# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch

## jose luis

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13549-9

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## Angela

The most important part of the study imo is the fact that ancient dna can be recovered from chewed birch pitch, and how to recover it. 

That's great.

The other interesting information was in what they ate, the diseases they suffered from, and the viruses and bacteria they carried. 

The Epstein Barr virus is horrible for people whose immune response it permanently heightens, leading to all sorts of debilitating and sometimes lethal diseases like MS, lupus, etc. 

Interesting they had so much tooth decay, given we were told so often that only came about with the Neolithic and consumption of starches. 

In actuality, for these people it was probably all the hazelnuts they ate, which was also the case for some hunter-gatherers in North Africa according to a paper which came out a few days ago. I'm sure the hunter-gatherers in the Levant, with all the wild growing grain and lots of bees for honey, might have had more than their share as well.

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## Silesian

> The most important part of the study imo is the fact that ancient dna can be recovered from chewed birch pitch, and how to recover it. 
> That's great.
> The other interesting information was in what they ate, the diseases they suffered from, and the viruses and bacteria they carried. 
> The Epstein Barr virus is horrible for people whose immune response it permanently heightens, leading to all sorts of debilitating and sometimes lethal diseases like MS, lupus, etc. 
> Interesting they had so much tooth decay, given we were told so often that only came about with the Neolithic and consumption of starches. 
> In actuality, for these people it was probably all the hazelnuts they ate, which was also the case for some hunter-gatherers in North Africa according to a paper which came out a few days ago. I'm sure the hunter-gatherers in the Levant, with all the wild growing grain and lots of bees for honey, might have had more than their share as well.


This study is very important. Why?

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## Angela

> This study is very important. Why?


I'm sorry, I thought I made it clear. 



"_The most important part of the study imo is the fact that ancient dna can be recovered from chewed birch pitch, and how to recover it._
_That's great._
_The other interesting information was in what they ate, the diseases they suffered from, and the viruses and bacteria they carried."


_The fact that a Scandinavian hunter-gatherer is WHG should not be earth shattering news for anyone, should it?

It would be like being over the moon that a farmer from France was mostly Anatolian Neolithic and some WHG. Interesting, glad to have it, but hardly a groundbreaking study, yes?

Unless I'm misunderstanding your point?

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## bicicleur

> Interesting they had so much tooth decay, given we were told so often that only came about with the Neolithic and consumption of starches. 
> 
> In actuality, for these people it was probably all the hazelnuts they ate, which was also the case for some hunter-gatherers in North Africa according to a paper which came out a few days ago. I'm sure the hunter-gatherers in the Levant, with all the wild growing grain and lots of bees for honey, might have had more than their share as well.


The Iberomaursians came from the same branch as the Natufians - E1b1b1b-M35.
They had similar lifestyle and also ate a lot of plant food.
Their caries and the habit in some of their tribes to extract the incisors at young age must have been desastrous.

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## Silesian

Our genome has between 20-25K genes. The microbiome has vastly more genes. Some bacteria we do not even know, as they cannot survive outside the host. We can use the human genome to parse populations as well as archaeogenetics of ancient bacteria [as the study above shows]for example. Using bacteria also makes a great deal of sense, to the point of being able to parse women of different nationalities by the bacteria microbes they harbor with in reproductive tract. The microbiome has adapted and co-evolved with human genes to help in specific human needs[symbiotic relationship between mtdna for example] , and we can see that in the bacteria of the skin, mouth, gut, reproductive[women]. Some bacteria are harmful and when introduced to a new population- pathogenic like Yersinia pestis,[stomach bacterias] , and e coli[produce] for example. Others are beneficial like specialty cheeses, Kefir, yogurt-[ two strains of bacteria, that co-evolved from the Bulgarian eco-system] etc...

Archaeogentic testing of specific regional strains of bacteria, also has implications for potential linguistics. As a particular bacteria co-evolved within a specific region, say for example, nomadic pastoralism on the steppe using dairy or mares milk and co-evolving with certain strains of bacteria. Or say specific yeasts like grape yeasts that only live in Georgia, as another example.

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## Gnarl

> The fact that a Scandinavian hunter-gatherer is WHG should not be earth shattering news for anyone, should it?


Well, its a little bit interesting. The subject seems to be nearly 100 % WHG. No admixture with Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers. Also lacks Farmer DNA although both the location and time period is within the Funnelbeaker culture area. We also seem to be within the time frame of the Atlantic Megalith culture, although I am not sure if Scandinavia was quite there on it yet. We just had a paper showing that the Y-chromosomes of the Megalith builders were WHG in origin, and that the DNA showed a more male-dominated WHG gene transfer -except in Scandinavia.

I also got the impression that this was a fairly large site. Its food for speculation if nothing else.

EDIT: Also seems within the WHG resurgence period.

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## bicicleur

no EHG admixture in island southern Denmark
and no EHG despite K1e mtDNA

in Europe there seems to have been quite some exchange of females between HG and farmers, while in the Caucasus there was not (Wang paper)

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## Angela

> Well, its a little bit interesting. The subject seems to be nearly 100 % WHG. No admixture with Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers. Also lacks Farmer DNA although both the location and time period is within the Funnelbeaker culture area. We also seem to be within the time frame of the Atlantic Megalith culture, although I am not sure if Scandinavia was quite there on it yet. We just had a paper showing that the Y-chromosomes of the Megalith builders were WHG in origin, and that the DNA showed a more male-dominated WHG gene transfer -except in Scandinavia.
> 
> I also got the impression that this was a fairly large site. Its food for speculation if nothing else.
> 
> EDIT: Also seems within the WHG resurgence period.


All good points.

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## jose luis

As this thread is also about the oral microbiome, I post this here as I can't find a more appropriate thread.
.
"The evolution and changing ecology of the African hominid oral microbiome", May 2021, featuring names like Johannes Krause, using the oral microbiome of hunter-gatherers Sapiens (n=20) and Neanderthals (n=17) since 100,000 years , concludes:
1) "the Upper Paleolithic individual from El Mirón in Iberia (18.6 ka) clusters with Neanderthals, rather than with other Pleistocene hunter-gatherers of the African Later Stone Age or more recent Holocene-era European or African populations. Recently published human genomic data including this individual has revealed that its associated genetic ancestry component was largely displaced across Europe after 14 ka during postglacial warming. Turning to our low-coverage metagenomic datasets, we assessed additional European Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic groups and found that they show a similar pattern (albeit at lower resolution), with the oral taxa of individuals dated to before 14 ka mostly falling with Neanderthals and those after 14 ka mostly clustering with present-day modern humans. This pattern suggests that the reconstructed oral bacterial genomes from El Mirón reflect a standing microbial diversity in Homo that was present in Europe during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, but which was later replaced following subsequent migrations of modern human populations from elsewhere."
.
Is this change in the Sapiens oral microbiome 14,000 years ago due to the fact that, at that time, the diet of glacial Europe, based on the meat of the large herds of steppe herbivores, was replaced by post-glacial small game and forest plants, warmer weather and less cooked foods? I ask this, because in order to have the same oral microbiome as the Neanderthals, the first European Sapiens, coexisted intimately with them (for instance, kissing on the mouth, sharing a deer leg...) before they replaced them, and the waves of Sapiens that followed also coexisted intimately with the previous populations before replacing them. I know little about paleogenetics but this wave after 14,000 years ago and the one that followed, the Neolithic, also coexisted at least in the Iberian Peninsula, with the populations prior to 14,000 years ago, according to the study that includes the same individual from El Mirón and is authored by the same Johannes Krause: Current Biology, Villalba-Mouco et al.: "Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-gatherer ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula" https://www.cell.com/current-biology...822(19)30145-9
.
2) "starch-rich foods [tubers, wild cereals, pods...], possibly modified by cooking first became important more than 600 ka".
.
A few million years ago, as the climate became drier, the fruits we fed on became more compact (first in pods, later in wild cereal seeds...) and their content became starch. Our teeth have adapted to grinding this seeds and we have invented tools capable of digging up tubers or chop and hammer these hard foods. For a frugivore who hail from the forest, as we were a few million years ago, this starch-rich foods are the most affordable foods on the savannah.
This conclusion of the authors of this study is uncomfortable for those who defend the importance of carnivorism in human evolution, very much in vogue with paleo diets nowadays.

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