How Scientists Recreated A Photo Of A Woman From DNA Found In 5,700-Year-Old Chewing Gum

As mysterious as the sequence of human evolution is, the more interesting it is to know, scientists around the world are constantly searching and researching to collect new information regarding human evolution. Sometimes in the course of the research, scientists come across something incredible that completely shocks them. This is one of the most amazing discoveries in the field of science as this time scientists have found 5700 years old chewing gum. Researchers use this ancient 'chewing gum' to find out not only the gender of the person who chewed it but also when they last ate it. This is the first time researchers have been able to trace the DNA of ancient humans in a way other than human bones.

But it does not seem to be true as to how the first chewing gum would have been made 5700 years ago. But if it's found it means someone must have chewed it, so whoever chewed it, the DNA of that person was still present in it, and scientists got a lot of information from that. The scientists wanted to find out what the person who chewed it 5700 years ago looked like and after a lot of calculations, it was found out that whoever chewed this chewing gum actually looked something like the one shown in the picture below. 

Credit: Tom Björklund

According to a study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, this woman had dark hair and dark skin, while her eyes were blue, and researchers have named this stone-aged woman Lola. They believed that the people of the place where Lola lived, mainly engaged in fishing and hunting for their survival. They have also learned about the diet of Stone Age humans and the microbiomes in their mouths from a tar sample of a birch tree, and this discovery could help scientists understand how microbiomes change over thousands of years and may develop further in the future. 

This 'chewing gum' was found during archaeological excavations at Syltholm on the island of Lolland, Denmark, and its investigation revealed many things as from the genome found inside it, scientists have reconstructed a picture of what the person looked like who chewed it. But it is still a mystery how chewing gum may have been made 5700 years ago.