HEALTH Neanderthal used 'aspirin' for tooth pain: study

[Melodi]

I've always said it is hard to find what you are not looking for, as I predicted here once they validated Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, this stuff is coming out of the wood work and a lot of it is from old finds that were never properly looked at because "we know" they "didn't do this, that or the other thing" yeah right...

Neanderthal used 'aspirin' for tooth pain: study
[AFP]
Mariëtte Le Roux, Pascale MOLLARD
AFPMarch 8, 2017

A handout photo released on March 7, 2017 by Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC shows the upper jaw of Neanderthal El Sidron 1, found in what is today Spain, with a dental calculus deposit visible on the rear molar (right) (AFP Photo/Handout)

Paris (AFP) - Nearly 50,000 years before the invention of penicillin, a young Neanderthal tormented by a dental abscess ate greenery containing a natural antibiotic and pain killer, analysis of his teeth revealed Wednesday.

The male, who lived in El Sidron in what is now Spain, ate an antibiotic fungus called Penicillium and chewed on bits of poplar tree containing salicylic acid -- the active ingredient of modern-day aspirin, researchers said.

The youngster's fossilised jawbone reveals the ravages of an abscess, and his dental plaque contained the remnants of an intestinal parasite that causes acute diarrhoea, "so clearly he was quite sick," they wrote in the journal Nature.

"Apparently, Neanderthals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants and their various anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, and seem to be self-medicating," said study co-author Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

"Certainly, our findings contrast markedly with the rather simplistic view of our ancient relatives in popular imagination," he added.

The study is the latest to recast our long-extinct cousins, long thought of as thick-skulled and slow-witted, in a more positive light.

Other recent findings have started to paint a picture of Neanderthals as sophisticated beings who made cave art, took care of the elderly, buried their dead and may have been the first jewellers -- though they were probably also cannibals.

In 2012, a study in the journal Naturwissenschaften said Neanderthals appeared to have used medicinal herbs such as yarrow and chamomile.

Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000 years but appear to have vanished some 40,000 years ago.

This coincided more or less with the arrival of homo sapiens out of Africa, where modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago.

- Vegetarian -

Neanderthals and homo sapiens interbred, leaving a small contribution of less than two percent to the DNA of all humans except for people from Africa, where Neanderthals never lived.

For the latest study, an international team did a genetic analysis of DNA trapped in the dental plaque of four Neanderthals -- two from Spy Cave in Belgium and two from El Sidron.

Calcified plaque preserves the DNA of microorganisms that lived in the mouth, windpipe and stomach, as well as bits of food stuck between teeth -- which can later reveal what a creature ate and what its state of health was.

From the oldest plaque ever to be genetically analysed, the team concluded the Belgian Neanderthals ate a diet of woolly rhino, wild sheep and mushrooms, living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

"Those from El Sidron Cave, on the other hand, showed no evidence for meat consumption, but appeared instead to have a largely vegetarian diet comprising pine nuts, moss, mushrooms and tree bark," Cooper said in a statement.

El Sidron at the time was in a densely forested environment, added the study's lead author Laura Weyrich, also from ACAD.

"In contrast, the Spy Neanderthals were living in a steppe-like environment, so it's easy to picture large, beastly animals wandering around as a major source of food," she told AFP.

The sick Spanish Neanderthal was the only one with traces of poplar or Penicillium in his dental plaque.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/neanderthal-used-aspirin-tooth-pain-study-181706637.html

 

[Squib]

Thank you for posting this - I find this stuff very interesting and thought provoking!

 

[Witness]

Why do I find it funny that they said the man "self medicated"?
Did they not have well stocked hospitals at the time?

 

[Ben Sunday]

Interesting!

I wonder if their salicin compounds also came from Willow Bark - salix alba, iirc. Years ago I found the OTC White Willow bark in capsules to be effective for minor aches and pains.

I agree with Witness regarding the concept of self medication. Sometimes our intuition is our best guide (within reason, of course).

 

[Melodi]

Why do I find it funny that they said the man "self medicated"?
Did they not have well stocked hospitals at the time?

Yeah we don't know that he self medicated, the tribal medicine elder aka DOCTOR might have given it to him; most traditional societies have some basic medical lore that everyone knows (how to splint a finger) but there are also medical (and other) specialists; it is just when your a hunger and gatherer most people are not full time specialists, which does not mean an apprentice healer (aka DOCTOR) might not train for years, as well as being a hunter or a grandmother.

 

[Melodi]

Better article from New Scientist



Daily news

8 March 2017
Neanderthals may have medicated with penicillin and painkillers

Neanderthals sat round a campfire with bits of meat hanging up in the foreground
I feel ill, pass the poplar

ddp images

By Colin Barras

What a difference 1000 kilometres make. Neanderthals living in prehistoric Belgium enjoyed their meat – but the Neanderthals who lived in what is now northern Spain seem to have survived on an almost exclusively vegetarian diet.

This is according to new DNA analysis that also suggests sick Neanderthals could self-medicate with naturally occurring painkillers and antibiotics, and that they shared mouth microbiomes with humans – perhaps exchanged by kissing.

Neanderthals didn’t clean their teeth particularly well – which is lucky for scientific investigators. Over time, plaque built up into a hard substance called dental calculus, which still clings to the ancient teeth even after tens of thousands of years.

Researchers have already identified tiny food fragments in ancient dental calculus to get an insight into the diets of prehistoric hominins. Now Laura Weyrich at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and her colleagues have shown that dental calculus also carries ancient DNA that can reveal both what Neanderthals ate and which bacteria lived in their mouths.

The team focused on three Neanderthals – two 48,000-year-old specimens from a site called El Sidrón in Spain and a 39,000-year-old specimen from a site called Spy in Belgium. The results suggested that the Spy Neanderthal often dined on woolly rhinoceros, sheep and mushrooms – but no plants. The El Sidrón Neanderthals ate more meagre fare: moss, bark and mushrooms – and, apparently, no meat.
Vegetarian cannibals?

“That was really a surprise to us,” says Weyrich. “I think the assumption has always been that Neanderthals had diets based around heavy meat consumption. For us not to find any meat in the El Sidrón individuals was quite strange.”

There is a certain irony to that finding, says Paola Villa at the University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, given that cut marks on Neanderthal bones from El Sidrón are often interpreted as evidence of cannibalism. “They may have had a diet of mostly plants but paradoxically they provided meat to the Neanderthals that killed them,” she says.

Other researchers say it makes sense that Neanderthals would have adapted to eat a plant-rich diet if there was less opportunity to hunt animals in their local environment. “To imagine otherwise would be a bit simplistic,” says Amanda Henry at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

But Henry cautions against taking the new DNA findings too literally. “The overwhelming component of the DNA is from the oral bacteria,” she says – only about 0.3 per cent of it comes from the animals, plants and fungi that the Neanderthals ate. “To suggest they are recovering the entirety of the diet here is a bit premature.”

Henry’s earlier work has, in fact, suggested that the Spy Neanderthals ate roots and tubers as well as meat. The new DNA work didn’t recover evidence of those plants, hinting that it provides an incomplete picture.

It’s likely that the Spy diet did contain substantial quantities of plants or mushrooms, says Luca Fiorenza at Monash University in Clayton, Australia, because humans – and probably Neanderthals – can’t cope with a diet exclusively based on animal protein (with little or no animal fat). “You begin to show signs of what is called rabbit starvation,” he says. “It leads to diarrhoea, fever, and even death.”

The study also adds to emerging evidence that mushrooms and other fungi were an important component of ancient human diets – they were eaten both at Spy and El Sidrón.

“Mushrooms have often been forgotten by archaeologists,” says Hannah O’Regan at the University of Nottingham, UK – they are unlikely to be preserved intact at ancient sites.
Neanderthal “doctors”

One of the two El Sidrón individuals – a teenage boy – is known to have had a large dental abscess. The new DNA analysis shows he had a diarrhoea-causing gut parasite in his system, too. “It’s likely he wasn’t a very happy individual,” says Weyrich.

Previous studies have suggested the teenager was eating plants with anti-inflammatory properties. The new study also finds DNA sequences of poplar plants, which are known to contain the natural pain killer salicylic acid (closely related to the active ingredient in aspirin).

That may not have been the only medication or self-medication he did: there was DNA from Penicillium fungus – the source of penicillin – in his dental calculus.

However, it is difficult to say for sure whether Neanderthals actively consumed the fungus for its medicinal properties. Penicillium grows naturally on plant material as it moulds, so they could have eaten it by coincidence. “It’s difficult to tell these specific moulds apart unless you have a hand lens,” says O’Regan.

But Weyrich points out that the Penicillium was only in the dental calculus of the sick teenager – none was found in the calculus of the second El Sidrón individual, who is thought to have led a healthy life. “They might have had some knowledge that mouldy grains could help them when they were sick – we just don’t really know,” she says.
Evidence of foreplay?

There was one more surprise in the dental calculus of the sick teenager. Weyrich and her colleagues extracted enough DNA to reconstruct the genome of a species of oral bacteria called Methanobrevibacter oralis. At 48,000-years-old it is the oldest microbial genome ever sequenced, according to Weyrich and her colleagues.

Comparing the ancient genome with the M. oralis genome found in the mouths of living people, the researchers discovered that the Neanderthal and modern human versions both descended from a common ancestor that lived about 110,000 to 140,000 years ago.

This date roughly coincides with when we think humans and Neanderthals first interbred.

“It’s really well understood that bacteria are swapped between people when they kiss,” says Weyrich. It’s possible that humans and Neanderthals kissed during sex 110,000 years ago, which could explain why the descendants of those interbreeding events – including both the El Sidrón Neanderthals and modern humans – ended up with similar forms of M. oralis bacteria in their mouths.

It’s an interesting idea, says Adam Siepel at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, although he thinks there may be more mundane ways for oral bacteria to be shared. “Once humans and Neanderthals began to occupy the same geographical ranges, it is likely that they drank from the same streams, perhaps salvaged food from one another,” he says. This may be how oral bacteria were swapped.

Weyrich agrees that there are several ways oral bacteria can be exchanged, but the possibility of kissing is still a thought-provoking one, particularly since it is unclear whether the ancient interbreeding events were forced or consensual. “It’s a very different interaction from brash interbreeding,” she says. “It’s very intimate.”

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature21674

Read more: Neanderthal chefs may have spiced up menus with wild herbs; Eats bark, fruit and leaves: diet of ancient human; Ancient leftovers show the real Paleo diet was a veggie feast
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...id=SOC|NSNS|2017-Echobox#link_time=1488997149

 

[Richard]

If this happened it would have been viewing an effect of chewing aspirin rather that any scientific insight into drug use.

Any scientific use that happened before about 1600 was a result of pure accident and observation like "natural remedies". A lot of natural remedies have been proved useful but it was not biology.

Neanderthals are now extinct or interbred with humans.

 

[willowlady]

If this happened it would have been viewing an effect of chewing aspirin rather that any scientific insight into drug use.

Any scientific use that happened before about 1600 was a result of pure accident and observation like "natural remedies". A lot of natural remedies have been proved useful but it was not biology.

Neanderthals are now extinct or interbred with humans.

Since "science" and the study of biology as we know it did not exist in those times, the whole idea of it being unscientific is not applicable. What DID exist in those times, no doubt, was observation and anecdote. In other words, "Hey, Ugh, I tried this remedy that Oolah's aunt recommended and it worked for me; you could try it, too, dude." Sometimes they hit on real, measurably effective medicine; other times they hit on what amounts to superstition. But the smart ones kept the knowledge of what worked and what didn't; so began the pursuit of what we now call science.

 

[Meadowlark]

Neanderthals had larger brains and were physically more robust than modern humans. Perhaps the one thing they lacked was a proper windpipe and the ability to speak. Otherwise getting into an physical argument with a Neanderthal was a short fight. The nanderthal would easily win.

 

[Richard]

Neanderthals had larger brains and were physically more robust than modern humans. Perhaps the one thing they lacked was a proper windpipe and the ability to speak. Otherwise getting into an physical argument with a Neanderthal was a short fight. The nanderthal would easily win.

But they disappeared.

 

[Richard]

Since "science" and the study of biology as we know it did not exist in those times, the whole idea of it being unscientific is not applicable. What DID exist in those times, no doubt, was observation and anecdote. In other words, "Hey, Ugh, I tried this remedy that Oolah's aunt recommended and it worked for me; you could try it, too, dude." Sometimes they hit on real, measurably effective medicine; other times they hit on what amounts to superstition. But the smart ones kept the knowledge of what worked and what didn't; so began the pursuit of what we now call science.

Agreed, but a lot of so called evidence could be accidental.

 

[willowlady]

Agreed, but a lot of so called evidence could be accidental.

I doubt that they had much of a concept of "evidence." I'm sure they had a concept of "this worked, that didn't." I'll bet they experimented with things, too. Remember the old school of plant medicine that purported to base the medicinal qualities on what the plant looked like. Trial and error was probably the closest concept they had to evidence and science, and when you get right down to it, that's what we have, too. We're just a lot better at keeping records.

Regarding Neanderthals, a couple of thoughts:
1. They were generally more robust and had a larger brain capacity than we do, so why did they die out?
2. Maybe they were just plain not mean enough.
3. The idea my DD came up with is pretty simple: IF they, like most other large mammals, had an estrus cycle that provided a "breather" between parturition and the next pregnancy, Homo Sapiens Sapiens may have just outbred them, since we can produce offspring every ten or eleven months. We see how that's working out even with today's populations.

 

[naturallysweet]

They had the same gene for speech as modern humans. They had speech.

They have also found skeletons for individuals who lived into old age or had injuries. Proving that they cared for their elderly and infirm.

I think they might have been too caring, and let the human hordes invade. Much like their descendants in Europe are doing now.