What if a piece of chewing gum could tell you what someone ate nearly 10,000 years ago? It sounds like the setup for an archaeological mystery, but researchers have discovered that ancient pieces of chewed birch bark pitch can preserve remarkable clues about the people who used them.
At the Huseby Klev archaeological site on the west coast of Sweden, researchers studied pieces of chewed pitch dating back roughly 9,700 years. The material contained DNA from humans, plants, animals, and oral bacteria, giving scientists an unusual glimpse into the lives—and dental health—of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
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