生病。这本身就很迷人。但我认为真正有意思的是，当我们把这些与其他的事实和信息联系起来时，我们可以真正地建立起当时的情况。
So, first of all, we can compare this to other samples of Yosinopestus plague bacteria found in ancient skeletons across Eurasia. And we get this this kind of impression that the whole of the the landmass was was affected by what might have been a really quite devastating pandemic, about 5,000, 4,500 years ago.
首先，我们可以将此与在全欧亚大陆发现的其他Yosinopestus瘟疫细菌标本进行比较。我们得到的印象是，全大陆可能都受到了一场可能非常毁灭性的大流行病的影响，大约在5000年到4500年前。
And it's also really interesting when you compare this with other sources of information. So, we know that around this time, certainly in Western Europe, the population collapsed. We know this from archaeologists who basically totted up the the number of archaeological finds throughout history and find a big slump around this time.
当你将这与其他信息来源进行比较时，这也非常有趣。因此，我们知道在这个时期，特别是在西欧，人口数量大幅下降。考古学家们通过对历史上所发现的考古遗物数量进行统计，发现在这个时期有一个巨大的下滑。
We know this from scientists who have basically looked at peat samples and have worked out that around this time, you get far more seeds from wild plants than you do from domesticated crops. And so, so this suggests that that around 5,000, 4,500 years ago, there was perhaps a neolithic black death that wiped out a large proportion of the population.
我们从科学家那里得知这些，他们基本上是通过研究泥炭样本得出的结论，在这个时期，野生植物的种子数量远远超过了家养作物。因此，这表明大约在5000年至4500年前，可能发生了新石器时代的黑死病，导致了大量人口的死亡。
And to add to this some recent research that looks at the kind of big migrations of humans coming into into Western Europe demonstrates that around this time, you have a really really big change in the genetic makeup of the population. It seems like there was a a big migration of herders from the Western Step Region who who basically surged through the surged through the region.
还有一些最近的研究，研究了人类大规模迁徙进入西欧，这表明在这个时候，该地区的人口基因组发生了非常大的变化。看起来是来自西部步地区的放牧者大规模迁移，他们基本上横扫了整个地区。
And this is really important because these Western Step Herders, they they seem to have brought Indo-European languages and they also account for a large proportion of the gene variants carried by particularly northern, northern Europeans. So, it's it's really incredible to think that we can still, if we walk around Euro-Iman London, if we walk around the streets, we can still see and hear the consequences of this of this plague epidemic that occurred 5,000 years ago.
这非常重要，因为这些西部游牧民族似乎带来了印欧语言，并且特别是北欧人携带的基因变种中有大部分来自他们。因此，想到我们仍然可以在欧洲伦敦游走，看到、听到这场发生在5000年前的瘟疫所带来的后果，这真的令人难以置信。
So, as a species, what can we do to ensure we survive the threat from diseases in the future? Well, I think it's it's really important to invest in science and technology and you know, certainly if we look at the speed at which a safe and effective vaccine or several safe and effective vaccines were were developed during the COVID pandemic. This is really remarkable, even miraculous, but I think it's also really important to remember that science and technology on their own are not, not enough.
作为一个物种，我们该怎么做才能确保未来能够幸存于疾病的威胁之下呢？我认为，投资于科学技术是非常重要的，尤其是如果我们看到在COVID大流行期间，安全有效的疫苗或多个安全有效的疫苗开发的速度。这真的是非常了不起，甚至是神奇的。但我认为，也非常重要的是要记住，单靠科学技术是不够的。
We also have to look at political, social and economic problems. If we you know, if we think about the the COVID pandemic, for example, it seems like, you know, the initial spread in in China of COVID was inhibited by the secrecy of the Chinese Communist Party, so the lack of transparency. And then, if we look at the devastation that COVID caused in the UK and the US in particular, this was the the result of pretty bad decisions by politicians not to lock down at the right time to just let the virus rip through rip through the country.
我们还需要关注政治、社会和经济问题。如果我们想想 COVID 疫情，例如，似乎中国 COVID 最初的传播是由于中国共产党的保密和缺乏透明度所限制的。然后，如果我们看看 COVID 在英国和美国特别造成的破坏，这是政治家们做出的相当糟糕的决定，没有在正确的时候封锁，而是让病毒在整个国家蔓延。
And we can also look at who was who was affected and you know, not everyone was equally at risk of getting sick and dying from COVID. Certainly poor people and people from certain minoritized ethnic groups were at much higher risk of getting ill and dying. And so I think we have to realize that the problem with COVID wasn't just the COVID virus.
我们还可以看看谁受到了影响，不是每个人都同等有感染和死于COVID的风险。当然，穷人和某些少数民族群体的人得病和死亡的风险要高得多。因此，我认为我们必须意识到，COVID的问题不仅仅是COVID病毒。
It was that our society had created a habitat through which the COVID virus was able to prosper. And if we deal with these issues of poverty and lack of transparent government that really kind of helped the the the COVID pandemic to thrive, then we can we can help avert a future pandemic as well.
我们的社会创造了一个环境，使得COVID病毒得以茁壮成长。如果我们处理贫困和缺乏透明政府等问题，这些问题实际上有助于COVID大流行的蔓延，那么我们也可以防止未来的大流行。
Thank you for listening to instant genius that was Dr Jonathan Kennedy talking about how disease has shaped human history. His book, Pathogenesis is out on the 13th of April. The latest issue of BT sites focus magazines out now. Pick up a copy and store. Office at sitesfocus.com.
谢谢你们收听我们的节目，我们邀请到了乔纳森·肯尼迪博士，他谈论了疾病如何塑造了人类历史。他的新书《病原体》将于4月13日出版。最新一期的BT站点专注杂志现已上市，欢迎购买及收藏，您可以在sitesfocus.com联系我们。