The analytical power of dental calculus as a record of individual lifestyles from the past makes it an invaluable tool to investigate changes in the oral microbiome of ancient animals, in particular domesticated and tamed species, or species living in human-altered ecosystems. Biomolecules of various origins trapped in the mineral matrix of dental calculus, originating from microbes to food residues, are a rich source of genetic and microfossil information that can inform us on health, diet and lifestyle of ancient humans and extinct hominins 5, 6, 7. Recent metagenomic studies driven by technological advances of next-generation sequencing have demonstrated that dental calculus – plaque mineralized on the surfaces of teeth during life – from ancient specimens can be used to investigate oral microbiomes from the past 4.
Dental calculus classification driver#
The oral cavity, in particular, is an extremely rich and diverse microbial environment that can exhibit ethnic-specific variation 2 and is a critical driver of health and disease in humans 3. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for more extensive studies on ancient animal oral microbiomes to examine the extent to which domestication and human management in the past affected the diet, health and lifestyle of target animals.Ĭommensal microbial communities living in or on eukaryotes play a key role in the host’s immunity, susceptibility to pathogens, metabolism and stress response 1. These results may reflect the omnivorous dietary behaviour of baboons, even though health, food provisioning and other factors associated with human management, may have changed the baboons’ oral microbiome. We demonstrate that these captive baboons possessed a distinctive oral microbiome when compared to ancient and modern humans, Neanderthals and a wild chimpanzee. Here, we characterise the oral microbiome of six ancient Egyptian baboons held in captivity during the late Pharaonic era (9 th–6 th centuries BC) and of two historical baboons from a zoo via shotgun metagenomics. Although most studies have so far focused on ancient humans, dental calculus is known to form in a wide range of animals, potentially informing on how human-animal interactions changed the animals’ oral ecology. Recently, ancient metagenomics made it possible to unlock the wealth of microbial and dietary information of dental calculus to reconstruct oral microbiomes and lifestyle of humans from the past. Dental calculus, or mineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues.
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