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13,000-year-old Italian Tooth Reveals Dentistry Was Not So Easy Back Then [VIDEO]

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Humans have always taken dental care seriously and even in Ice age Europe, 13,000 years ago, people are finding ways on how to fix tooth cavities. However, the downside to this is that people back then would have suffered horrendously painful surgeries as they drill out cavities and fill it up with anything ranging from vegetable fiber to beeswax to gold fillings.

Archeological news on Discovery Magazine reported the discovery of dental work on a 13,000-year-old tooth in Northern Italy revealing primitive attempt to fill up cavities. The tooth show signs of being drilled by a crude equipment, which one can only imagine the pain one endures. The specimen discovered in Italy was from a person who died during the ice age, with teeth drilled and filled with hair and bitumen or tar. It would be quite an experience to be under the hands of a primitive doctor as he grinds on one's molar without any pain reliever whatsoever.

According to an article published by the Daily Mail, primitive dentists use sharp stones to scrape away the diseased tissue inside the cavity of molars. Most of the operations involved completely scraping the cavity up to the pulp chamber, which meant a lot of pain during the operation. Dentistry spread throughout the ancient world and have made considerable improvement over the years.

Archeology also discovered dental operation in Pakistan, India and various Middle Eastern countries. The Egyptians have used gold wire to attach dentures and also practiced the use of beeswax as filling in cavities. This made sense as honey is a powerful antiseptic and antioxidant which would retard the rate of tooth decay. The oldest evidence for dental operations were also found in Italy, which dated almost 14,000 years old. It was only during the invention of anesthesia that dental operations became bearable and no longer place people under unbelievable levels of pain. Now we've come so far that many patients don't even need braces to fix crooked teeth, merely clear aligners. Thank goodness for medical advancements!


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