I’m not even sven, but a woman I used to work with had nice teeth (white, straight, no cavities) but they broke easily. The whole tooth would just break at the gum line. Her dentist told her it was genetic. In the three years I knew her, she lost four teeth. She’s in her 40’s.
ObSimpsons link.
(displaying perfect teeth)
Why, straight white teeth, of course. Old skeletal remains show surprisingly healthy teeth; but they aren’t by any means always straight and white. Sometimes one also sees some ghastly results of wisdom teeth not being extracted as is pretty routinely done today.
Swine
Interesting.
It really depends on what period of “olden times” you’re talking about. Just like bathing customs, dental cleaning practices have varied a lot over time. Diet is probably the main factor though.
A source I used some time back on a similar topic: http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/11_1Epidemiology.htm
Money quote: "In the most ancient hominids, the incidence of caries is less than 1%. Although many Neandertal specimens have been discovered, no carious lesions have been described except for a single root lesion in some Neandertal teeth from Mt. Carmel,Israel.
“In European material, there is a gradual increase from very low rates through the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age, to a rapid rise through Medieval and modern times.”
I can’t remember exactly where I read it, probably in more than one place, actually, but the more carbohydrates in your diet, the worse your teeth are generally. The above citation talks about refined carbohydrates, but what I remember is that the relative amount of carbs — regardless of kind — correlates well to dental health. Refined sugar is obviously a major culprit, but bread, rice, potatoes, pasta are all contributing foods.
About 50 to 60% of the calories in the Japanese diet come from white rice, and as Sage Rat said, most of the older Japanese have black and rotten smiles. The concerted dental campaign that started at least 10 years back, before I came here, still hasn’t helped all that much relative to the US. I see quite a few middle school and high school kids with decayed teeth, and this is despite being taught to brush after every meal and having a dedicated after-lunch group brushing session in elementary school that lasts literally several minutes.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember the details, but I have a clear memory of my anthropology professor showing our class a photo of a skull that had nearly every tooth in an advanced state of abscess. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you what species of hominid it came from, but it was certainly pre-historic (not a medieval nobleman’s skull or anything like that).
Have you (or anyone here) ever heard of such a find? I’m 99.9% positive I’m not fabricating this memory, but it’s flying in the face of the evidence presented in this thread.
My dentist was in the Air Force for years-he saw lots of young men with mottled and discolored teeth-but NO decay! The secret was: they came from areas that had high levels of fluorides in the water-these kids had ugly teeth, but no cavities at all.
I haven’t, but it’s certainly possible. That <1% figure quoted is an average per 100 teeth. You might have several skulls with absolutely no cavities and one with a few cavities. The issue is that the overall incidence has gone up dramatically in the last few hundred years, to the point where even with modern dentistry it’s rare for someone to not have cavities.
Peasants in medieval England during the 13th century probably ate something called maslin which was a mixture of wheat and rye or barley and rye which was baked into a very course loaf that weighed around 4 pounds and was consumed by men, women, and children. (Most of the wheat they grew went to market)
Poorer peasants ate something called pottage which was barley that wasn’t milled, allowed to sit in a damp place until it sprouted, and were boiled in a pot. The water could be mixed with honey to make barley water or fermented into a beer.
You know those dog biscuits that are supposed to help clean a dog’s teeth while he eats it? Maslin is really course and it acted in a similar way. It’d grind against the teeth rubbing anything that was on them off.
When people think of the medieval period what are we talking about? I think of the medieval period as being up until around 1450.
Marc
According to his biography, Frank Trumbauer, one of the great saxophonists of early jazz, spent much of the late 1920s suffering from grievous and painful dental problems, even while appearing and recording as star soloist with Paul Whiteman’s band and Bix Beiderbecke’s jazz groups.
Tram had been making his living with his chops for many years even then, and was a very clean-living guy compared with his dissolute pal, Bix. But the state of dental hygiene, and public awareness about it, clearly wasn’t what it is today, if a virtuoso wind player had to deal with his teeth going bad while still in his 20s.