Abstract

Dental calculus, or mineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues. 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. 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. Here, we characterise the oral microbiome of six ancient Egyptian baboons held in captivity during the late Pharaonic era (9th–6th centuries BC) and of two historical baboons from a zoo via shotgun metagenomics. We demonstrate that these captive baboons possessed a distinctive oral microbiome when compared to ancient and modern humans, Neanderthals and a wild chimpanzee. 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 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.

Highlights

  • IntroductionMineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues

  • Dental calculus, or mineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues

  • We describe for the first time the oral microbiome of ancient hamadryas (Papio hamadryas) and olive baboons (P. anubis) from Pharaonic Egypt by analysing dental calculus samples

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Summary

Introduction

Mineralized plaque, represents a record of ancient biomolecules and food residues. 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. We demonstrate that these captive baboons possessed a distinctive oral microbiome when compared to ancient and modern humans, Neanderthals and a wild chimpanzee 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 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. Captivity conditions for baboons in ancient Egypt are illustrated by palaeopathological evidence of hand and foot fractures[21] and metabolic diseases[17,22], suggesting that the animals were subject to harsh treatment and suffered from poor health conditions

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