Accidental Blogger

And you thought your trip to the dentist was painful. The primitive man visited the dentist and had his teeth drilled. The procedure was done presumably without anesthesia, using drills made out of flint. This means that dentists were practising their trade as early as 7000 years ago if archaeological findings in Pakistan are to be believed.

Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 7000 B.C. and 5500 B.C., an article in today’s journal Nature reports. Scientists carbon-dated 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 were hard-to-reach molars. In 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.

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

How it was done is painful just to think about. 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 in France, and colleagues simulated the technique and drilled through human, but no longer attached, teeth in less than a minute.

The dentistry probably evolved from intricate ornamental bead drilling and went on for about 1,500 years until about 5500 B.C. After that, there were no signs of drilling. The drilling was likely done to reduce the pain of cavities.