Its long been known that the Etruscans (900 BC–100 BC) of northern Italy, who were contemporaries of the early Roman Republic, were very experimental in their medical treatments, particularly dentistry.
In particular their gold band bridgework as opposed to the gold wires which are seen in other cultures (Egyptians, Phoenicians) of the same time.
But there has been recent evidence that takes the age of dentistry back thousands of years. Until now the earliest evidence of dental filling came from a 6,500-year-old human tooth from Slovenia, which showed that beeswax had been used to fill cavities.
Now archaeologists at the University of Bologna unearthed the skeletal remains of a person at Riparo Fredian, near Lucca in northern Italy. The person, who lived around 13,000 years ago still had two front teeth (or upper central incisors), both of which had big holes in the surface that reach down to the tooth's pulp chamber.
Inside the drilled out tooth cavities (apparently done with microliths - tiny stone tools), there were traces of bitumen, a tar-like substance (as well as plant fibre and hair), that all might have been used as an antiseptic or a filling to protect the tooth from getting infected.
As this is from before the switch to agriculture, which is when its traditionally thought that carbohydrate-rich diets led to an enormous increase in dental caries, it shows that there appears to have been an increase of dental problems in the Mesolithic period, ice age hunter-gatherer communities, that drove some populations to develop new dental treatments.
 |
| Etruscan Dentistry Was Advanced |
In particular their gold band bridgework as opposed to the gold wires which are seen in other cultures (Egyptians, Phoenicians) of the same time.
But there has been recent evidence that takes the age of dentistry back thousands of years. Until now the earliest evidence of dental filling came from a 6,500-year-old human tooth from Slovenia, which showed that beeswax had been used to fill cavities.
Now archaeologists at the University of Bologna unearthed the skeletal remains of a person at Riparo Fredian, near Lucca in northern Italy. The person, who lived around 13,000 years ago still had two front teeth (or upper central incisors), both of which had big holes in the surface that reach down to the tooth's pulp chamber.
 |
| Mesolithic Teeth With Drilled Cavities |
Inside the drilled out tooth cavities (apparently done with microliths - tiny stone tools), there were traces of bitumen, a tar-like substance (as well as plant fibre and hair), that all might have been used as an antiseptic or a filling to protect the tooth from getting infected.
As this is from before the switch to agriculture, which is when its traditionally thought that carbohydrate-rich diets led to an enormous increase in dental caries, it shows that there appears to have been an increase of dental problems in the Mesolithic period, ice age hunter-gatherer communities, that drove some populations to develop new dental treatments.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.
Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.
Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.
Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.
Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.