人们常用“出嫁”一词指代女性婚配，一些女性也确实会嫁到较远的地方。一项新研究显示，这种风俗可能在人类远祖南方古猿的社会中就已存在。古生物学家在南非考察了南方古猿生活过的两个山洞，发现其中大多数女性都是“外来户”。

由德国、美国和英国研究者组成的科考小组，在6月2日出版的新一期英国《自然》周刊上报告说，该小组对南非两个山洞中出土的一些南方古猿化石进行了分析，重点研究其牙齿化石中的锶同位素含量。

一些幼年动物的牙齿在生长时会摄入当地环境中的锶，因此其含量特征是由幼年所处地域决定的。不同地域环境中的锶同位素含量特征并不一样，可以由此判断牙齿化石所属者是从小就生活在化石出土地，还是从“他乡”迁移至此。

分析结果显示，在这两个山洞的南方古猿当中，约90％的男性成员是从小生活在当地，而女性中超过半数来自外地，可以推断是“出嫁”过来的。

南方古猿是人类早期远祖，本次研究中所用的化石测年结果在约200万年前。参与研究的英国牛津大学教授朱丽叶·李－索普教授说，研究者对南方古猿的社会特征一直了解不多，本次研究提供了难得的直接证据，有助于探索远古人类先祖的若干生活特性。（生物谷Bioon.com）

生物谷推荐原文出处：

Nature DOI:10.1038/nature10149

Strontium isotope evidence for landscape use by early hominins

Sandi R. Copeland; Matt Sponheimer; Darryl J. de Ruiter; Julia A. Lee-Thorp; Daryl Codron; Petrus J. le Roux; Vaughan Grimes; Michael P. Richards

Ranging and residence patterns among early hominins have been indirectly inferred from morphology1, 2, stone-tool sourcing3, referential models4, 5 and phylogenetic models6, 7, 8. However, the highly uncertain nature of such reconstructions limits our understanding of early hominin ecology, biology, social structure and evolution. We investigated landscape use in Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus from the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave sites in South Africa using strontium isotope analysis, a method that can help to identify the geological substrate on which an animal lived during tooth mineralization. Here we show that a higher proportion of small hominins than large hominins had non-local strontium isotope compositions. Given the relatively high levels of sexual dimorphism in early hominins, the smaller teeth are likely to represent female individuals, thus indicating that females were more likely than males to disperse from their natal groups. This is similar to the dispersal pattern found in chimpanzees9, bonobos10 and many human groups11, but dissimilar from that of most gorillas and other primates12. The small proportion of demonstrably non-local large hominin individuals could indicate that male australopiths had relatively small home ranges, or that they preferred dolomitic landscapes.