Not unlike New Yorkers, some of our ancient relatives felt comfortable leaving their gum wherever they pleased. Now, archaeologists combing through centuries-old settlements are recovering these chewed remains, breaking them down and learning more about the people who spat them out.
One such wad, recovered in southern Denmark, was likely chomped about 5,700 years ago by a member of one of the last groups of hunter-gatherers in the region. A full genome recovered from the gum shows it belonged to a dark-skinned, dark-haired and blue-eyed female, according to an analysis published in Nature Communications. The recovered DNA also hints at what kind of foods and diseases were common among people of the region, as well as where they might have come from in the first place.
The “gum” in question is birch pitch, a byproduct of heating up tree bark. It’s unclear what our relatives chewed it for. It may ...
