« Women Leaders in Health Care: Changing the Face of Medicine | Main | World Health Day 2006: Working Together for Health »
April 05, 2006
The Oldest Profession -- Dentistry?
New research published in the journal NATURE today shows that dentistry is 4,000 years older than previously thought.
A. Coppa, L. Bondioli, A. Cucina, D. W. Frayer, C. Jarrige, J. -F. Jarrige, G. Quivron, M. Rossi, M. Vidale and R. Macchiarelli
Palaeontology: Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry.
Nature 440(7085):755-756.
doi:10.1038/440755a
http://www.nature.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/nature/journal/v440/n7085/full/440755a.html [Access limited to the University of Michigan]
"Prehistoric evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo has so far been limited to isolated cases from less than six millennia ago. Here we describe eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan that dates from 7,500–9,000 years ago. These findings provide evidence for a long tradition of a type of proto-dentistry in an early farming culture."
Posted by pfa at April 5, 2006 09:34 PM