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Stone Age Dentists
morleron writes "Scientists have found evidence in Pakistan that the Stone Age had dentists. They used flint drills to remove cavities and attempt other tooth repair. No evidence as to whether or not the patients were conscious during the procedures."
The article states that the teeth showed use-wear from chewing, indicating that the tooth excavations were indeed performed in mouth and the patients did live for an appropriately long length of time in that they continued to have use of their mouth.
Kinda like the romans and ?mayans/incas/aztecs(one of the three, don't feel like doing the google)? performing brain surgery and the patients living. This was proved by bone growth around the openings.
2^3 * 31 * 647
Probably not as bad as you'd think. Hemp, opium, datura, henbane, mandrake and hemlock were all known to be used as prehistoric anaesthetics. Dwale, an anaesthetic used in old England, was a reasonably sophisticated mixture of bile, lettuce, vinegar, bryony root, hemlock, opium, and henbane.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm more interested in knowing if the patients were still alive after the procedures.
Successful brain surgery dates back to at least 3,000 BCE, so it wouldn't surprise me.
I'd like to know what (if anything) they were using for fillings.
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Asphalt or tar compounds
. php4 05_060405_teeth_drill_2.html
These have more info than the BBC story
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/05/news/teeth
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0
IAAD (I AM A Dentist) Coronal tooth structure (the part that is above the gum) is composed of Enamel, Dentin, then Pulp. Enamel is very hard, not easily susceptible to decay. Dentin is softer, more sensitive, contains tubules that lead directly into the pulp. Bacteria can either secrete acids to break down dentin (most likely) or crawl their way into the pulp (less likely), causing pain, pulpitis, then necrosis. From the looks of the images, the ancient dentists drilled past the enamel into dentin. There is no mention of any attempt to fill these teeth (amalgam wasn't exactly perfected until the late 1800s, resin composites not until circa 1950s). It is not trivial to come up with a long-lasting filling material. Malleable gold comes to mind. Gold had been extensively used in dentistry dated back to I'd say 3000BC, not nearly old enough for these dentists. Most likely the recurrent decay found in those teeth resulted from plaque and bacteria making those un-filled drilled holes their home.
As I had a spate of dental problems the last year and because I was wondering why we evolves such apparently wretchedly fragile teeth (sharks have it nice, three rows of ever-emerging teeth keep popping up and the old ones pop out), and read up on dentistry in general to take better care of my teeth.
There are a lot of people out there who keep repeating that cavities were not a problem in most people until refined sugar hit the scene around the 1700s and that the industrial revolution made it cheap for the masses.
This is true to a point but I guess this article shows it's stupid to think that no one had cavities before refined sugar.
Drspiller.com being a good site to look up some info. Meat won't give cavities. Natural starchy foods (vegetables like potatoes) and fruit have many natural fibers that wash their own sugars off your teeth before they have time to settle, and the acids in them negligent because of dilution. With a drink of water afterwards should prevent any problems.
So it's true, processed and refined foods, especially with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, etcetera, are the biggest causes of cavities.
However, dried fruits are sticky and should be treated as refined sugar or processed foods (these all can cause cavities) and may be the biggest cavity causer of the old world (along with perhaps alcohols, like mead, etcetera).
Stone age dentistry happens even today... a little more updated, but not too much, for most of the billions on this planet.
"Where There Is No Dentist"
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I imagine that many people were willing to risk their lives
Exactly my thought. In fact whenever I see dental equipment from hundreds of years ago in a museum (or the odd dentist who likes to showcase it in his waiting room), I believe to be able to infer the amount of dental pain the patients suffered from the instruments they allowed to be used to help them.
Drilling a hole into a tooth with a foot pedal-powered drill, then pouring molten lead into the cavity must have been better than the toothache. Aaargh!
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
A hell of a lot of Western knowledge was lost due to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, which happened early in the 1st millenium. Amongst other things lost were originals of Aristotle and Euclid, and Heron's plans for his steam car.
It's thought by some that we still haven't brought geometry to the state it was in before the Dark Ages.
We do have to keep in mind though that non-western civilisations kept most of their knowledge until the colonial powers trivialised and marginalised it. A great example is the Ancient Chinese proof of "Pythagoras' Theorem", which is simpler and clearer than Euclid's, to the extent that I use it when teaching, and have never had a student fail to understand it.
Considering that this is Pakistan, I would imagine that they had supplies of Opium nearby
Nope, sorry, but the opium poppy is an introduced species in Pakistan. Alexander gets the credit for the introduction, circa 327 BC, from "Ancient Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia".
It's a plant native to the Mediterranian basin.
The first record of opium being used medicinally in India (remember that Pakistan did not exist until the last half of the 20th century) occurs circa 1200 AD and recreational use of sufficient quantity to be notable did not begin until circa 1600, "coincident" with:
Massive cultivation of opium in India did not begin until the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and English, began exporting it from India to China. It was the Dutch who taught the Chinese to smoke it, circa 1700.
Opium in Asia is one of the earliest byproducts of Eurpean "colonization" of the Orient. It was entirely unknown there before the Iron Age.
KFG
You are correct.
Exposed dentin won't rot if it is kept clean.
I broke a tooth when I was 15.
It was a clean break and the exposed dentin area was flat.
My dentist said that a clean break like that would be fine.
I was 40 before I had a veneer put on it.
No rot at all in 25 years.