2023-08-11 08:30:01
Five years ago, while digging to build a tunnel that would connect two islands in the Baltic Sea, archaeologists discovered a startling find: a small piece of birch bark that a Stone Age girl had been chewing on 5,700 years ago. This insignificant object contained a valuable relic: the complete genome of the young woman, known as Lola. Thanks to this discovery, the researchers gained unprecedented insight into life in northern Europe when agriculture was just arriving in the region.
The Lolland Falster Museum, excited by this discovery, published the results in the journal Nature and performed a facial reconstruction of Lola based on her DNA. However, the image of a young woman with blue eyes and a brown complexion caused controversy on social networks. Some users were outraged, arguing that northern Europeans were always white and blond, while others accused the museum of manipulating the results to be politically correct.
Museum inspector Marie Brinch was surprised by the intensity of the reactions, explaining that a misperception had been created over the years about the appearance of the first inhabitants of northern Europe. Lola’s facial reconstruction revealed that she had dark hair, dark skin, and blue eyes, challenging her previous assumptions.
A nearly 6,000 year old piece of chewing gum, found in Scandinavia, perfectly preserved the DNA of its chewer. She was a young, hunter-gatherer girl, with dark skin, brown hair & blue eyes, who had recently eaten a meal of hazelnuts & duck. Archaeology is amazing. pic.twitter.com/kfav9PkonE
— Dorsa Amir (@DorsaAmir) July 13, 2023
Experts from the University of Copenhagen Hannes Schroeder and Theis Jensen provided details about Lola’s life. She was part of a hunter-gatherer population and lived near a flat forest and a lagoon, where she ate mallard meat, eels, and hazelnuts. The birch bark that she chewed, in addition to being used as gum, also had antiseptic properties that she probably used to clean her teeth.
The small piece of birch bark, preserved in moist soil devoid of oxygen, allowed the exceptional preservation of Lola’s DNA. This finding adds to a unique exhibition of objects made of wood, bones and plant fibers from the same site.
The museum director, an advocate of scientific evidence, encourages people to visit the exhibition to learn the facts instead of engaging in unscientific discussions on social media. The legacy of Lola, a girl from the Stone Age, continues to surprise and reveal secrets about the ancient life in northern Europe.
“Numerous comments express conviction that scandinavians have always had fair skinalthough the analysis of the girl’s DNA shows the opposite and many others accuse us of having been lying, “explains the museum inspector, Marie Brinchwhich has been taken by surprise by the controversy, “it is impressive that so many people are aroused by such strong feelings that doesthousands of years things were different as was believed until now.”
The director of the museum defends the illustration with the facts and analysis on which it is based and he prefers not to enter into any more extra-scientific discussions with netizens. “There is rarely anything that is completely absolute, what we can say is that we have a very high probability that she had dark hair, dark skin and blue eyes, although there is also a small probability that she did not,” he explains.
hunter and gatherer
“Numerous comments express conviction that scandinavians have always had fair skinalthough the analysis of the girl’s DNA shows the opposite and many others accuse us of having been lying, “explains the museum inspector, Marie Brinchwhich has been taken by surprise by the controversy, “it is impressive that so many people are aroused by such strong feelings that doesthousands of years things were different as was believed until now.”
The director of the museum defends the illustration with the facts and analysis on which it is based and he prefers not to enter into any more extra-scientific discussions with netizens. “There is rarely anything that is completely absolute, what we can say is that we have a very high probability that she had dark hair, dark skin and blue eyes, although there is also a small probability that she did not,” he explains.
Lola, at least the reconstruction of her face from the genome, looks at us from the Stone Age impassively. In her eyes you can see a look of perplexity about our current behavior. She belonged to a puna hunter-gatherer population and lived in a flat forest landscape near the lagoon now called Syltholm Fjord. She had participated in an excavation in Sweden in which similar remains were found, in the form of bluish tar. He knew that gray-black birch bark becomes liquid when heated and then quickly solidifies, so it was used as a glue and chewed as an antiseptic because it has the property of killing bacteria, the same one that has allowed to preserve the DNA from the saliva in the lump.
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