Even so, it took modern dentistry to
turn pain into an art form. :-)
Ancient man used sophisticated drills to treat tooth decay, according to a French anthropologist who turned up evidence of fine dental work in ancient Pakistani cemeteries.
Writing in the respected British journal Nature, Roberto Macchiarelli of the University of Poitiers said Neolithic man used drills made of tiny pieces of flint up to 9,000 years ago.
That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought and far older than modern anesthesia.
Macchiarelli came to his conclusion after finding nearly perfect holes that had been drilled into the back teeth of nine skulls in a Pakistani graveyard. He carbon-dated the skulls and found the patients lived between 5500 BC and 7000 BC.
What surprised Macchiarelli was the sophistication of the dental work. The ancient dentists managed to drill holes into the large molars at the back of their patients’ mouths, a tricky job even with modern equipment.
The only bone to pick– oops, poor choice of words– I have is regarding the following:
“Definitely it had to be painful,” Macchiarelli said.
If we were wrong about their ability to perform the dental work, couldn’t we be wrong about their ability to provide pain relief to the patient?
“Why do they think these ancient dentists used chipped pieces of stone to do this?”
From the article:
“Researchers found drill bits that were fashioned out of tiny pieces of flint and used tiny bows to spin them.”
And KB is right about the pain. Probably not painful at all if the hole did not penetrate the enamel. If it did, the ancient dentists may have used some type of plant or herb to deaden the pain. ( In the worst case, a good slap upside the head with a rock would put the patient out cold for the duration of the procedure 🙂 )
ever heard of the coca plant!
There’s a difference between intelligence and sophistication. Ancient Homo sapiens was no less intelligent than todays model. In fact, giving the survival challenges, they may have been a bit sharper. No government to pull your arse out the fire then.
BOBG
The coca plant comes from South America, this came from Pakistan which is on the other side of the world. Opium might have been a more appropriate drug.