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What a Bronze Age Skeleton Reveals About Cavities
Here’s a hint: He didn’t eat processed foods and sugar.
Previous work with modern oral microbiome genomes suggested that S. mutans populations increased following the adoption of cereal agriculture 12,000 years ago. The study results also demonstrate a loss of diversity in the oral microbiome since the time of the Bronze Age man, as well as an increase in its ability to cause disease. They were able to build an entire genome for ancient S. Mutans for the first time because of the large quantity of the bacteria present on one of the Bronze Age man’s teeth when he was alive.
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