OUCH! 9,000 Years Ago

[Rokcet Scientist]

New York Times

Man Was Enduring the Dentist's Drill 9,000 Years Ago

By KYLE JARRARD
International Herald Tribune
Published: April , 2006

PARIS, April 5 — 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.

[...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/scien ... ref=slogin
Reg required

[MichelleH]

This story is posted under "Back to Archaeology"

[Minimalist]

But R/S has a better headline.

[Rokcet Scientist]

[Guest]

this article bothers me as it assumes that, since there has been no record found of anesthesia being used before 3000 b.c., there was no form of pain relief at all.

this shows the limited thinking on the part of those who make these discoveries. sounds like they want the press morethanthey want to publish the truth. they base their conclusions on what has not been found, which isn't always the smartest thing to do.

[Minimalist]

Ooh....ring the bell...arch and I agree.


The problem is that the hole in the tooth can be proven by the bone but if there were certain herbs or plants which could render a man senseless it would be virtually impossible to find evidence without some sort of textual reference.

Let's face it, primitive cultures have made use of various natural organic substances for hallucinogenic effects; peyote, poppies, etc. Just because Western Man lost the knack for producing useful medicinal plants does not mean that such knowledge did not exist 9,000 years ago.

In fact, and perhaps arch you will even agree with this, the idea that someone could drill a perfect hole in the back of a tooth of a patient who was screaming bloody murder and thrashing about at the time, is beyond belief. One has to assume that some means were found of rendering the victim...er, patient...unconscious.

[Guest]

In fact, and perhaps arch you will even agree with this, the idea that someone could drill a perfect hole in the back of a tooth of a patient who was screaming bloody murder and thrashing about at the time, is beyond belief. One has to assume that some means were found of rendering the victim...er, patient...unconscious

yes, i would agree as the only other solution would be that the skull is from an ancient dental school and the 'patient' was already dead at the time of drilling.

[Barracuda]

Can you imagine a life without dental work?

In the past many peoples had diets that prevented many of the problems we have today, but still dental problems were very common, and very painful.

Even the richest and most powerful, like the kings of Egypt, lived in pain from bad teeth.

[Minimalist]

Ramesses the Great had an x-ray taken which showed a severe abscess. Another part of the problem was the technique of grinding grain on stone wheels left a certain amount of grit in the grain which was hell on teeth.

[stan]

yes, i would agree as the only other solution would be that the skull is from an ancient dental school and the 'patient' was already dead at the time of drilling.

What would be the point of dental students practicing on corpses if they couldn't perform
the procedures on living people?

I think people were tougher then than they are now, but I also think
that they had some form of general anesthesia.

........

On the other hand, the holes pictured were not very deep.

[Minimalist]

Update:


http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060408/fob5.asp

Four teeth exhibit decay near drilled holes, Macchiarelli's team says in the April 6 Nature. Three drilled teeth came from the same individual, and another tooth was drilled twice. Intriguingly, no instance of drilling has been found in teeth from a 6,500-year-old cemetery at the same site.

"We have no idea why the practice [of tooth drilling] disappeared at that time," says anthropologist and study coauthor David W. Frayer of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. "In fact, we're not sure why it was done in the first place, since less than half of the drilled teeth had [decay]."

Drilled holes in the Mehrgarh teeth were 1.3 to 3.2 millimeters in diameter with a depth of 0.5 to 3.5 mm. Edge smoothing indicates that drilling was performed on living individuals whose continued chewing caused further dental wear.

[Guest]

What would be the point of dental students practicing on corpses if they couldn't perform
the procedures on living people

sometimes i wonderif people actually read watis being written on these pages. i said '...the only other...' which means i was presenting the only other possibility for the lack of use of anesthesia, not making a statement of what took place.

now to answer your question--practice.

interesting article there minimalist. seems that the dental habits and possibly diet were far better in the past than they are now, if so few people needed dental work.

[Minimalist]

You know, arch, it reminds me of another of Hancock's insights. He attributes much of the knowledge of the ancients to the legacy of a destroyed civilization, but....that knowledge was not distributed evenly.

Thus, some cultures like the Mayan came up with amazing mathematical concepts which were far in excess of what they would have needed...but never developed the wheel. The Andean peoples built imposing structures but showed no evidence of writing and so on. He speculates that groups of survivors with different skills ended up in different places.

Perhaps, the reason that we see this find only in Pakistan is that this is where the dentist went when the flood waters rose?

[Guest]

You know, arch, it reminds me of another of Hancock's insights. He attributes much of the knowledge of the ancients to the legacy of a destroyed civilization, but....that knowledge was not distributed evenly.

though i disagree with the part about survivors, you make an interesting point about the distribution of knowledge. one worth investigating. one question that needs to be answered is--why was that? what purpose did it serve to allow certain civilizations master life to only a certain extent while others went penniless in the knowledge department?

i could also make a point that Hancock proves my theory and thinking that non-religious see evidence of a pre-flood civilization according to the Bible then attribute such evidence to another avenue.

many people see the evidence but do not have an open enough mind to include all possibilities. as far as i am concerned, atlantis could refer to the pre-flood peoples of the world, if the evidence wasn't so strong for santorini and the minoans.

[Minimalist]

Hancock's vision is of a human society which was not destroyed because they pissed off some god or other. It is of a society which was lucky to survive the end of the ice age.

He would bash you sternly about the head and shoulders if you ever told him that he was supporting religion in any sense of the word! He's far too smart for that.