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Iceman Had Bad Teeth
sciencehabit writes "Europe's best-known mummy wasn't just a medical mess; he also had terrible teeth, according to a new study. Ötzi, a Stone Age man who died atop a glacier about 5300 years ago, suffered from severe gum disease and cavities. When Ötzi was discovered atop a glacier on the Austro-Italian border, his frozen corpse was intensively studied. But no one took a close look at his teeth until now. Using 3D computer tomography (a CAT scan), the hunter's mouth could be examined for clues as to the life he led. A fall or other accident killed one of his front teeth, still discolored millennia later. And he may have had a small stone, gone unnoticed in his whole-grain bread or gruel, to thank for a broken molar. That gruel may be the culprit behind Ötzi's cavities and gum disease, too. The uptick in starches, the researchers suggest, could explain the increasing frequency of cavities in teeth from the time—a problem that's been with us ever since."
I mean, I'm not the biggest Val Kilmer fan around, but c'mon, that's just downright insulting!
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
From the No-Shit-Sherlock dept.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
An American Ice Man would have had braces as a cave child.
Dentists? Nope
Doctors? Nope
Nationwide medical coverage? Nope
Anesthetics? Nope
Rather Complicated Operations? Yes, surprisingly - but at full consciousness!
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Grain. Hardly paleo.
5,300 years ago would have been the neolithic period, so technically, a neolithic diet gave this guy terrible teeth.
Bet he still regrets missing all those dental appointments.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The summary contains almost the entire FA. But there is this...
In the late Stone Age, humans were increasingly incorporating coarsely ground grain into their diets. The uptick in starches, the researchers suggest, could explain the increasing frequency of cavities in teeth from the time—a problem that's been with us ever since.
In other words, it was no longer the "Paleo diet" and a shift away from it is what brought about bad oral health.
TFA mentions that he ate gruel and grains and that was probably to blame for his poor dental health. They're also blaming mechanical damage from tool holding and chewing sand with his gruel. I find it pretty unlikely that he would eat sandy gruel, they were prehistoric, not stupid. If they were stupid, we wouldn't have gotten the chance to be as stupid as we are as a race.
Sandy gruel just means "stone ground".
Forget the article, you didn't even read the whole summary, I see. "The uptick in starches, the researchers suggest, could explain the increasing frequency of cavities in teeth from the time---a problem that's been with us ever since." In other words, tooth decay isn't caused by lack of dentists. It's caused by eating food that isn't the natural diet for human beings. Dentistry is only needed to fix a problem we've caused ourselves.
People didn't only live until 30. That statistic is an average: Infant mortality was high, but if people made it through childhood, they died in their 60s-80s just like they do nowadays. Go look up a few random historical figures from ancient times if you don't believe me. Socrates died in his 70s. Plato made it to 80. Aristotle, 62. Roman Emperor Augustus, 76. Tiberius, 78.
But I suppose these are some of the myths you need to believe in, and propagate, to support "national health coverage." So by all means carry on.
Liberty in your lifetime
He likely did not have freedom of speech either. Was the great Washington perhaps lying?
Instead of listing the richest folks who had access to the best of everything, how about you tell me how long the median farmer lived.
I suppose these are myths you need to support "Fuck you, I got mine." So by all means, carry on.
Your assumption about unrefined foods is incorrect, Look up the teeth of the Indians and Eskimo's before they were "civilized". From what I've read, eating a meat diet, or one that included some vegetables, didn't have cavities. Cavities seem to be associated with the consumption of sugar and starches.
Well, things can always be a little too simple, but that doesn't mean we should make them as complicated/not-simple/technological as possible. It's perfectly possible to have good health without being inundated with technology for our entire lives.
No actually it isn't. You just don't realise that: spoken language, currency, written language, specialized education, calendars, etc. are technology. Not to mention: stethoscopes, toothbrushes, anatomy, cell theory, germ theory, etc.
Good luck having a modern lifespan without a nontrivial subset of technology.
ONE comment, and you've already beaten me to the Val Kilmer joke...
Considering this is Slashdot, I'd have expected the obligatory joke "Iceman" reference to have been Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, not bloody Top Gun. I can't believe that I'm the first. Hand in your geek cards at once... >:-(
Anyway.... "Iceman had bad teeth? That's nothing, Firestar had BO and the other guy, er... could do what a spider can. Hang on, that last one's quite cool."
*ahem*
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Dying in the snow and being frozen for the next 5300 years definitely helps here.
Last I read the British have better dental hygiene than us Americans do. They're just not as fixated on the bleaching and such.
And before some horse's ass drags out the new "i'm confused by your 'americans' reference", I meant the US.
The rich had access to food that was not rotting, did not starve, and water that was clean. For the vast majority of human history the amount and quality of food available varied greatly based on income and social standing.
Actually it's pretty well established in the archeological record. Prior to wheat and rye agriculture the human diet was pretty similar to that of Homo Habilis, so we had plenty of time to adapt to that. Subsequent to the establishment of agriculture in the Middle East dental disease became a major cause of death, and in Europe in some portions of the Middle Ages it was the single leading cause of death. It seems to be more associated with a wheat and rye diet though, because I don't believe the same thing was seen in the areas where rice or maize were the principle grain crops. (Could be wrong, since I'm just working on memory.) Small stones left in flour seem to have been the primary culprit in many cases, breaking teeth, getting stuck between teeth, and injuring gums.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
OK... My bad, you guys are right, this guy was neolithic, not paleolithic, I'm sorry. Yup, you heard it right, someone on the internet admitting they were wrong, and apologizing for it!
"Hardly anyone lives short from molar abscesses" any more. It used to be a major cause of death in the Middle Ages in Europe and well into the colonial period in the Americas.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
One of the problems with claiming what "the" paleo diet consisted of is that it varied hugely from time to time and place to place.
Unsurprisingly, the world before "the" invention of agriculture was not a giant homogeneous culture with the same diet everywhere.
For the most part, diets in the winter vs summer were remarkably different, even for the same people. There are many exceptions, though, where the diet didn't vary much year round.
Even the diets from places as close together as, say, western Oregon and Utah from 13,000 years ago were hugely different. The Pleistocene Oregon diet consisted of large amounts of seafood, rabbits, tubers, and, yes, lots of wild grains. In Utah there was significantly more larger game, more meat, including more fat, different berries, more grains and less tubers.
And, yes, even without lots of grains, throughout the archaeological record, people frequently had bad teeth. Worn flat by sand and bits of dirt in their food the was rule, not the exception, and cavities and abscesses were more common than not throughout the Americas. I imagine it would be similar to Europe and Africa.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Subsequent to the establishment of agriculture in the Middle East dental disease became a major cause of death
Ramesses II might have died of dental infection. I don't think he had a single healthy tooth in his mouth. The gritty Egyptian flour with an admixture of sand (which is sort of difficult to avoid in Egypt!) didn't help any.
Of course, the problems with agricultural nutrition were many-fold: pollen analysis of the layers found in Jarmo and other places suggests that the range of plants consumed dropped from about two hundred to mere eight or so, leading to malnutrition, decreased stature, lots of developmental problems - I guess the teeth development suffered as well from the malnutrition alone. The quern work also led to skeletal deformation in women, as they had to work it for extended periods of time.
I'm absolutely not surprised by these findings, indeed, I didn't expect them to find anything else!
Ezekiel 23:20
Or maybe, just maybe living in a predental hygiene era might have had something to do with it.
Both. He lived after the invention of flour and before the invention of toothbrush. That was a very unfortunate period for everyone's teeth.
Ezekiel 23:20
How do we even know this "Paleo diet" would cause one to have good oral health?
It's called paleopathology. That's how we know.
Ezekiel 23:20
You have a nice hypothesis. Now go for the hard data: look for countries with better life indexes and higher life expectancy than USA (yes, there's quite a lot of them). Now note down which one of them has NOT socialized medicine.
HINT: no one of them, not a single one.
Every once in a while, you hear of some local government or some NGO sponsoring an expensive piece of equipment for a hospital, then even with judicious use the hospital runs out of the yearly cap by May, making that equipment gather dust.
While here in good ol free market USA, virtually all our major equipment in our small rural hospital has been purchased by funds from various NGOs because we don't have the right mix of patients to make money off the bizarre US system. To add insult to injury to 'the best medical system in the world', we have increasing problems with drug unavailability. Nothing like a lack of sterile saline solution to kick your medicine back a couple hundred years.
The US system is failing on so many levels that it's pretty embarrassing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
He was found 22 years ago. It took that long to examine his teeth?
He was afraid of dentists. It's quite a primeval phobia, you know.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bear liver can be poisonous, just because it has too high of a concentration of vitamins.
Mod parent up.
To compare the Romans to cavemen is an insult. Romans were extremely advanced for the time. The legions (when not fighting) could build damn near anything and could build it to last. Roman roads survived the middle ages with little to no maintenance and are still servicable today. Meanwhile, our roads quickly crumble and deteriorate without yearly maintenance. Roman aquaducts and sewers meant that cities had running water and decent sanitation (including flush toilets), something not seen again until the late 19th-20th century. After the collapse of Rome, Europe would spend the next 1800 years shitting in a bucket. Romans even had a primitive steam engine. It wasn't deployed much (if at all) outside of design drawings but a steam-powered vehicle could have been possible if the empire had lasted a bit longer.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."