Exploring the Potential of Tracking Human Migration through Oral Archaea in Dental Calculus

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Understanding human movement through time and space is a major goal of archaeogenetic studies. Though the field has predominantly made use of DNA from ancient human remains, dental calculus offers the possibility of indirectly tracing human movement using the commensal microbes ancient humans carried with them. Although oral bacteria are being increasingly studied, prominent commensal archaea, including the genera Methanobrevibacter, remain underexplored. Advancements in de novo genome assembly have allowed for a closer view of these enigmatic archaea, making it increasingly clear that ancient DNA previously identified as Methanobrevibacter oralis likely originates not from a single species, but rather from a group of unnamed species within this genus. In this study, we present a more complete view of the Methanobrevibacter phylogeny by analyzing 228 metagenomically assembled genomes (MAGs) from dental calculus and dental plaque samples dating from Neanderthals to modern humans across multiple continents. Building on the work of previous research, which identified three species clusters within this genus, we report the discovery of a fourth species cluster. Additionally, we analyze 54 MAGs from another oral archaea genus, Methanomethylophilus, with phylogenetic relationships revealing clear geographical clustering. This demonstrates the possibility of utilizing understudied commensal species as tracers for population migration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53819