A History of Dentistry
The top-notch dental care you receive at Hudec Dental has been a long time in the making! Once upon a time, dentistry was unheard of. We’ll be exploring the fascinating past that brought us the advanced dentistry we know today!
Paleolithic Humans
The very earliest humans had very little in the way of tooth decay and cavities—nutritional anthropologists feel that this was due to what is called the Paleolithic diet. Most folks are aware that nutrition has a huge impact on our teeth, and the Paleolithic diet was (and still is) packed with vitamins nutrients. Paleolithic humans ate a variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as lean meats, nuts and roots—all of which we know to be great for our teeth!
The Rise of Agriculture
Ten thousand years ago, humans began to domesticate animals and began planting gardens. Slowly the plants and animals began to change—modern corn as we know it appeared, seeds were picked from the sweetest, the discovery of dairy products came to pass… and the bacteria in our mouths began to change too. In fact, there is a direct connection with the rise of farming and the rise of cavities, to the point where we see the sudden appearance in the oldest example of dentistry we have—an Italian tooth was found which appears to have been cleaned with flint tools over ten thousand years ago!
Ancient Dentistry
Evidence of dental procedures using bow drills (probably operated by bead craftsmen) has been uncovered in areas of Pakistan dating back to 7000 BC! Archaeologists continue to find creative solutions for dental problems—the first tooth filling was dated around 6500 years ago, and was made of beeswax! Ancient Egyptian dentistry was the first appearance of the dental bridge to replace lost teeth—the tooth in question (sometimes even a donor tooth) would be attached to the surrounding teeth with thin bands of gold and silver. Greek dentists would pack linen, soaked in medicine, into the cavities of teeth as a form of filling—the Greeks would almost never pull their teeth, but would rather just endure the pain from their cavities!
Dentistry has come a long, long way from linen and beeswax—and we can be thankful for that! Stay tuned for a look at medieval dentistry, dental practices through the Victorian era and the earliest stages of the dentistry we know and love today!
