London – While Electric Drills and Anesthesia are the instruments dentists’ swear by, what options do you think early man had when he had to drill a tooth to treat decay? While you can indulge in some creative thinking on the endless possibilities that early man could have tapped, researchers have dug up the past and chewed upon available evidence to suggest that a flint head served the purpose of a drill.
While excavating in Pakistan, Roberto Macchiarelli, of the University of Poitiers in France, and a team of international scientists discovered drilled molars from nine adults, in a grave in Pakistan , dating its origin back to about 7 500 to 9 000 years ago.To quote the words of Roberto Macchiarelli "Four teeth show signs of decay associated with the hole, indicating that the intervention in some cases could have been therapeutic or palliative."
The researchers are unsure of the type of filling, due to lack of sufficient evidence. It is estimated that drilling with the flint heads must have continued for a good 1500 years before any changes were made. The researchers were prompted to guess that the methodology invented by the skilled artisans to produce beads must have found additional use in drilling teeth.
