If you dread going to the dentist, be thankful you didn’t live in the Stone Age. Roughly 8,000 years before Novocaine and some 7,300 years before they could even swig whiskey to dull the pain, prehistoric patients were having holes drilled into their teeth with drill bits carved from stone.
Scientists found 11 teeth from the skeletons of four females, two males and three individuals of unknown gender in an ancient cemetery in Pakistan that show signs of having undergone the painful procedure.
All the teeth had worn a bit after the holes were made, confirming that the drillings were performed while the people were still alive.
It’s unlikely the holes were drilled for decorative purposes since all of teeth were first or second permanent molars located deep inside the mouth, said study leader Roberto Macchiarelli from the Universite de Poitiers in France.
The researchers think the dental work may have been done to ease tooth pain, since four of the teeth showed signs of tooth decay and the jaw of at least one individual showed signs of massive infection. One poor soul had three drilled teeth and another had a tooth that had been drilled twice.
Neolithic Molar Shows Signs of Dentistry
The procedure would have caused a lot of pain, too. The holes ranged from about 1 to 3 millimeters in diameter and were about 0.5 to 3.5 millimeters deep.
One minute of torture.
The researchers reconstructed a flint-tipped drill and found they could create similar holes in less than a minute. But even with anesthetic, it would likely have been a very long one minute, Macchiarelli said. “The extent and depth of the drilling would haveproduced horrible pain,” he said. “These people took the capability offacing pain to another level.” At the excavation site, flint drillheads were found alongside beads made of bone, shell, turquoise andother material. The researchers think the early dentists learned theircraft from artisans skilled at making beads.
For more information contact Dr. Todd Welch with West Tennessee Periodontics and Dental Implants in Jackson, TN at www.wtnperioblog.com
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