Is dentistry older than we think?
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans are famous for having teeth extracted and wearing dentures. But did you know that Neanderthals may also have attempted a form of dentistry 130,000 years ago?
The general consensus of opinion used to be that the history of dentistry went back no further than a couple of thousand years or so. But that was before researchers at the University of Kansas found what could be evidence of basic dental techniques being used around 128 millennia earlier.
Using advanced technology to analyse Neanderthal teeth found over a century ago in Croatia, the scientists found that the premolar and M3 molar were pushed out of their normal positions. They also found six toothpick grooves among those two teeth and the two molars behind them.
"The scratches indicate this individual was pushing something into his or her mouth to get at that twisted premolar," said David Frayer, the University’s Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. “As a package, this fits together as a dental problem that the Neanderthal was having and was trying to presumably treat itself, with the toothpick grooves, the breaks and also with the scratches on the premolar.”
Previous research had already identified toothpick grooves going back almost two million years, so these new findings have contributed to a growing body of evidence that dentistry was invented much earlier in human history than previously thought.
A perennial problem
The misery of toothache is something we share with our ancestors. Of course, it’s the sugary drinks and processed foods we now consume that are mainly responsible for widespread tooth decay in modern times. However, although they weren’t in the habit of bingeing on Coke and chocolate bars, ancient societies had much coarser diets, which resulted in much greater wear and tear on their teeth.
Ancient Greek scholars Hippocrates and Aristotle wrote about dentistry. Various preparations for the treatment of toothache, tooth infections and loose teeth have been found in ancient Egyptian papyri. And the Romans used rudimentary dentures made from ivory, bone or boxwood. However, it was their predecessors in Northern Italy, the Etruscans, who came closest to acquiring the skills of modern-day dental technicians by expertly crafting bridges out of ox bone and wire.
Crazy remedies
There have been some eccentric solutions to the problem of toothache. The Ancient Egyptians believed that wearing an amulet could relieve the pain, while the Roman writer Pliny suggested that a frog in the moonlight had the power to cure the problem. You only had to ask.
For many centuries it was believed that cavities were caused by burrowing tooth worms. An ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablet entitled ‘The Legend of the Worm’ recounts how a supernatural worm drinks the blood and eats the roots of the teeth, causing cavities and periodontitis. The idea of tooth worms persisted until it was debunked in the first authoritative scientific description of dentistry, ‘The Surgeon Dentist’ by Pierre Fauchard, published in 1728.
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