Around 5,700 years ago, a young girl chewed on some gum and spat it out. That ancient gum is all scientists today need to reconstruct her entire appearance and even the world of microbes that lived inside her.
Click start to pay today’s Crossword, where DNA hides in the clue for 7-Across.
Scientists unveiled astonishing details of the ancient human genome they sequenced from a piece of chewed birch pitch they found in Denmark. The results were published in the UK-based scientific journal Nature Communications in December 2019.
Birch pitch is a glue-like substance made by heating birch bark. Its antiseptic nature meant that ancient humans would use it often, and excavations at ancient sites around the world have frequently uncovered blobs of pitch imprinted with human teeth. But it’s only recently that scientists have developed the tools they need to extract human genomes from this Stone Age chewing gum.
What they found was incredible. They called the girl Lola, after the Lolland island in Denmark, where the gum was found, and learned that she lived on the island in the Baltic Sea in around 3,700 BC. She had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes – a common genetic combination of many ancient European hunter-gatherers.
From Lola’s oral microbiome – the DNA of the countless microbes that lived inside her mouth – scientists were able to even identify the kinds of plants and animals she had consumed just before spitting out the birch pitch. They discovered Lola was lactose intolerant and may have suffered from a kind of gum disease. And she had recently had a meal that included duck and hazelnuts.
This remarkable genetic snapshot of a unique person and time, frozen in history, was the first time researchers were able to reconstruct a complete human genome via ‘non-human material’ rather than from physical remains. Scientific research is only starting to get its bearings around human microbiomes, according to a December 2019 report in National Geographic, but it’s clear that it plays an important role in our health. Variations in our microbiome can impact all aspects of our health – from our predisposition to infection, to heart ailments and even our behaviour.
The birch pitch that archaeologists found was also a humbling reminder: being able to reconstruct an entire person and her lifestyle from an unsuspecting piece of gum shows that even the most unremarkable artifacts should be preserved and studied.
Any innocuous artifact could open a window into history. And who knows what remarkable discoveries lie in wait?
Play today’s Crossword and let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.
