Drilled and filled cavities put dentistry’s start date in the Stone Age

5000 years ago, someone in Sumeria was worried they had “tooth worms.” It was probably just run-of-the-mill cavities, but people didn’t really know why their teeth could break down in their mouths. Lacking a real understanding of the root causes of tooth aches didn’t stop people from looking for remedies though, and people have been removing, wiring and medicating teeth for thousands of years. A discovery in Italy shows that dentistry may predate those Sumerian tooth worms though, with evidence of Stone Age fillings from nearly 13,000 years ago.

Carving for cavities

The two teeth show a lot of damage, but the assumption is that much of it was intentional. While paleolithic peoples likely demanded a lot of their teeth, using them as a third hand to hold or soften wood, hides and plants, these teeth seem to have been scraped on purpose. Instead of rough, random damage, an impressively smooth, regular pit was carved in the center of each tooth, much like your dentist would do with their drill to remove any infected tooth around a cavity and make a better seat for a filling.

Aside from the fact that this work was done without a modern dental drill, there obviously wasn’t modern fillings available either. To fill the teeth, it appears that fillings made of bitumen was used to fill the drilled hole. Bitumen is a thick, sticky substance that is usually derived from petroleum, and is most commonly used today in making asphalt cement. In Paleolithic era, bitumen was more often used as a glue in tools, but apparently dentists at the time felt it was a good way to fill in damaged teeth as well.

No signs of Novocaine

None of this sounds terribly pleasant for the patient, but a persistent tooth ache is hard to ignore. Hopefully, the dentist in question could at least recommend some of the pain-killing techniques used by Neanderthals in what is now Spain, as their teeth have turned up with traces of salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. It wouldn’t have made this a painless procedure, but it seems better than nothing.

Source: Stone Age hunter-gatherers tackled their cavities with a sharp tool and tar by Bruce Bower, Science News