Dig uncovers ancient roots of dentistry
Tooth drilling goes back 9,000 years in Pakistan, scientists say

Researchers conduct a re-enactment of the method presumably used in Pakistan to drill teeth 9,000 years ago. A flint drilling tip was mounted in a rod holder and attached to a bowstring. In less than a minute, the technique produced holes similar to those found in prehistoric teeth. One important difference: The Neolithic dentists performed their operations on living humans.
Associated Press
Updated: 12:59 p.m. ET April 5, 2006
WASHINGTON - Proving prehistoric man's ingenuity and ability to withstand and inflict excruciating pain, researchers have found that dental drilling dates back 9,000 years.

Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least nine skulls with 11 drill holes found in a Pakistan graveyard.

That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought — and far older than the useful invention of anesthesia.

This was no mere tooth tinkering. The drilled teeth found in the graveyard were hard-to-reach molars. And in at least one instance, the ancient dentist managed to drill a hole in the inside back end of a tooth, boring out toward the front of the mouth.

The holes went as deep as one-seventh of an inch (3.5 millimeters).

"The holes were so perfect, so nice," said study co-author David Frayer, an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas. "I showed the pictures to my dentist and he thought they were amazing holes."

Painful for the patient
How it was done is painful just to think about. Researchers figured that a small bow was used to drive the flint drill tips into patients' teeth. Flint drill heads were found on site. So study lead author Roberto Macchiarelli, an anthropology professor at the University of Poitiers, France, and colleagues simulated the technique and drilled through human (but no longer attached) teeth in less than a minute.

Definitely it had to be painful for the patient," Macchiarelli said.

Researchers were impressed by how advanced the society was in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. The drilling occurred on ordinary men and women.

The dentistry, probably evolved from intricate ornamental bead drilling that was also done by the society there, went on for about 1,500 years until about 5500 B.C., Macchiarelli said. After that, there were no signs of drilling.

Reducing pain, or releasing 'evil spirits'
Macchiarelli and Frayer said the drilling was likely done to reduce the pain of cavities.

Macchiarelli pointed to one unfortunate patient who had a tooth drilled twice. Another patient had three teeth drilled. Four drilled teeth showed signs of cavities. No sign of fillings were found, but there could have been an asphaltlike substance inside, he said.

Dr. Richard Glenner, a Chicago dentist and author of dental history books, wouldn't bite on the idea that this was good dentistry. The drilling could have been decorative or to release "evil spirits" more than fighting tooth decay, he said, adding, "Why did they do it? No one will ever know."

Macchiarelli said the hard-to-see locations of the drilled teeth in jaws seem to rule out drilling for decorative purposes. Frayer said the prehistoric drillers' skill is something modern-day patients can use to lord over their dentists.

"This may be something to tell your dentist: If these people 9,000 years ago could make a hole this perfect in less than a minute," Frayer said, "what are they doing?"

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12168308/

9,000-Year-Old Dental Drill Is Found
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - Proving prehistoric man's ingenuity and ability to withstand and inflict excruciating pain, researchers have found that dental drilling dates back 9,000 years.

Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday's journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least nine skulls with 11 drill holes found in a Pakistan graveyard.

That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought — and far older than the useful invention of anesthesia.

This was no mere tooth tinkering. The drilled teeth found in the graveyard were hard-to-reach molars. And in at least one instance, the ancient dentist managed to drill a hole in the inside back end of a tooth, boring out toward the front of the mouth.

The holes went as deep as one-seventh of an inch (3.5 millimeters).

"The holes were so perfect, so nice," said study co-author David Frayer, an anthropology professor at the University of Kansas. "I showed the pictures to my dentist and he thought they were amazing holes."

How it was done is painful just to think about. Researchers figured that a small bow was used to drive the flint drill tips into patients' teeth. Flint drill heads were found on site. So study lead author Roberto Macchiarelli, an anthropology professor at the University of Poitiers, France, and colleagues simulated the technique and drilled through human (but no longer attached) teeth in less than a minute.

"Definitely it had to be painful for the patient," Macchiarelli said.

Researchers were impressed by how advanced the society was in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. The drilling occurred on ordinary men and women.

The dentistry, probably evolved from intricate ornamental bead drilling that was also done by the society there, went on for about 1,500 years until about 5500 B.C., Macchiarelli said. After that, there were no signs of drilling.

Macchiarelli and Frayer said the drilling was likely done to reduce the pain of cavities.

Macchiarelli pointed to one unfortunate patient who had a tooth drilled twice. Another patient had three teeth drilled. Four drilled teeth showed signs of cavities. No sign of fillings were found, but there could have been an asphalt-like substance inside, he said.

Dr. Richard Glenner, a Chicago dentist and author of dental history books, wouldn't bite on the idea that this was good dentistry. The drilling could have been decorative or to release "evil spirits" more than fighting tooth decay, he said, adding, "Why did they do it? No one will ever know."

Macchiarelli said the hard-to-see locations of the drilled teeth in jaws seem to rule out drilling for decorative purposes. Frayer said the prehistoric drillers' skill is something modern-day patients can use to lord over their dentists.

"This may be something to tell your dentist: If these people 9,000 years ago could make a hole this perfect in less than a minute," Frayer said, "what are they doing?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_sc/prehistoric_dentistry

Flint Drills Kept Stone-Age Smiles Bright
04.05.06, 12:00 AM ET

WEDNESDAY, April 5 (HealthDay News) -- Human teeth from almost 9,000 years ago show evidence of prehistoric -- but highly developed and precise -- dental drilling and filling, anthropologists say.

The find in Pakistan, reported in this week's Nature, pushes the origins of dentistry to long before recorded history, but leaves behind another mystery, since these procedures appear to have died out after 6,500 B.C.

But the precision and placement of the drilled holes -- in teeth with evidence of cavities -- leaves little doubt they were done to treat tooth decay, according to the researchers.

"Something interesting is going on with those teeth, and it looks like it had something to do with dentistry," said David DeGusta, an assistant professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

DeGusta, who was not involved in the Pakistani dig, is one of the world's leading experts on "prehistoric dentistry." In the late 1990s, his team discovered a similar, precisely drilled hole in a 1,000-year-old tooth found in a burial site in Colorado. That find remains the first evidence of prehistoric dentistry in the American Southwest, and one of only two such finds in the Americas.

According to the American Dental Association, the first recorded mention of dental health comes from the ancient Sumeria of 5,000 B.C., with a text attributing dental decay to "tooth worms." The first recorded evidence of dentistry, per se, comes from a tomb inscription for Hesy-Re, a doctor-scribe who was lauded as "the greatest of those who deal with teeth and of physicians." His dental office closed up shop in about 2,600 B.C., archaeologists say.

The Pakistani site, a "neolithic cemetery" at Mehrgarh in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, goes further back, to a 1,500-year period between 5,500 B.C. and 7,000 B.C. However, the anthropological team working there said that, despite its antiquity, the site revealed that the early agricultural society they uncovered had "an increasingly rich cultural life with technological sophistication based on diverse raw materials."

The first evidence of dentistry at the burial ground emerged about five years ago, when excavators discovered two molars with tiny perfectly drilled holes.

In this latest report, anthropologists led by Dr. Roberto Macchiarelli, of the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France, said they have since discovered 11 permanent fillings in molars from both the upper and lower jaws of four females, two males and three individuals of unknown gender.

High-tech electron microscopy revealed precise hole formations that could only have been mechanical in nature, the scientists said, and "smoothing" along the margins of the holes indicates that months or years of chewing occurred after the holes were drilled.

"The teeth of at least one individual reveal that the procedure involved not just the removal of the tooth structure by the drill, but also subsequent micro-tool carving of the cavity wall by either the operator or the patient," the anthropologists wrote in their report.

Because molars lie far back in the mouth, there's no evidence that the holes were drilled for any decorative purpose, the researchers said. Four of the 11 teeth showed definite evidence of nearby decay. According to DeGusta, "When you have people drilling teeth that had cavities, it's not a stretch to suggest that it might have been early dentistry."

Macchiarelli's team noted that the drilled holes often "exposed sensitive tooth structure, so some type of filling may have been placed in the cavity," although the scientists stressed there was no evidence to confirm that.

How did ancient humans produce such precise dental work?

DeGusta's team found that an obsidian flake mounted on the tip of a slim rod, then rotated vigorously by the palms, effectively drilled through human tooth enamel to produce conical holes similar to the one seen in the Colorado find. And in its own research, the team in Pakistan used a "bow drill" technique (using a local material, flint, instead) to similar effect.

Macchiarelli's team also noted the presence throughout the Pakistani dig of drilled, decorative beads made from turquoise, lapis lazuli, carnelian and other precious stones. Since precision drilling would be needed to create such jewelry, they speculated that "the know-how originally developed by skilled artisans for bead production" gave rise to its use in prehistoric dental offices.

Degusta called that theory "a reasonable hypothesis, but I'd like to find some way to test it. Maybe we could compare the micro-striations of the teeth with those of the beads to see if they really do match."

But one mystery remains: No evidence of dentistry has been found in Mehrgarh graves dating from later than 6,500 B.C., which suggests the highly skilled craft died out.

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2006/04/05/hscout531976.html

Yeeowww! Prehistoric Dentists Used Stone Drills
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 05 April 2006
01:00 pm ET

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.

Life after pain

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 pain, since four of the teeth showed signs of 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.

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 have produced horrible pain," he told LiveScience. "These people took the capability of facing pain to another level."

At the excavation site, flint drill heads were found alongside beads made of bone, shell, turquoise and other material. The researchers think the early dentists learned their craft from artisans skilled at making beads.

The findings are detailed in the April 6 issue of the journal Nature.

http://www.livescience.com/history/060405_neolithic_dentist.html

Italians find ancient dentists
Drill holes in 9,000-year-old teeth, researchers say (ANSA) - Rome, April 5 - Italian researchers say they have found the world's oldest dentists - drilling away in Pakistan 9,000 years ago .

The Neolithic precursors of today's dental experts "used tiny flint-tipped wooden drills they managed to whirl around 20 times a second, using little bows," said Renato Guarini of Rome University .

Signs of drilling have so far been seen in eleven molars out of a trove of almost 5,000 teeth found at a necropolis in Pakistan, Guarini said .

"It's an extraordinary discovery," he said .

The teeth have been loaned by the Pakistan government to Rome's Pigorini ethnography museum, where experts hope to find more holes .

"They invented a whole new therapy, using their existing expertise with beaded necklaces," said Pigorini anthropology chief Luca Bondioli .

Hundreds of bone, shell and stone beads have been found at the site at Mehgar on the Indus River Valley, Bondioli said .

The bead apertures are the same size as the tooth holes - a few tenths of a millimetre .

Alfredo Coppa of Rome University's Human Biology derpartment said: "At first we thought the holes in the teeth were due to tooth decay. Then we found the beads" .

"So far we haven't found any trace of fillings but we're sure we will," Coppa added .

Materials that could have been used to fill the drill holes are abundant at the Pakistani site, he noted: bitumen, resin and cotton .

The Rome researchers collaborated with experts in Paris, Poitiers, Kansas and Yucatan on their study, which is set for publication in the prestigious international journal Nature .

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2006-04-05_1058952.html