几百年前我们的食物是什么样子的?艺术史或许有答案

几百年前我们的食物是什么样子的?艺术史或许有答案

What happens when a plant geneticist and an art historian walk into a museum together?

如果一个植物遗传学家和一个艺术历史学家一起走进博物馆会发生什么?

The fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds were once cultivated and improved over the millennia. Growers honed in on different textures, flavors, appearances and varieties that were more appealing for human consumption and agriculturally efficient.

水果、蔬菜、豆类、谷物、坚果和种子都经过了几千年的培育和改良。种植者们在不同的质地、口味、外观和品种上不断磨练，使它们对人类消费和农业效率更有吸引力。

But what did our food look like hundreds of years ago? For a few decades, plant geneticists have studied the historical genetic composition of modern foods in several ways, highlighting certain genetic mutations that were responsible for transformations in appearance.

但是几百年前我们的食物是什么样子的呢?几十年来，植物遗传学家以多种方式研究了现代食物的历史基因组成，重点研究了导致外观变化的某些基因突变。

These approaches haven't offered many answers for what some plant-based foods actually looked like, according to an article published Tuesday in the journal Trends in Plant Science.

根据周二发表在《植物科学趋势》杂志上的一篇文章，这些方法并没有为一些植物性食品的实际外观提供很多答案。

So worldwide art collections, the old-time equivalents of the modern-day photograph, might serve as a massive historical database of how modern plant foods have fluctuated in their looks. And they're asking the public to send in what they find.

因此，世界各地的艺术收藏，就像现代的照片一样，可以作为一个巨大的历史数据库，记录现代植物的外观是如何变化的。他们要求公众把他们发现的东西送来。

"Images, and in this case artistic depictions, are a good way to provide that missing information," said study coauthor Ive De Smet.

该研究的合著者艾夫·德·斯迈特说:“图像，以及在这种情况下的艺术描绘是提供缺失信息的好方法。”

"We are mainly interested in the story that, say, the modern orange carrot made from its humble beginnings as a weed, to its current popular form," he said.

他说:“我们主要对现代橙色胡萝卜的故事感兴趣，比如它从一种不起眼的野草发展到现在流行的形式。”

"Genomes of ancient plant-based foods can help us understand what this plant could have looked like," he continued. "This helps us pinpoint the appearance of certain characteristics on a timeline, the same way paintings can."

“古老植物性食物的基因组可以帮助我们了解这种植物可能看起来像什么，”他继续说道。“这有助于我们在时间轴上确定某些特征的外观，就像绘画一样。”

De Smet and co-author David Vergauwen, who is a lecturer on cultural history at Amarant, a Belgian cultural institution — have been friends since high school more than 30 years ago.

德·斯迈特和合著者、比利时文化机构阿玛兰特的文化史讲师戴维•维高温30多年前从高中时代就成了朋友。

Attending the same university they studied disciplines that, until now, seemed worlds apart. But every now and then the friends "take a trip together to visit a region or city we cannot convince our wives to go to," De Smet said.

在同一所大学里，他们学习的学科直到现在看来都是天壤之别。但斯迈特说，这对朋友偶尔会“一起去旅行，去某个我们说服不了妻子的地区或城市”。

A few years ago, the duo stood in the Hermitage Museum in Russia, in front of a painting of fruits by the late Flemish painter Frans Snyders. Neither of them recognized the fruits, so the following question was whether the fruit had looked the same in the 17th century, or whether Snyders was merely a bad painter.

几年前，两人站在俄罗斯的隐士博物馆里，面前是已故的弗拉芒画家弗兰斯·斯奈德的一幅水果画。他们谁也没认出这些水果来，所以随之而来的问题是这些水果在17世纪看起来是不是一样，还是斯奈德只是个蹩脚的画家。

On a train to Tsarkoe Selo, another museum in Russia, that query sparked further discussion about whether other foods had similar stories. A multidisciplinary investigation was born.

在前往俄罗斯另一家博物馆萨科奇塞洛的火车上，这个问题引发了关于是否其他食物也有类似经历的进一步讨论。一项多学科的研究由此诞生。

With art as an aid, they've since made similar discoveries regarding the making of modern wheat, the cultivation of strawberries and the origins of watermelon.

在艺术的帮助下，他们在现代小麦的制作、草莓的种植和西瓜的起源等方面都有了类似的发现。