Earliest Dental Fillings Discovered in 13,000-Year-Old Skeleton

[Judi Lynn]

By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor | April 18, 2017 10:56am ET


You might wince at the sight of your dentist holding an electric drill over your mouth. But, you can be thankful she's not using a stone tool instead.

That is what the most advanced dental care looked like thousands of years ago. By studying teeth at archaeological sites, scientists think that prehistoric humans came up with a variety of resourceful solutions to dental problems: people drilled out cavities, sealed crown fractures with beeswax, used toothpicks to relieve inflamed gums and extracted rotten teeth.

Now, researchers report that they've discovered what is perhaps the oldest known example of tooth-filling at an ice age site in Italy.

Archaeologists unearthed the skeletal remains of a person who lived about 13,000 years ago at Riparo Fredian, near Lucca in northern Italy. The person's two front teeth (or upper central incisors) both had big holes in the surface that reach down to the tooth's pulp chamber.

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