What did people on the west coast of Scandinavia eat 10,000 years ago?

A new study (Scientific Reports) of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that people on the west coast of Scandinavia ate deer, trout and hazelnuts as part of their diet, some 10,000 years ago. It also shows that one of the individuals had severe problems with her teeth. Some 9,700 years ago, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia, north of what is today Göteborg. They had been fishing, hunting and collecting resources for food. Chewed resin was found together with remains of stone tools in a context dated to 9,700 years ago. The stone material also indicated a Mesolithic chronology. According to the researchers, identifying the different species present in the kind of mix of DNA that was present in the Mesolithic chewing gum was challenging. “We had to apply several computational heavy analytical tools to single out the different species and organisms. All the tools we needed were not ready to be applied to ancient DNA; but much of our time was spent on adjusting them so that we could apply them,” Dr. Andrés Aravena from Istanbul University says in a release