我拍中华对角羚

中华对角羚（又名普氏原羚），是一种比大熊猫还稀少，被国际自然保护联盟列为极危级的动物，全球现存不足300只，仅生活于青海湖周边地区。从1997年开始，摄影家葛玉修把手中的镜头对准了这一濒危物种，他冒着严寒，在海拔3300多米的高原地区坚持拍摄，他与寒冷、饥饿、孤寂相伴，与狼群擦肩而过，用图片把中华对角羚的生存状况展现在了世人面前，唤起了人们对中华对角羚的关注和保护之情。本刊特刊发葛玉修先生的这篇文章，让我们随着葛先生的讲述，一起到西海之畔，去认识中华对角羚这一大自然的精灵。[编者按]     

Plant exploitation of the last foragers at Shizitan in the Middle Yellow River Valley China: evidence from grinding stones

China is one of the few centers in the world where plant domestication evolved independently, but its developmental trajectory is poorly understood. This is because there is considerably less data from the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene documented in China than in other regions, such as the Near East and Mesoamerica, and previous studies on Paleolithic subsistence in China have largely focused on animal hunting rather than plant gathering. To resolve these problems the current research investigated the range of plants used by late Paleolithic hunter–gatherers in the middle Yellow River region where some of the earliest farmers emerged. We employed usewear and starch analyses on grinding stones to recover evidence for plant use in a hunting–gathering population at a late Paleolithic site, Shizitan Locality 9 in Jixian, Shanxi (ca. 13,800–8500 cal. BP). The usewear analysis shows that all artifacts preserved a range of usewear patterns best matching multiple tasks and indicating multi-functional use. Starch remains recovered from these tools indicate that the Shizitan people collected and processed many types of grass seeds (Panicoideae and Pooideae subfamilies), acorns (Quercus sp.), beans (Phaseoleae tribe) and yams (Dioscorea sp.). The Shizitan people represented some of the last hunter–gatherers in the middle Yellow River region. Their broad spectrum subsistence strategy was apparently carried on by the first Neolithic farmers in the same region, who collected similar wild plants and eventually domesticated millets. The trajectory from intensified collection of a wide range of wild plants to domestication of a small number of species was a very long process in north China. This parallels the transition from the “broad spectrum revolution” to agriculture in the Near East.