& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

Ancient 'chewing gum' yields human DNA

CNN Online
Lola, a young girl who lived in Denmark 5,700 years ago, had blue eyes, dark skin and dark hair. Her last meal included hazelnuts and mallard duck but no milk - she couldn't stomach dairy.
And the reason we know any of this is because she chewed on birch pitch, a material that functioned a bit like an ancient chewing gum.
A study of that birch pitch has uncovered the girl's entire genome and oral microbiome, marking FROM PAGE 16
the first time human genetic material has successfully been extracted from something besides human bones. The study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Birch pitch was what Palaeolithic people used as glue as many as 760,000 years ago. It was derived by heating the bark of birch trees, and somewhere along the way they realized they could chew it - as indicated by teeth marks found on ancient remnants of the pitch.
A small hunk of brownish-black birch pitch was found by archaeologists from the Museum Lolland-Falster at the Syltholm site on Lolland, the fourth largest island of Denmark. Small lumps are common at archaeological sites in Scandinavia, according to the study.
"Syltholm is completely unique.
Almost everything is sealed in mud, which means that the preservation of organic remains is absolutely phenomenal," said Theis Jensen, study author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen's Globe Institute, who excavated at the site.
"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."
By extracting DNA from the birch pitch, the researchers learned that it had been chewed by a female genetically closely related to huntergatherers from the European
mainland, rather than those in central Scandinavia. Specific genes told them about her hair, skin and eye colour, similar to that of other European hunter-gatherers.
"It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from anything other than bone," said Hannes Schroeder, study author and associate professor from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen. "What is more, we also retrieved DNA from oral microbes and several important human pathogens, which makes this a very valuable source of ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human remains."
Plant and animal DNA trapped in the pitch also revealed that she had eaten hazelnuts and duck, likely staples of her diet.