Saturday, May 23, 2015

DNA of plants comprising ancient Roman pills sequenced

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Ok, this is a really cool article.

Ancient Roman pills (from 140-120 BCE) managed to survive a shipwreck in a tin container.  That's amazing.

The sunken ship was found, and archaeologists preserved the finds from the ship.  Cool, and amazing, really, but we're kinda used to it.

The pills were found with tools used by ancient physicians, which leads archaeologists to suspect they, too, were medical supplies.

Someone sequenced the DNA of the plants that the pills were made of.  The article says that these are the only remains of ancient medicines that are known, and that this is the first time ancient medicines have been analyzed via DNA sequencing, to find out what they were made of.  Cool, and amazing.

The pills were made of common garden plants, like carrots, radishes, celery, yarrow...............

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