0000000001086980
AUTHOR
Amanda G. Henry
Understanding the microbial biogeography of ancient human dentitions to guide study design and interpretation
AbstractThe oral cavity is a heterogeneous environment, varying in factors such as pH, oxygen levels, and salivary flow. These factors affect the microbial community composition and distribution of species in dental plaque, but it is not known how well these patterns are reflected in archaeological dental calculus. In most archaeological studies, a single sample of dental calculus is studied per individual and is assumed to represent the entire oral cavity. However, it is not known if this sampling strategy introduces biases into studies of the ancient oral microbiome. Here, we present the results of a shotgun metagenomic study of a dense sampling of dental calculus from four Chalcolithic i…
Microremains from El Mirón Cave human dental calculus suggest a mixed plant/animal subsistence economy during the Magdalenian in Northern Iberia
Abstract Despite more than a century of detailed investigation of the Magdalenian period in Northern Iberia, our understanding of the diets during this period is limited. Methodologies for the reconstruction of Late Glacial subsistence strategies have overwhelmingly targeted animal exploitation, thus revealing only a portion of the dietary spectrum. Retrieving food debris from calculus offers a means to provide missing information on other components of diet. We undertook analysis of human dental calculus samples from Magdalenian individuals (including the “Red Lady”) at El Miron Cave (Cantabria, Spain), as well as several control samples, to better understand the less visible dietary compo…
Assessing use and suitability of scanning electron microscopy in the analysis of micro remains in dental calculus
AbstractDental calculus is increasingly recognized as a major reservoir of dietary information. Palaeodietary studies using plant and animal micro remains (e.g. phytoliths, pollen, sponge spicules, and starch grains) trapped in calculus have the potential to revise our knowledge of the dietary role of plants in past populations. The conventional methods used to isolate and identify these micro remains rely on removing them from their microenvironment in the calculus, thus the microenvironment that traps and preserves micro remains is not understood. By using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM–EDX) on modern chimpanzee calculus from the Taï Forest, Côt…
Dietary evidence from Central Asian Neanderthals: A combined isotope and plant microremains approach at Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai, Russia).
Neanderthals are known primarily from their habitation of Western Eurasia, but they also populated large expanses of Northern Asia for thousands of years. Owing to a sparse archaeological record, relatively little is known about these eastern Neanderthal populations. Unlike in their western range, there are limited zooarchaeological and paleobotanical studies that inform us about the nature of their subsistence. Here, we perform a combined analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes on bone collagen and microbotanical remains in dental calculus to reconstruct the diet of eastern Neanderthals at Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai Mountains of Southern Siberia, Russia. Stable isotopes identify…
Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia
During recent decades, Neanderthal diet has been a major research topic in palaeoanthropology. This has been accelerated by the maturation of different techniques, which have produced a plethora of new information. However, this proliferation of data has led to confusing and contradictory results. Furthermore, most of the ecological dietary studies have been carried out on specimens drawn from different time periods and regions, almost exclusively those characterized by cold, open environmental conditions. Subsistence models based on these fragmentary data have been applied to Neanderthals living in a variety of different regions and environments, even though their dietary strategies may ha…
Aliados de la arqueozoología: estudio de la dieta paleolítica mediante análisis isotópicos y de micro-restos vegetales
Durante la última década, los análisis arqueozoológicos que pretenden reconstruir los patrones de subsistencia paleolítica han encontrado aliados en la aplicación de nuevas técnicas: los análisis isotópicos y el estudio de micro-restos vegetales. Los análisis de isótopos estables del carbono y del nitrógeno en colágeno óseo dan información sobre el origen de la proteína consumida de forma constante durante varios años antes de la muerte de los individuos, así como sobre el peldaño trófico de la cadena alimentaria en que los especímenes de estudio se sitúan. El estudio de micro-restos vegetales (fitolitos y granos de almidón) conservados en cálculos dentales y útiles líticos da información s…
The evolution and changing ecology of the African hominid oral microbiome
Significance The microbiome plays key roles in human health, but little is known about its evolution. We investigate the evolutionary history of the African hominid oral microbiome by analyzing dental biofilms of humans and Neanderthals spanning the past 100,000 years and comparing them with those of chimpanzees, gorillas, and howler monkeys. We identify 10 core bacterial genera that have been maintained within the human lineage and play key biofilm structural roles. However, many remain understudied and unnamed. We find major taxonomic and functional differences between the oral microbiomes of Homo and chimpanzees but a high degree of similarity between Neanderthals and modern humans, incl…
Understanding the microbial biogeography of ancient human dentitions to guide study design and interpretation
©. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This document is the Published manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in FEMS Microbes. To access the final edited and published work see DOI: 10.1093/femsmc/xtac006 The oral cavity is a heterogeneous environment, varying in factors such as pH, oxygen levels, and salivary flow. These factors affect the microbial community composition and distribution of species in dental plaque, but it is not known how well these patterns are reflected in archaeological dental calculus. In most archaeological studies, a single sample of dental calculus is studied p…
Dental calculus evidence of Gravettian diet and behavior at Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov
How modern humans colonised the frigid Late Pleistocene North European Plain is a major theme in the study of human origins. Research has made strides in revealing the technology, art, settlement and subsistence of groups in these northern environments. Although the refuse of ancient meals are frequently found in Gravettian occupational layers in the form of the skeletal remains of fauna, much of what we know about Gravettian and indeed Upper Paleolithic subsistence is incomplete and biased towards certain food types, particularly animal foods (Svoboda et al. 2005; Tagliacozzo et al. 2012). Understanding vegetal diet in order to explain the subsistence strategies of Upper Palaeolithic Euras…
Seasonal and habitat effects on the nutritional properties of savanna vegetation: Potential implications for early hominin dietary ecology.
The African savannas that many early hominins occupied likely experienced stark seasonality and contained mosaic habitats (i.e., combinations of woodlands, wetlands, grasslands, etc.). Most would agree that the bulk of dietary calories obtained by taxa such as Australopithecus and Paranthropus came from the consumption of vegetation growing across these landscapes. It is also likely that many early hominins were selective feeders that consumed particular plants/plant parts (e.g., leaves, fruit, storage organs) depending on the habitat and season within which they were foraging. Thus, improving our understanding of how the nutritional properties of potential hominin plant foods growing in mo…
Dental calculus evidence of Taï Forest Chimpanzee plant consumption and life history transitions
AbstractDental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is a source of multiple types of data on life history. Recent research has targeted the plant microremains preserved in this mineralised deposit as a source of dietary and health information for recent and past populations. However, it is unclear to what extent we can interpret behaviour from microremains. Few studies to date have directly compared the microremain record from dental calculus to dietary records and none with long-term observation dietary records, thus limiting how we can interpret diet, food acquisition and behaviour. Here we present a high-resolution analysis of calculus microremains from wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ve…
Influences on plant nutritional variation and their potential effects on hominin diet selection
The selection of foods in any environment depends on a variety of factors, including the nutrient availability and antifeedant loads in the component habitats. How these nutritional properties vary and covary in time and space is not well known, particularly among wild plant species. We collected plant samples from several habitats within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa, and measured their macronutrient and antifeedant properties in order to explore how season, habitat, plant type, and plant organ affected the quality of these potential plant foods. Our results have implications for early hominin use of similar habitats.
Grass leaves as potential hominin dietary resources
Discussions about early hominin diets have generally excluded grass leaves as a staple food resource, despite their ubiquity in most early hominin habitats. In particular, stable carbon isotope studies have shown a prevalent C4 component in the diets of most taxa, and grass leaves are the single most abundant C4 resource in African savannas. Grass leaves are typically portrayed as having little nutritional value (e.g., low in protein and high in fiber) for hominins lacking specialized digestive systems. It has also been argued that they present mechanical challenges (i.e., high toughness) for hominins with bunodont dentition. Here, we compare the nutritional and mechanical properties of gra…
The Potential of Dental Calculus as a Novel Source of Biological Isotopic Data
Stable isotope analysis has become an essential tool in investigations of ancient migration and paleodietary reconstruction. Because the biogeochemistry of bone collagen and apatite is well known, current methods rely almost exclusively on analyses of bones and teeth; however, dental calculus represents a potentially additional biological source of isotopic data from ancient skeletons. Dental calculus is a mineralized bacterial biofilm that forms on the surfaces of teeth. Sampling dental calculus does not damage the dentition and thus can be used in cases where it is not possible to perform destructive analyses of conventional mineralized tissues. Like bone and dentine, dental calculus cont…
Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary niche.
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains…
Dental calculus is not equivalent to bone collagen for isotope analysis: a comparison between carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of bulk dental calculus, bone and dentine collagen from same individuals from the Medieval site of El Raval (Alicante, Spain)
Palaeodietary reconstruction using the carbon and nitrogen isotope values of bone and dentine collagen is a well-established method and the biochemical processes involved are well known. Researchers have recently explored using bulk samples of dental calculus as a substitute for bone and dentine collagen in dietary analyses, because calculus can be sampled without causing damage to the teeth, and may be useful in situations where more destructive analyses are not possible, or where collagen is poorly preserved. Several questions remain about the use of bulk calculus as a source of carbon and nitrogen isotope data, however. It is not yet clear how much of an individual¿s life span dental cal…