Masticated lumps, often with imprints of teeth, fingerprints or both, are not uncommon to find in Mesolithic sites. Some of the resin has teeth imprints, indicating that children, actually teenagers, had been chewing them. The site has been radiocarbon dated to between 10,200 and 9,400 years ago, with one of the pieces of resin dated to 9,700 years ago.

It was excavated by archaeologists in the early 1990s, and yielded some 1,849 flint artifacts and 115 pieces of resin (mastic).

The location is now known as Huseby Klev, situated north of Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden. This snapshot of the Mesolithic period, just before Europeans started farming, comes from analysis of DNA left in the chewed resin that we have conducted, now published in Scientific Reports. Due to a severe gum infection (periodontitis), one of the teenagers had problems eating the chewy deer-meat, as well as preparing the resin by chewing it. Some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue, just after eating trout, deer and hazelnuts.

Eldi kin disease