Ancient humans were performing rudimentary dentistry on each other 14,000 years ago, Italian scientists have discovered – 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Researchers believe they have found evidence of an infected tooth being treated, probably with a sharp piece of flint, after studying the 14,000-year-old skeleton of a prehistoric man found in the Dolomites.
It was known that early humans used toothpicks made from wood or bone for basic dental hygiene, digging out scraps of meat or fibre from between their teeth.
But this discovery reveals a more sophisticated element of Palaeolithic dentistry.
A team from the universities of Ferrara and Bologna analysed a molar from the skull of the 25-year-old hunter-gatherer, whose remains were found in a valley near the town of Belluno in the Dolomites in 1988.
The skeleton, found in a rock shelter, was laid in a shallow pit, surrounded by the hunter’s most prized possessions – a flint knife, a stone used as a hammer, a flint blade and a sharp piece of bone.
The skeleton was unusually well-preserved, and the burial mound was marked with stones decorated with designs painted in red ochre.
The scientists analysed one of the man’s molars and found evidence that it had once been infected and that rotten material had been dug out of the tooth with the aid of a stone implement, most likely a shard of flint.
The results “have important implications for our knowledge of the earliest forms of dentistry”, the scientists said in a statement.
“What the results show is that the tooth represents the oldest evidence of intervention on a cavity,” Stefano Benazzi, the leader of the research group, told an Italian newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino.
“The discovery suggests, moreover, that in the Upper Palaeolithic era, humans were aware of the damaging effects of cavity infections and of the necessity of treating them, using stone instruments to remove the infected material and to clean out the cavity.”
The discovery represented “the development, albeit incipient, of dental surgery practices,” said his colleague Marco Peresani, from Ferrara University.
This article was originally posted on Telegraph News.
