I'm guessing you brush twice a day, or aspire to. Our ancestors were a little less diligent. But that's a good thing for scientists, because ancient placode teeth are like time capsules, preserving early evidence of cavities or even plaque DNA. Now researchers have turned to a-thousand-year-old teeth from a convict cemetery outside Frankfurt Germany, and they cleaned it up much like your dentist does.

 

 

We use the same dental tools, and we collect the calculus from the teeth.

 

 

That's molecular anthropologist Christina Warner of the University of Oklahoma. Inside that calculous plaque, she and her colleagues found tiny bits of pork, bread wheat and cabbage, identified by their DNA. Along with the bugs behind strap through, bacterial meningitis and oil string of Gonorrhea. And don't be too quick to judge. 

 

 

Nearly all of us still have Gonorrhea at our mouth.

 

 

There study is in the journal Nature Genetics. Some of those bugs are antibiotic resistant too, because long before penicillin, some microbes produce natural antibiotics to attack rivals. 

 

Your mouth is like a battlefield to bacteria. So, chew on that.