What Chewed-Up Gum Reveals About Life in the Stone Age [DNA]

www.theatlantic.com ^ | Dec 14, 2018 | Sarah Zhang

[Red Badger]

Chewed tar is an unexpectedly great source of ancient DNA.

No one today quite understands how they did it, but people in the Stone Age could turn ribbons of birch bark into sticky, black tar. They used this tar to make tools, fixing arrowheads onto arrows and blades onto axes. And they chewed it, as evidenced by teeth marks in some lumps.

These unassuming lumps of chewed birch-bark tar turn out to be an extraordinary source of ancient DNA. This month, two separate research groups posted preprints describing DNA from the tar in Stone Age Scandinavia. The two papers have not yet been peer reviewed, but they are already generating excitement about what they herald.

“It’s really amazing,” says Pontus Skoglund, an ancient-DNA researcher at Francis Crick Institute who was not involved with either study. Ancient DNA from human bones and teeth have recently revolutionized the study of the past, but many cultures over time did not bury their dead and left no remains to analyze. Chewing gum could fill in some of the gaps. It could also reveal a wealth of additional information, such as who helped make the Stone Age tools, what they ate, and what bacteria lived in their teeth.

The first new paper describes human DNA from three 10,000-year-old pieces of birch-bark tar, all found at a site called Huseby Klev in western Sweden. Having never extracted DNA from tar before, the team tried a protocol originally designed to extract DNA from feces—and it worked. Each piece of tar appears to have been chewed by just one person. In total, the tar pieces captured the DNA of two females and one male.

[freedumb2003]

pe’s hunter-gatherers then."

Or Troglodytes

[miliantnutcase]

R1a haplogroup here.

[ifinnegan]

“the tar pieces captured the DNA of two females and one male”

What? DNA doesn’t determine gender. These scientists need to go to reeducation camp.

[wally_bert]

Did you bring enough for everybody?

[piasa]

So she looked sort of like a Siamese cat...

[trebb]

Yeah - and the ancients used to store wine in lead containers because it made the wine taste sweeter...while making the drinkers insane....can’t imagine turpentine residue being good for one.

[jmcenanly]

I don't don't know if they're related but recently they dod a reconstruction of a 9000-year-old skull of a young girl found in Greece. She has the dark hair and skin mentioned here but has dark eyes. To me she looks like a possible daughter of Dwayne Johnson and Sigourney Weaver.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the pings and for posting this, I've been unable to devote time to FR of late. Some ABC gum from the Neolithic, sounds delicious. Probably the reason its qualities got discovered was the flavor? Or perhaps medicinal or other qualities?

[Red Badger]

It was Mastodon Flavor.......................

[a fool in paradise]

Does your chewing tar lose its flavor on your axe handle overnight?