9,000-Year-Old Drilled Teeth Are Work of Stone Age Dentists
Amitabh Avasthi
National Geographic
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Human teeth excavated from an archaeological site in Pakistan show that dentistry was thriving as recently as 9,000 years ago. Researchers excavating a Stone Age graveyard found a total of 11 teeth that had been drilled, including one that had apparently undergone a complex procedure to hollow out a cavity deep inside the tooth.
The discovery suggests a high level of technological sophistication, though the procedure, which involved drills tipped with shards of flint, could hardly have been a painless affair. "The finding provides clear and compelling evidence that earlier people had knowledge of manipulation of dental hard tissues in living people," said Clark Spencer Larsen, an anthropologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, who was not part of the excavation.
Scientists from the Université de Poitiers in Poitiers, France, and the Musée Guimet of Paris made the discovery. The team's findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Apr 05, 2006
Amitabh Avasthi
National Geographic
_______________
Human teeth excavated from an archaeological site in Pakistan show that dentistry was thriving as recently as 9,000 years ago. Researchers excavating a Stone Age graveyard found a total of 11 teeth that had been drilled, including one that had apparently undergone a complex procedure to hollow out a cavity deep inside the tooth.
The discovery suggests a high level of technological sophistication, though the procedure, which involved drills tipped with shards of flint, could hardly have been a painless affair. "The finding provides clear and compelling evidence that earlier people had knowledge of manipulation of dental hard tissues in living people," said Clark Spencer Larsen, an anthropologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, who was not part of the excavation.
Scientists from the Université de Poitiers in Poitiers, France, and the Musée Guimet of Paris made the discovery. The team's findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Apr 05, 2006
