October
10
/ 2020
A medieval toilet may not be the first place you’d want to dig as an archaeologist, but old latrines are surprisingly good at revealing secrets to life in the Middle Ages! A team of scientists looking at medieval gut bacteria samples from two ancient toilets have reported on what is the first scientific attempt to detect ancient gut bacteria in this not-so-fun way. The study was launched to determine what exactly constitutes a healthy microbiome for modern people. And to answer this question a team of researchers studied the microbiomes of our ancestors who lived long before antibiotics were in use and who didn’t eat any processed foods at all. The results of the experiment shed important light on the
