EARLIEST DENTAL FILLINGS

A pair of 13,000-year-old front teeth contain the earliest known use of fillings. The teeth, two upper central incisors belonging to one adult, were discovered recently at the Riparo Fredian site near Lucca in northern Italy. Each tooth has a large hole in the incisor’s surface that extends down into the pulp chamber deep in the tooth. Archæologists at the University of Bologna found a series of tiny horizontal marks on the inside of the cavities that suggest they had been drilled out and enlarged, probably by microliths (tiny stone tools). The markings were similar to those found in teeth from a site in the Italian Dolomites in 1988 dated to 14,000 year ago, believed to be the first known example of dentistry in humans.

However, these new teeth also have a new dental innovation. The holes contain traces of bitumen, with plant fibres and hairs embedded in it, which are seen as evidence of prehistoric fillings. While the purpose of the plants and hairs is unknown, it appears that they were added to the cavity at the same time as the drilling, so are not simply the remains of food eaten later. The Palæolithic dentist would have drilled out the cavities and filled the holes with bitumen to reduce pain and to keep food out of the pulp chamber, just as in modern dentistry. The bitumen, along with some medicinal plants, might have been used as an antiseptic, much as beeswax was used in other examples of prehistoric dentistry thousands of years later. These Italian teeth show that humans had developed therapeutic dental practices millennia before we developed the systematic production of foods such as cereals and honey, which are thought to have been responsible for a dramatic increase in dental decay. D.Mail, 16 July; (Sydney) D.Telegraph, 17 July 2015; newscientist.com, 17 April 2017.