We think we invented oversharing. It’s been going on for 6,000 years. Just look at what some gumshoes found out when they examined something rotten in the state of Denmark. Wired: What a 5,700-Year-Old Piece of Gum Reveals About Its Chewer. “They not only found the chewer’s full genome and determined her sex and likely skin and hair and eye color, they also revealed her oral microbiome—the bacteria and viruses that pack the human mouth—as well as finding the DNA of hazelnut and duck she may have recently consumed. All told, from a chunk of birch pitch less than an inch long, the researchers have painted a remarkably detailed portrait of the biology and behavior of an ancient human.”

+ “At the dawn of the Neolithic era, a young woman discarded a lump of ancient chewing gum made from birch tar into a shallow, brackish lagoon that drew fishers to the coast of southern Denmark. Nearly 6,000 years later, researchers excavating the site spotted the gum amid pieces of wood and wild animal bone and from it have reassembled her complete DNA and so painted the broadest strokes of her portrait.” The Guardian: Neolithic chewing gum helps recreate image of ancient Dane. (Sooner or later, they’re gonna find out everything. You might as well just spit it out…)