University of Kansas Professor David Frayer and co-authors have discovered multiple toothpick grooves on teeth of a Neanderthal individual who lived 130,000 years ago in what is now Croatia.
Neanderthals used toothpicks likely made of bones or stems of grass. Image credit: Abel Grau, CSIC Communication.
Prof. Frayer’s team analyzed four isolated but associated mandibular teeth from the left side of the Neanderthal’s mouth.
The teeth (left P4 – M3) were collected more than a century ago from the Krapina Neanderthal site.
They were analyzed by eye and with a light microscope to document occlusal wear, toothpick groove formation, ante mortem enamel, dentin scratches and lingual fractures.
“As a package, this fits together as a dental problem that the Neanderthal was having and was trying to presumably treat itself, with the toothpick grooves, the breaks and also with the scratches on the premolar,” Prof. Frayer said.
“The scratches and grooves on the teeth indicate they were likely causing irritation and discomfort for some time for this individual.”
The paleoanthropologists found the premolar and M3 molar were pushed out of their normal positions.
Associated with that, the team found six toothpick grooves among those two teeth and the two molars further behind them.
“The scratches indicate this individual was pushing something into his or her mouth to get at that twisted premolar,” Prof. Frayer said.
“The features of the premolar and third molar are associated with several kinds of dental manipulations.”
“Mostly because the chips of the teeth were on the tongue side of the teeth and at different angles, we ruled out that something happened to the teeth after the Neanderthal died.”
The authors did not identify what the Neanderthal would have used to produce the toothpick grooves, but it possibly could have been a bone or stem of grass.
“It’s maybe not surprising that a Neanderthal did this, but as far as I know, there’s no specimen that combines all of this together into a pattern that would indicate he or she was trying to presumably self-treat this eruption problem,” Prof. Frayer said.
The evidence from the toothpick marks and dental manipulations is also interesting in light of the discovery of the Krapina Neanderthals’ ability to fashion eagle talons into jewelry, because people often think of Neanderthals as having ‘subhuman’ abilities.
“It fits into a pattern of a Neanderthal being able to modify its personal environment by using tools, because the toothpick grooves, whether they are made by bones or grass stems or who knows what, the scratches and chips in the teeth, they show us that Neanderthals were doing something inside their mouths to treat the dental irritation. Or at least this one was,” Prof. Frayer added.
The research is published in the Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology.
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David W. Frayer et al. 2017. Prehistoric dentistry? P4 rotation, partial M3 impaction, toothpick grooves and other signs of manipulation in Krapina Dental Person 20. Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology 11 (1): 183221
