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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."
Any dentists here?
If the tooth bone (pulp or whatever the stuff below the enamel is) is exposed, wouldn't it start to rot in no time?
If yes and the further decay is limited (4 teeth showed decay associated with the hole), would that suggestion that they filled the hole with clay, resin, or some other material capable of hardening?
Bert
Eh, let us not wildly exaggerate the pain involved. My father had all his fillings as a child without anaesthesia. It isn't unheard of for people to refuse it today.
What I find more curious about this report is that the ancient men were observant enough to realize that if you stopped the decay by drilling it out, you needn't lose the tooth later. As late as the 18th century or so, I believe the standard treatment for a decaying tooth was: (1) wait until it really starts to hurt, and then (2) pull it out. Drilling the decay out (while preserving the tooth) is a lot more sophisticated.
This is the same time period in which agriculture/civilization first developed, which also led to a decline in diet [too much starch] and a lower quality of life [state oppression].
For more on your point, see:4 49219-7760050?v=glance&n=283155
"The Original Affluent Society" by Marshall Sahlins
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times."
and:
"CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery"
http://www.whywork.org/
"If you start asking yourself "why work?" you may see a connection between wage slavery, misunderstandings of leisure, lifestyles based on consumption, corporate welfare, education that often amounts to little more than conditioning, and the global social, environmental, and economic crises we are now facing. We hope that the materials we feature here will encourage critical thinking about such things. This site is primarily about ideas and encouragement, so our focus is more philosophical than practical. However, ideas and action go hand-in-hand, so we're currently expanding the "practicality" sections."
and:
"THE ABOLITION OF WORK" by Bob Black
http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working."
or:
_The End of Work_
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874778247/002-6
"Global unemployment is now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. Rifkin (Biosphere Politics, LJ 5/15/91) argues that the Information Age is the third great Industrial Revolution. A consequence of these technological advances is the rapid decline in employment and purchasing power that could lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Rifkin foresees two possible outcomes: a near workerless world in which people are free, for the first time in history, to pursue a utopian life of leisure; or a world in which unemployment leads to an even further polarization of the economic classes and a decline in living conditions for millions of people."
James P. Hogan has several sci-fi novels envisioning an alternative positive future (e.g. _Voyage from Yesteryear_)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Books from Roman times show that complicated operations were routine, but the scale of dentistry has its own particular challenges. Making a thick drill from flint may be easy, but to make a fine dental drill that won't break before the tooth could be a real challenge.
You can go to the Qandahari Bazaar of Quetta today, and you'll see dentists lined up on the footpath fixing peoples teeth. There are cars and rickshaws blaring away a few feet away from them. Dentists themselves are stocky muscular dudes in the same traditional dress, shoes taken off sitting on the cloth mat and sometimes with a made-in-china loupe holding boiled metal tools that they sharpen using knife sharpeners or simply ceramic bricks.
They obtain their tools from the organic waste of hospitals of Karachi which are sold on trolleys in the bazaars there. You see thousands of scalpels and the likes lined up under the sun sold for Rs 5 (10c) or less even to the grand public. Get up real close and in the crevices of the handle you'll notice dried up blood.
But the dentists DO boil their tools sometimes before your eyes on gas cookers, on the footpath. You'll occasionally hear a moan where a tooth is getting right out... real men dont need anasthetic.
With my full dental insurance here in Toronto, I still am put on long holds, have to fill out way more paperwork, and in the end, its still an italian surgeon who remarkably resembles the Qandahari Bazaar surgeons complete with hairy forearms, who pulls the teeth. Even the tools look the same. So stop pretending we've advanced that much!
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
That's my question.
In my lifetime, dentists have changed the way you're supposed to brush your teeth three times now.
This isn't rocket science, folks. Try to find a way to get plague off someone's teeth without using C-4, please.
I suspect dentistry simply isn't trying to solve the problem of tooth decay - there's too much money in not solving it. By now, we should have a simple chemical that spread on the teeth should remove bacteria and plaque almost instantly and prevent further growth. It's ridiculous.
I guess I'll have to wait for further development of nanotech - I just hope I have any teeth left by then (OTOH, I'll probably be able to rebuild them with nanotech, anyway.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Actually they have found a microbe that colonizes the mouth and kills the bacteria that causes plaque and decay. Once you've gotten colonized, you don't get another cavity, ever. (Drinking large quantities of alchohol at frat parties not included.)
Problem, they don't think making a few hundred at a one time dentist appointment is good enough. They are trying to genetically modify the microbe to need something special it can't get unless you buy the daily/weekly microbial maintenance mouthwase. (At an inflated price of course)
I have no problem with genetic engineering to improve things, but making a 'pay me forever or it dies' gene is just plain evil. Kinda seems like blackmail.
Also, I don't think this would wipe out dentistry. Just about everything non-cavity related should still be viable.