by hilzoy
From the NYT:
“Man’s first known trip to the dentist occurred as early as 9,000 years ago, when at least 9 people living in a Neolithic village in Pakistan had holes drilled into their molars and survived the procedure.
The findings, to be reported Thursday in the scientific review Nature, push back the dawn of dentistry by 4,000 years to around 7000 B.C. The drilled molars come from a sample of 300 individuals buried in graves at the Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan, believed to be the oldest Stone Age complex in the Indus River valley.
“This is certainly the first case of drilling a person’s teeth,” said David Frayer, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas and the lead author of the report. “But even more significant, this practice lasted some 1,500 years and was a tradition at this site. It wasn’t just a sporadic event.”
The earliest previously known evidence of dental work done in vivo was a drilled molar found in a Neolithic graveyard in Denmark dating from about 3000 B.C.
All 9 of the Mehrgarh dental patients were adults — 4 females, 2 males, and 3 individuals of unknown gender — and ranged in age from about 20 to over 40. Most of the drilling was done on the chewing surfaces of their molars, in both the upper and lower jaws, probably using a flint point attached to a bow that made a high-speed drill, the researchers say. Concentric ridges carved by the drilling device were found inside the holes.
The drilling may have been done to relieve the pain and damage of tooth rot, but only 4 of the total of 11 teeth showed signs of decay associated with the holes. The scientists say it is clear that the holes were not made for aesthetic reasons, given their position deep in the mouth and on the erosion-prone surface of the teeth.
While there is no evidence of fillings, the researchers believe something was used to plug the holes because some of them were bored deep into the teeth. What that filler substance was is unknown. The holes ranged in depth from a shallow half-a-millimeter to 3.5 millimeters, deep enough to pierce the enamel and enter the sensitive dentin.”
We are a peculiar species. It’s odd enough for a member of any species to figure out the point of doing one painful thing to avoid even greater pain in the future. (My cats, for instance, don’t understand this at all.) It might make sense for someone to do this when instinct takes over altogether (breathing despite broken ribs), or when the connection between the present pain and the future benefit is obvious (gnawing your foot off to escape from a trap.) But dental work involves not just a very complicated theory about how to get rid of pain in your teeth, but also (before anaesthesia) a willingness to endure excruciating pain for the sake of that theory.
It’s astonishing enough that we invented spears and fishhooks. It’s downright amazing to think that we invented dentistry nine thousand years ago. Who had this bizarre idea? What brave person was willing to be the first dental patient? And how on earth did the first dentist convince him or her to go for it? When you think about it, it’s really peculiar.
Yeah, I think it’s amazing too. One has to remember that these are the same kind of modern humans as we are. Possibly smarter than us in many ways.
And they had time to think – hunter gatherers have a lot of free time. But whoever came up with the first dental drill must have been a persuasive person 😉
“But dental work involves not just a very complicated theory about how to get rid of pain in your teeth, but also (before anaesthesia) a willingness to endure excruciating pain for the sake of that theory.”
And who came up with eating fugu? (There’s some other food I have in mind in the back of my head that’s incredibly difficult to understand how we got started on eating that, that I’m too foggy to think of right now, darn it.)
gary: the traditional answer is oysters.
The drilling may have been done to relieve the pain and damage of tooth rot, but only 4 of the total of 11 teeth showed signs of decay associated with the holes.
They might have used a general anesthesia (like fermented whatever or perhaps the local equivalent of coca leaves) In fact, the guy with the drill might be like the doc with the prescription pad, and the 7 guys with no apparent tooth decay were like Rush Limbaugh saying the Neolithic equivalent of ‘have you got those blue babies for me?’
Poppies are native to the area. I seriously doubt that it would have taken long for the properties of the seedpods to become apparent. We do a great disservice to our ancestors when we underestimate their intelligence and curiousity. I’m willing to bet that those teeth were drilled while the patient was throroughly intoxicated on either opium or some other narcotic.
To hell with oysters and fugu, I want to know who figured out how to eat Cassava, a major food crop for a big chunk of the world.
In order to process it so that it isn’t poisonous (cyanide), they must be peeled, shredded, soaked in water, squeezed dry, soaked again, squeezed again, repeat a few more times, allow the milky liquid in the water to settle for a few hours, remove it, and then the results toasted. At that point it becomes non-poisonous and can be used in cooking.
Who the blankity-blank figured that one out? Lucky surviving tester number 3,874?
“Okay, tester number 1,145 – you try putting it in the sun for a few days after peeing on it. Tester 1,146, you mix it with shrimp paste and then bury it for a week. C’mon guys, cheer up, one of these has just got to work.”
d-p-u, I think the traditional answer is “some guy who was starving.”
Which, JM, is the traditional answer to the origin of almost all cuisine.
There’s some other food I have in mind in the back of my head that’s incredibly difficult to understand how we got started on eating that, that I’m too foggy to think of right now, darn it
The Thousand Year Egg.
What if they did it as punishment ?
Does that thought make me a cynic?
double-plus-ungood beat me to the cassava observation.
As to “how on earth did the first dentist convince him or her to go for it”, I speculate it was the free X-rays, the free dental hygiene package (toothbrush, little bottle of Scope, and the sharpened wishbone of the baby velociraptor for gum massage), and the winsome dental hygienists in the low-cut Mammoth-hair bibs.
Could be, too, that dentistry and stegosaurusi raged through the jungle side by side, as Genesis so proves.
Birds nest soup.
Jake
I think, if you’re in enough pain, it’s not too hard for someone who’s probably already the local medicine wo/man to convince you to try this nifty new technique s/he has invented. Being blissed out on poppies would make a good added inducement.
I’d like to know what they drilled with. Tooth enamel is one of the hardest natural substances on earth, and whatever they used was hard enough to remove parts of the tooth without shattering it. That’s an impressive display of inventiveness and skill.
I’m always amazed at how our ancient ancestors are assumed to be not very bright. The biggest essential difference between them and us was that their information storage and retrieval was limited to oral history and pictographs. That certainly limited the quantity of information they could accumulate – and the level of detail, what with few scientific instruments available – but their powers of reasoning can’t have been all that different from ours. “Logic” surely existed before it was codified in the 6th-5th Centuries BCE.
What little mystery do I wonder about?
Soap.
How did someone figure out that combining fat, ashes and lye would create a waxy blob that, combined with water, cleaned whatever you rubbed it on?
I don’t think that it is weird at all, but agree that it is truly amazing.
I tend to think of mankind inventing things as continual progression. Man knows actions and results through experience. Perhaps Person 1 had horrible and painful tooth decay that caused a tooth to fall out and cease the pain. Person 1 could then point out this observation to Person 2. Person 2 knocks out a tooth with a rock (Ouch). Person 2 passes it on until Person 45 with horrible tooth decay/pain eats something that always made them feel less pain. Then person 300 decides to use a tool or chisel they are familiar with plus the trick from Person 45.
It is hypothesis/evidence driven. What is really amazing about the human species is that we can ask questions and solve them, especially abstract questions. That drives my mind wild… I still can’t get my mind around how computers work. I think Bill Gates is a different species.
We also tend to underestimate how much knowledge is lost. Just because we can’t figure out how to do it doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t figured out how to do it. The more we learn about “primitive” peoples the more we find surprises about how clever they are at solving the problems of daily life.
If cassava wasn’t what I was thinking of, I’ll claim it was.
Something I’ve found extremely interesting is how much we’ve learned in the past couple of decades on the large number of tool-using animals, and the details of their use.
When I was a kid, people used to claim all sorts of things were unique to humans (usually referred to as “man”). “Man is the only animal who… laughs, uses tools, shares emotions, learns, teaches others, etc., etc.”
All untrue. All traits and practices we now know lots of species engage in.
Isn’t the traditional answer to soap (and this answer could easily just be a folk tale) that people were washing things downriver from somewhere where some or all of those things were mixing, and noticed the improved cleaning powers?
In a related vein: When I was a little kid and first learned about sex, I actually spent some time wondering how the first people figured out how to do it. (Somehow it didn’t occur to me how problematic my notion of “first people” was.) Anyway, I pictured them standing around thinking about how they needed to reproduce, but not being sure how to do it, and trying all sorts of various things (sticking fingers in each other’s ears, etc.) until they finally hit on the thing that worked.
It seemed so arbitrary at the time.
“It seemed so arbitrary at the time.”
That’s how it actually happened, though. Little-known fact.
dpu: ” I want to know who figured out how to eat Cassava,”
I wondered the same thing about the first person ever to eat peyote. Only not so much “how” to eat it but why? I mean, after the [RELENTLESSLY BREATHTAKINGLY SKUNK-BUTT AWFUL HORRID TASTING!!!] first bite, why / how did he (had to be a guy!) know/decide – to take the second?
Always wondered about that.
yeah, and how did people ever get the idea of smoking any kind of burning leaf? I guess there were fires and people noticed it smelled kind of good. But still, it’s a leap to putting it in your mouth and deliberately inhaling it. (I know, Bob Newhart got here first).
And how did wheat ever get domesticated?
I don’t know if this is what Gary Farber was thinking, but I’ve heard that almonds need a little processing, too.
And how did wheat ever get domesticated?
Read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Modern wheat is descended from a wild grass native to the Fertile Crescent. It had big seeds.
Somewhat OT, but interesting: one of the more provocative reasons advanced for the explanation of how agriculture arose is … beer. People had to have a reason to settle down, and grow seed crops, and that reason was either a) to feed livestock, b) to feed themselves, or c) to get loaded.
I vote for beer. Prost!
>What brave person was willing to be the first dental patient? And how on earth did the first dentist convince him or her to go for it?
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Did you ever see the Tom Hanks movie Castaway? I could see that character submitting to a flint drill…
Matt
Read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Modern wheat is descended from a wild grass native to the Fertile Crescent. It had big seeds.
Can you sex that explanation down a little more? It’s actually a pretty interesting story of natural selection.
Wheat is supposed to scatter its seeds on the wind like any other grass. But some plants were mutants whose heads clung to the stalk. Those seeds were eaten by humans, passed through their guts, and grew up well fertilized in their latrine pits. So the mutation was selected for and we got a grass whose seeds stay on the stalk till harvest.
IntricateHelix, the interesting thing is that we do tend to assume that our primitive ancestors worked things out long-term by trial and error – even though we have present-day knowledge that from time to time geniuses arise who just think of things that work. I’d bet on it being some long-dead unsung genius who, contemplating the problem of toothache, suddenly thought “Hey, if I dose them up with poppyseed so they don’t notice how I’m hurting them, and drill out the bit of their tooth that’s decaying, and then fill it up with something that’ll dry solid, I bet I can stop the pain!” Thereafter the trial-and-error would have been her experiments to find something hard enough to drill tooth enamel and something malleable/hard enough to fill the hole with.
As long as we’re on the subject of clever “primitives,” I think that I should mention Anglo-Saxon medicine. There are close to 1200 pages of Old English medical texts extant. The general reaction of scholars looking at these texts was to scoff at them as “magical.”
A few years ago, though, some scholars took a recipe from an Old English medical text for a medicine for a patient suffering from a sty. They followed the preparation instructions (which were fairly complex, and involved mixing it first in a brass container, holding it there for a certain length of time, and then storing it in a horn container) as closely as was possible.
The resulting medication was then tested on a culture of the bacteria that cause sties. It turned out that the remedy was a functional antibiotic.
PeterK beat me to it – when I read this my first thought was Marathon Man.
The comment about lost knowledge was great. I recently finished the 19-volume Aubrey/Maturin series about the golden age of the English Navy (beating Napolean).
wow, the skills needed to be an able seaman were amazing. and the ships were self-contained, self-repairing little factories. i wonder if the Tall Ships that purport to replicate the experience are even close to what life was actually like. (Cue Churchill — rum, sodomy and the lash are unlikely to be found on modern Tall Ships.)
and how many of us can knap flint?
“I recently finished the 19-volume Aubrey/Maturin series about the golden age of the English Navy (beating Napolean).”
I wish you all joy, sir. Anyone for some spotted dick? With syllabub?
“(Cue Churchill — rum, sodomy and the lash are unlikely to be found on modern Tall Ships.)”
Two responses: a) Depends upon who crews them; b) Two out of three isn’t bad.
A glass with you, sir.
“As soon as the sun is up I must have off the top of his skull with my little saw. You will see the gunner’s brain, my dear sir,” he added with a smile. “Or at least his dura matter.”
It’s in Master and Commander that Stephen Maturin trepans the Sophie‘s gunner – another v. ancient practice that makes one wonder how on earth the first practitioners talked their patients into it. (By the time of the Napoleonic Wars the physician at least knew to replace the missing piece of skull w/ a hammered-out coin and then sew the scalp over it, so that the victim didn’t have to live w/ a permanent soft spot.)
As for tall ships and sodomy, those of you who’ve read Master and Commander will remember this passage:
“A dish of tea? You take milk, sir?”
“Goat’s milk, sir?”
“Why, I suppose it is.”
“Perhaps without milk, then, if you please.”