Dental Operation

Scientists from the Italian University of Bologna and Ferrara have found evidence of the world’s earliest known dental operation in a 14,000-year-old skeleton of a Stone Age caveman. The study was conducted on a skeleton that was discovered in the Riparo Villabruna in Venetian Dolomites in 1988.

Scientists who analysed a dental cavity in the skeleton stated that the low tech interventions performed by our ancestors was to maintain dental hygiene. Prior to this, the oldest known dental surgery dated between seven and nine thousand years.

According to a study published in Scientific Reports journal, the cavity on the skeleton’s third inferior molar showed that the tooth was cleansed using a flint microlith to halt the infection in the person’s mouth. Research co-ordinator Stefano Benazzi said the discovery made it clear that humans in early Stone Age period were aware of the damaging nature of an infected cavity and the need to remove the same to stop the infection from spreading.