9,000-Year-Old Dental Drill Is Found

This just blows my mind, that cavemen were practicing dentistry with tools back then, I would have thought a swift blow to the jaw would have been the method for removing teeth at the time, boy was I wrong.

9,000-Year-Old Dental Drill Is Found

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Proving prehistoric man's ingenuity and ability to withstand and inflict excruciating pain, researchers have found that dental drilling dates back 9,000 years.

Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday's journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least 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.

I wouldn't want to be patient back then. Maybe our early ancestors has something to do with the fear many of us have of dentists today





[edit on 4-5-2006 by worldwatcher]

WW,

I dont think those people 9,000 years ago were primitive at all. Enough artifacts, tools have been found along with machinery.
I think they were highly civilized people who got wiped out, self destruction or natural i dont know.

hmm now how could you drill a hole in somebody's tooth while they squirmed in obvious pain?

did they not put the patient out in some fashion too?

how did they fill the hole? they had to?

maybe their techniques were fairly comparable to what we are doing today in many respects...

maybe they were far more advanced than our narrow minded scientific community is telling us...

maybe most history/archeology is false or made up?

asphalt fillings? nasty stuff

I have such a hard time grasping the idea that they had the knowledge to drill a tooth and fill it with something when the tooth hurt. perhaps it was more along the lines of ritual drilling with things adorning their teeth.

I have a "filling" that the pre-op procedure may have included
drinking an herbal mixture, or chewing something that could have numbed
the mouth.

We had a pretty good connection with nature back in the day.

I was very surprised when I heard the findings, but we have to know that until this day all we actually know about ancient men is not much.

Only that we are modern and they were ancient.

But in their time when alive they were as modern as us in comparison.

I also heard about the brain surgery they performed by the holes found in some ancient head sculls and the way the way the wholes were done show that they were not wounds but actually perfectly cut.

And they may not had the modern means of putting a patient out of pain but they probably had an equivalent of it.

What actually killed many of these patients after surgery procedures was not the surgery itself but the lack of sanitarian conditions.



[edit on 5-4-2006 by marg6043]

Chew poppie heads would give a great anaesthetic effect. Instant opiod rush and no bother about the drilling there!

Also what we tend to over look is the awesome array of natural ingredients these people mixed and tried - i bet with their stuff we would be able to stand alot of the 'primitive' treatment they dished out.

Neanderthal man buried his dead with flowers and trinkets in a grave, these people did tooth surgery, the early Ameri indians did all sorts of complex surgery, and if the tablets are to be believed they even did heart surgery. Now, were an advanced human race wiped out and had to go back to basics and we are the result? Well if we look at ancient 10 thousand year old texts we can see that there was a nuclear war....

Source

Its a good read.

You don't need anesthesia.

I had a root canal performed WITHOUT anesthesia (I was THAT terrified of needles) and I'm not the only one who's ever had this done. Furthermore, tooth modification is a common "beauty" treatment around the world (filing teeth to points and so forth) and it's done without anesthesia.

Just like tattoing.

If you're one of those unfortunates (like me) who has facial nerves in nonstandard places, you've had the experience of having your teeth worked on with ineffectual or nonexistant anesthesia (in other words, every part of your face EXCEPT the tooth being worked on is numb.)

Most of the time they'd pull the teeth, but they did have other treatments.

Originally posted by ByrdI had a root canal performed WITHOUT anesthesia (I was THAT terrified of needles)

you sir have my utmost respect. I'd let a midget beat me unconscious with a two by four before I'd let someone work in my mouth without anesthisia

done without anesthesia.

A man among men.

[edit on 5-4-2006 by Rasobasi420]

I'd imagine that even 9,000 years ago Pakistanis were familiar with opium, cannabis and ethyl alcohol...these holes were obviously drilled in an attempt to arrest the decay of, or alleviate the pain of, decayed teeth.

The doctor quoted in the article said they were "drilled for decoration...why else WOULD they?" I mean, gee...duh. One doesn't have one's teeth drilled into for fun.

One wonders about the ancient South Americans' histories of primitive dentistry...after all, the coca molecule is ideal for topical dental anaesthesia. I wouldn't put it past those Pakistanis to have known about opium, or the American Indians about coca, for dentistry, that far back (if they were advanced enough to drill perfect holes in teeth with a bow and a flint drill bit). What to fill the holes with, that would be the question...


[edit on 5-4-2006 by Dyno25000]

Originally posted by Rasobasi420

done without anesthesia.

A man among men.

[edit on 5-4-2006 by Rasobasi420]

Not really......he is a woman

A girlfreind of mine says she dont guse novicane or anything either.

She also says that they take very extreme care of her also instead of people getting novicane or whatever. since she has nothing to help her with main. she says it feels like a small eletrical current in her tooth.

Originally posted by Dyno25000The doctor quoted in the article said they were "drilled for decoration...why else WOULD they?" I mean, gee...duh. One doesn't have one's teeth drilled into for fun.

Beauty and status. Changing the shape of teeth or adding, say, diamonds or a gold wrap to teeth (rap stars, anybody?) is something that's permanent. It can be used to signify high status or low status and can be used to prevent impostors from entering or leaving a society.

This was the reason for head-binding... you could CLAIM to be "royal" but everyone knew that real royalty had their heads bound.

Humans do a lot of odd things to themselves in the name of status and beauty (like liposuction and face lifts, for instance.)

Originally posted by Amuk


Not really......he is a woman

Then a woman among men?

A woman among women?

A person among people?

Still, much respect.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
I have a "filling" that the pre-op procedure may have included
drinking an herbal mixture, or chewing something that could have numbed
the mouth.

perhaps they used clove oil which works wonders for toothache and numbs pain within minutes of being rubbed on the gum.

i do also wonder that they actually operated rather than pulled the tooth, which surely would have been easier and quicker to do.

Originally posted by Byrd
You don't need anesthesia.

I had a root canal performed WITHOUT anesthesia (I was THAT terrified of needles) and I'm not the only one who's ever had this done.

You are amazing!!!!!!!!!!

I had one performed and in my case no amount of anesthesia would take away the pain I felt.

I kept asking for more and still I felt every single drill they did.

Then on top of that I had an allergic reaction to the codeine and I end up with a trip to the emergency room the same night because an infection.

I swore that next time I will pull the sucker and no more root canals for me.

Now I am just suffering from my wisdom tooths causing problems with my jaws and I have to take them out. But not after my vacation trip to PR.

I've had to undergo 3 spinal epidurals,and a flourescope injected into shoulder joint with no pain killers ,and I wouldn't suggest it for anyone,but the teeth? I think I would hit myself over head first ouch,I am too under the impression that humans go thru a form of recycling fter they get to a certain degree of knowledge,too many unexplained artifacts etc

Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it actually was done 9,000 years ago with no anesthetic. Anything that would have been used to anesthetise the patient, short of a mallet, would have long since degraded.

Ancient medicine is nothing new

My mother told me about Egypts Old Kingdon, and how there are scrolls that remain to this day that explain how to perform certain surgery. These scrolls also describe the care needed for the patient afterwards, and the need for sanitary conditions. There is currently a book by a coloeague of hers named John Nunn that describes the processes in detail.