Details Published on Tuesday, 25 February 2014 16:53

Hardened plaque discovered on the teeth of 1,000 year old human skeletons has revealed not only their diets but the diseases they faced.HARDENED plaque discovered on the teeth of 1,000-year-old human skeletons has revealed the world's oldest case of gum disease.

Described as a 'microbial Pompeii', the plaque preserved bacteria and microscopic particles of food on the surfaces of teeth, effectively creating a mineral tomb for microbiomes.

And it revealed that our ancestors had gum disease that was caused by the same bacteria that plagues modern man, despite major changes in diet and hygiene.

They found that the ancient human oral microbiome already contained the basic genetic machinery for antibiotic resistance over eight centuries before the invention of antibiotics in the 1940s.

DNA testing of the tartar also showed some of the things ancient humans had been eating, such a vegetables, which do not show up in fossil records.

Gum disease is caused by a build-up of plaque on the teeth and is thought to affect over half of adults in the UK.

The teeth were taken from skeletons found at a site in Dalheim, Germany.Plaque is a sticky substance that contains bacteria and when it hardens it forms tartar.

Unlike bone, which rapidly loses much of its molecular information when buried, calculus grows slowly in the mouth and enters the soil in a much more stable state, helping it to preserve biomolecules.

Researchers from the University of York, along with Swiss and Danish colleagues, said studying plaque will be more important than teeth in discovering the lifestyles of our past ancestors.

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Plaque On 1000-Year-Old Human Teeth Could Unlock Secrets Of Medieval Diet And Disease