DNA from Stone Age woman obtained

6,000 years on
By Helen BriggsBBC News

This is the face of a woman who lived 6,000 years

ago in Scandinavia.

Thanks to the tooth marks she left in ancient

"chewing gum", scientists were able to obtain
DNA, which they used to decipher her genetic
code.

This is the first time an entire ancient human

genome has been extracted from anything
other than human bone, said the researchers.

She likely had dark skin, dark brown hair and

blue eyes.

Dr Hannes Schroeder from the University of

Copenhagen said the "chewing gum" - actually
tar from a tree - is a very valuable source of
ancient DNA, especially for time periods where
we have no human remains.
"It is amazing to have gotten a complete
ancient human genome from anything other
than bone,'' he said.

What do we know about her?

The woman's entire genetic code, or genome,

was decoded and used to work out what she
might have looked like. She was genetically
more closely related to hunter-gatherers from
mainland Europe than to those who lived in
central Scandinavia at the time, and, like them,
had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

She was likely descended from a population of

settlers that moved up from western Europe
after the glaciers retreated.

How did she live?

Other traces of DNA gave clues to life at

Syltholm on Lolland, an island of Denmark in
the Baltic Sea. The DNA signatures of hazelnut
and mallard duck were identified, showing
these were part of the diet at the time.

"It is the biggest Stone Age site in Denmark

and the archaeological finds suggest that the
people who occupied the site were heavily
exploiting wild resources well into the Neolithic,
which is the period when farming and
domesticated animals were first introduced into
southern Scandinavia," said Theis Jensen from
the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers also extracted DNA from

microbes trapped in the "chewing gum". They
found pathogens that cause glandular fever
and pneumonia, as well as many other viruses
and bacteria that are naturally present in the
mouth, but don't cause disease.
Image copyrightTHEIS JENSENImage captionPiece of 5,700-year-old birch pitch from Syltholm, southern
Denmark

Where did the DNA come from?

The DNA was stuck in a black-brown lump of

birch pitch, produced by heating birch bark,
which was used at that time to glue together
stone tools.

The presences of tooth marks suggest the

substance was chewed, perhaps to make it
more malleable, or possibly to relieve
toothache or other ailments.

What does the information tell us?

The researchers said the information

preserved in this way offers a snapshot of
people's lives, providing information on
ancestry, livelihood and health.

DNA extracted from the chewing gum also

gives an insight into how human pathogens
have evolved over the years.

"To be able to recover these types of ancient

pathogen genomes from material like this is
quite exciting because we can study how they
evolved and how they are different to strains
that are present nowadays," Dr Schroeder told
the BBC. "And that tells us something about
how they have spread and how they evolved."
The research is published in the journal Nature
Communications.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50809586