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Study of ancient British oral microbiomes reveals shift following Black Death

stareatgoats 3y ago
Studying the calcified plaque in the teeth of ancient populations can be a better proxy for understanding the oral microbiomes in pre-industrialized societies than using present day indigenous societies practicing subsistence lifestyle. Using this method this study might just prove, or at least insinuate, that the survivors of the Second Plague Pandemic that earned higher incomes and could afford higher-calorie foods are in fact possibly responsible for a "wide range of chronic diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and poor mental health". To their credit, they won't investigate the teeth of pre-industrialized people "without the permission and collaboration of decedent populations and stakeholders". I'm not saying nothing good will come out research such as this. It is just interesting that it contains so much irrelevant signaling.
- leoedin 3y ago
  That part jumped out at me. Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? And how on earth are they even going to get it? Surely even if one guy says it's ok (and you can prove he's descended from a body you found), what happens if another person says no? It's obviously nonsense - so why claim it? The part about indiginous research is kind of mad as well - "This research places unnecessary responsibilities and obligations on Indigenous communities to participate in microbiome research". We're talking about a mouth swab here. It makes me glad I don't work in academia!
  - basisword 3y ago
    Why do you think you’re entitled to dig up peoples bodies and conduct research on indigenous people? That kind of entitlement is the cause of everything bad in the tech industry.
    - stareatgoats 3y ago
      Except we're not talking about "indigenous people". The study wants to investigate the teeth of pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people in that slightly vague dichotomy.
      - bboygravity 3y ago
        Hey, tone it down a little. I'm indigenous European, you might be talking about my great great great great great great grandparents here. /s
        draugadrotten 3y ago
        > I'm indigenous European When Netflix depicts indigenous European as POC, is that Blackface or Historical Accuracy or both? I am confused.
        defrost 3y ago
        Both. The bulk of modern Europe was covered in thick glacial ice, when it receded the "first Europeans" walked in from the south. A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. Now throw in a steady low rate of long distance trade - traders travelled, as did those enslaved and traded. The Roman settlements in England were mainly established by people not from modern Italy, they came from across a broad part of the full Roman Empire, one fort was manned by Africans. So - legitimately mostly white skinned people with a small percentage of every other shade. Depending very much which bit of "Europe" you're looking at.
        qwytw 3y ago
        > A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. IIRC the current theory is that genes responsible for white skin in Europe were initially introduced by farmers migrating from Anatolia and the middle east (white skin appearings somewhere there or closer to the Caucasus). They almost entirely replaced the indigenous much darker skin hunter gatherers in many areas of Europe, > one fort was manned by Africans. North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now (Trans-Saharan slave trade which transported millions of people from Sub-Saharan Arica wasn't a thing back then).
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? Because there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead (e.g. shrunken heads) in the past, and there are numerous legal issues being fought to this day about repatriation of human remains back to their home countries. There is no need to pile more case on the already large pile.
    - leoedin 3y ago
      These bodies are British.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        Being studied by Americans and Australians. If it is bad for the British to take human remains from other countries, then we should apply the same logic to exporting British human remains.
        qwytw 3y ago
        > Being studied by Americans and Australians. And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent.
        eigenket 3y ago
        > And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent. We (the UK) don't care. If you try to export human remains from the UK to another country (the study is being done by US and Australian universities), without the correct permissions you're going to have a bad time.
    - KaiserPro 3y ago
      > there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead There is a rich history of everyone looting graves. This isn't a colonial vs other thing here. Sacking of places is common and still happens (see syria, afganistan & the sudans. ) We just happen to know about the stuff the western people did because they documented it and put it on display. (unlike the romans, persians, greeks, byzantines, ottermans, et al. didn't loose it to the next empire, yet.) There used to be a bunch of TV shows where they'd routinely dig up bones and put them on shelves in storage. Applying to exhume a body isn't that difficult in the UK either: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence
  - informatimago 3y ago
    Indeed. 500 years is about 16 generations, so any ancestor of that age may have 65536 or even more descendents. You'd need to locate them and ask them all permission. How does it work, is it majority vote? Unanimous vote? All European people have a unique male ancestor 300 generations away. If you locate remains of that age, do you have to ask nobody or everybody? (Depending on whether it's the male ancestor of all of us, or some other male whose last descendent died long ago?)
    - samus 3y ago
      Human societies have elaborate processes to solve this issue: inheritance laws. In case no heirs can be located anymore (body can't be identified, records are missing, the line has died out, etc.) the state is the heir by default and makes the rules.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence I suspect its part of the license to exhume the bodies. (Assuming that they haven't already been removed from the ground)
  - eigenket 3y ago
    This research is being done by US and Australian universities on remains from the UK. If you turn up in the UK and try to dig up random skeletons and send them to the US or Australia without the correct permissions, you're gonna get arrested. Probably very quickly, probably at the first grave yard you visit. You get the permission from whoever owns the land the graves are in, as well as the UK government.
    - stareatgoats 3y ago
      If I get your drift, you mean that research papers should henceforth have disclaimer, saying that "no law was broken during our research"? Fair enough, but I don't think that's what they were signaling by the quote in question somehow.
      - eigenket 3y ago
        I think the point is that there are many places where (especially indigenous) remains don't have the same level of legal protection as they do in the UK. The universities also want to make sure their researchers get permission from whoever they should/can even in those places.
- spacecadet 3y ago
  for a large number of university staff and graduates, signaling is all they can produce...
- demondemidi 3y ago
  What do you mean by “so much irrelevant signaling”? And why do you focus on the non science-y bits of a science article? Seems irrelevant, no?
- canarypilot 3y ago
  One hop from the parent article is a discussion on why these researchers believe it matters. Hacker News comments have been in a bit of an anti-academia, pro-business mood recently, so most relevant question copied below. Imagine an (exploitative? Creative?) product launch for a probiotic yogurt made “to give you the biome of a true paleo”. We might want to ensure those whose mouths were swabbed to unlock that tag line were compensated. > Q: What is microbiome ownership, and why is it important? Weyrich: This means that someone could own or have rights to their own bacteria. The ‘next generation’ of probiotics to support health are coming from people who donate their microbes — not yogurts or fermented foods, so establishing a framework for people to own their microbes means that they could benefit or profit from the commercialization of these microbes. This framework is important for providing equal benefits for research participants, research teams and companies that may want to commercialize someone’s microbes to make ‘next generation’ probiotics.
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    OK so this just confirmed my hunch: the driver for this type of research is ideological. I'm not overly disgusted by it such as someone in the "anti-academia, pro-business" camp might be, I pick the chips on my shoulder with some care. But I much prefer research that is not ideologically biased - in any direction. The more extremist, the less I prefer it. I'm familiar with the notion that "everything is politics" and the like, but it is a completely useless rule of thumb for everyone but undergraduate zealots and ideologues, who ultimately prefer to spend their energy defending their bias instead of looking at the data.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    > an anti-academia, pro-business mood recently recently? bro this is an incubator for SV startups -- its always been that way.
- sheepshear 3y ago
  Legally, I can destructively analyze your ancestor's genetics, use it to get rich selling you skinny pills instead of an inexpensive one-time therapy, and unknowingly destroy the genetic information that would have unlocked a remedy for a birth defect that runs in your family. The law is very underdeveloped in this area, so ethics stand in for now.
gumby 3y ago
Well that was not what I had expected! I assumed from the title that the oral bacteria would reveal some preferential defense or resistance to yersinia pestis, but instead it was entirely due to the post-epidemic economies of the survivors. This is more like the situation of beriberi crippling the imperial Japanese navy in the 1880s
estiaan 3y ago
I thought ancient meant 1000+ years ago?
anovikov 3y ago
TL;DR: not being desperately poor is unnatural for humans, and slowly kills us.
- pixl97 3y ago
  This said, being desperately poor killed us much faster.
yosito 3y ago
With the number of anecdotal reports I've heard of people having gut problems post-Covid, I wonder if this will also be true in our times.
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  There are a number of gut microbiome testing companies sponsoring studies on this and university labs who have found some promising candidate probiotics being clinically trialed to restore gut microbiome. We may be able to fix ours.

Studying the calcified plaque in the teeth of ancient populations can be a better proxy for understanding the oral microbiomes in pre-industrialized societies than using present day indigenous societies practicing subsistence lifestyle. Using this method this study might just prove, or at least insinuate, that the survivors of the Second Plague Pandemic that earned higher incomes and could afford higher-calorie foods are in fact possibly responsible for a "wide range of chronic diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and poor mental health". To their credit, they won't investigate the teeth of pre-industrialized people "without the permission and collaboration of decedent populations and stakeholders". I'm not saying nothing good will come out research such as this. It is just interesting that it contains so much irrelevant signaling.

leoedin 3y ago
That part jumped out at me. Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? And how on earth are they even going to get it? Surely even if one guy says it's ok (and you can prove he's descended from a body you found), what happens if another person says no? It's obviously nonsense - so why claim it? The part about indiginous research is kind of mad as well - "This research places unnecessary responsibilities and obligations on Indigenous communities to participate in microbiome research". We're talking about a mouth swab here. It makes me glad I don't work in academia!
- basisword 3y ago
  Why do you think you’re entitled to dig up peoples bodies and conduct research on indigenous people? That kind of entitlement is the cause of everything bad in the tech industry.
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    Except we're not talking about "indigenous people". The study wants to investigate the teeth of pre-industrial Europeans, the polar opposite of indigenous people in that slightly vague dichotomy.
    - bboygravity 3y ago
      Hey, tone it down a little. I'm indigenous European, you might be talking about my great great great great great great grandparents here. /s
      - draugadrotten 3y ago
        > I'm indigenous European When Netflix depicts indigenous European as POC, is that Blackface or Historical Accuracy or both? I am confused.
        defrost 3y ago
        Both. The bulk of modern Europe was covered in thick glacial ice, when it receded the "first Europeans" walked in from the south. A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. Now throw in a steady low rate of long distance trade - traders travelled, as did those enslaved and traded. The Roman settlements in England were mainly established by people not from modern Italy, they came from across a broad part of the full Roman Empire, one fort was manned by Africans. So - legitimately mostly white skinned people with a small percentage of every other shade. Depending very much which bit of "Europe" you're looking at.
        qwytw 3y ago
        > A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black. IIRC the current theory is that genes responsible for white skin in Europe were initially introduced by farmers migrating from Anatolia and the middle east (white skin appearings somewhere there or closer to the Caucasus). They almost entirely replaced the indigenous much darker skin hunter gatherers in many areas of Europe, > one fort was manned by Africans. North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now (Trans-Saharan slave trade which transported millions of people from Sub-Saharan Arica wasn't a thing back then).
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Why on earth do they need the permission of the descendents of someone who lived 500+ years ago? Because there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead (e.g. shrunken heads) in the past, and there are numerous legal issues being fought to this day about repatriation of human remains back to their home countries. There is no need to pile more case on the already large pile.
  - leoedin 3y ago
    These bodies are British.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Being studied by Americans and Australians. If it is bad for the British to take human remains from other countries, then we should apply the same logic to exporting British human remains.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        > Being studied by Americans and Australians. And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent.
        eigenket 3y ago
        > And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent. We (the UK) don't care. If you try to export human remains from the UK to another country (the study is being done by US and Australian universities), without the correct permissions you're going to have a bad time.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    > there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead There is a rich history of everyone looting graves. This isn't a colonial vs other thing here. Sacking of places is common and still happens (see syria, afganistan & the sudans. ) We just happen to know about the stuff the western people did because they documented it and put it on display. (unlike the romans, persians, greeks, byzantines, ottermans, et al. didn't loose it to the next empire, yet.) There used to be a bunch of TV shows where they'd routinely dig up bones and put them on shelves in storage. Applying to exhume a body isn't that difficult in the UK either: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence
- informatimago 3y ago
  Indeed. 500 years is about 16 generations, so any ancestor of that age may have 65536 or even more descendents. You'd need to locate them and ask them all permission. How does it work, is it majority vote? Unanimous vote? All European people have a unique male ancestor 300 generations away. If you locate remains of that age, do you have to ask nobody or everybody? (Depending on whether it's the male ancestor of all of us, or some other male whose last descendent died long ago?)
  - samus 3y ago
    Human societies have elaborate processes to solve this issue: inheritance laws. In case no heirs can be located anymore (body can't be identified, records are missing, the line has died out, etc.) the state is the heir by default and makes the rules.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence I suspect its part of the license to exhume the bodies. (Assuming that they haven't already been removed from the ground)
- eigenket 3y ago
  This research is being done by US and Australian universities on remains from the UK. If you turn up in the UK and try to dig up random skeletons and send them to the US or Australia without the correct permissions, you're gonna get arrested. Probably very quickly, probably at the first grave yard you visit. You get the permission from whoever owns the land the graves are in, as well as the UK government.
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    If I get your drift, you mean that research papers should henceforth have disclaimer, saying that "no law was broken during our research"? Fair enough, but I don't think that's what they were signaling by the quote in question somehow.
    - eigenket 3y ago
      I think the point is that there are many places where (especially indigenous) remains don't have the same level of legal protection as they do in the UK. The universities also want to make sure their researchers get permission from whoever they should/can even in those places.
spacecadet 3y ago
for a large number of university staff and graduates, signaling is all they can produce...
demondemidi 3y ago
What do you mean by “so much irrelevant signaling”? And why do you focus on the non science-y bits of a science article? Seems irrelevant, no?
canarypilot 3y ago
One hop from the parent article is a discussion on why these researchers believe it matters. Hacker News comments have been in a bit of an anti-academia, pro-business mood recently, so most relevant question copied below. Imagine an (exploitative? Creative?) product launch for a probiotic yogurt made “to give you the biome of a true paleo”. We might want to ensure those whose mouths were swabbed to unlock that tag line were compensated. > Q: What is microbiome ownership, and why is it important? Weyrich: This means that someone could own or have rights to their own bacteria. The ‘next generation’ of probiotics to support health are coming from people who donate their microbes — not yogurts or fermented foods, so establishing a framework for people to own their microbes means that they could benefit or profit from the commercialization of these microbes. This framework is important for providing equal benefits for research participants, research teams and companies that may want to commercialize someone’s microbes to make ‘next generation’ probiotics.
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  OK so this just confirmed my hunch: the driver for this type of research is ideological. I'm not overly disgusted by it such as someone in the "anti-academia, pro-business" camp might be, I pick the chips on my shoulder with some care. But I much prefer research that is not ideologically biased - in any direction. The more extremist, the less I prefer it. I'm familiar with the notion that "everything is politics" and the like, but it is a completely useless rule of thumb for everyone but undergraduate zealots and ideologues, who ultimately prefer to spend their energy defending their bias instead of looking at the data.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > an anti-academia, pro-business mood recently recently? bro this is an incubator for SV startups -- its always been that way.
sheepshear 3y ago
Legally, I can destructively analyze your ancestor's genetics, use it to get rich selling you skinny pills instead of an inexpensive one-time therapy, and unknowingly destroy the genetic information that would have unlocked a remedy for a birth defect that runs in your family. The law is very underdeveloped in this area, so ethics stand in for now.

gumby 3y ago

Well that was not what I had expected! I assumed from the title that the oral bacteria would reveal some preferential defense or resistance to yersinia pestis, but instead it was entirely due to the post-epidemic economies of the survivors. This is more like the situation of beriberi crippling the imperial Japanese navy in the 1880s

estiaan 3y ago

I thought ancient meant 1000+ years ago?

anovikov 3y ago

TL;DR: not being desperately poor is unnatural for humans, and slowly kills us.

pixl97 3y ago
This said, being desperately poor killed us much faster.

yosito 3y ago

With the number of anecdotal reports I've heard of people having gut problems post-Covid, I wonder if this will also be true in our times.

thenerdhead 3y ago
There are a number of gut microbiome testing companies sponsoring studies on this and university labs who have found some promising candidate probiotics being clinically trialed to restore gut microbiome. We may be able to fix ours.