Namaste

From ancient time to the islamic conquests, Indian scientists and mathematicians were leaders in many different fields .

Around 500 BC, thanks to vedas and our other anicent texts , the city if taxlia become the a great scientific center.Atreya, a great botanist(plant specialist)and doctor, was working at Taxlia about this time.

At early age of world when other civilization were not able to eat properly , indian becomes mature enough to know the root cause of various medical problems , one of the major problem on that time tooth decaying .

In the bow drill era (around 7000 BC), Dentistry got its maturity in the anicent period of time. These industrious would be dentists were master beadmakers who used bow drills to cure tooth problems.
This is also the first appearance of dental assistants, whose duties consisted of restraining the filling in gap of tooths and used to plug the holes with gum paste which include calicum carnbonate(chuna)and provide clove paste with tulsa for pain relief and this paste were also helps in fight in tooth rot and decay due to bactiria, fungus and virus .
       
Now , we will talk about some proof and research,

Man’s first known trip to the dentist occurred as early as 9,000 years ago, when at least 9 people living in a Neolithic village in Pakistan had holes drilled into their molars and survived the procedure.

The findings, to be reported Thursday in the scientific review Nature, push back the dawn of dentistry by 4,000 years to around 7000 B.C. The drilled molars come from a sample of 300 individuals buried in graves at the Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan, believed to be the oldest Stone Age complex in the Indus River valley.

“This is certainly the first case of drilling a person’s teeth,” said David Frayer, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas and the lead author of the report. “But even more significant, this practice lasted some 1,500 years and was a tradition at this site. It wasn’t just a sporadic event.”

The earliest previously known evidence of dental work done in vivo was a drilled molar found in a Neolithic graveyard in Denmark dating from about 3000 B.C.
All 9 of the Mehrgarh dental patients were adults — 4 females, 2 males, and 3 individuals of unknown gender — and ranged in age from about 20 to over 40. Most of the drilling was done on the chewing surfaces of their molars, in both the upper and lower jaws, probably using a flint point attached to a bow that made a high-speed drill, the researchers say. Concentric ridges carved by the drilling device were found inside the holes.

The drilling may have been done to relieve the pain and damage of tooth rot, but only 4 of the total of 11 teeth showed signs of decay associated with the holes. The scientists say it is clear that the holes were not made for aesthetic reasons, given their position deep in the mouth and on the erosion-prone surface of the teeth.

Professor Frayer said that, given the position of the holes and the angles of the drilling, “we’re pretty sure these were not self-induced.” That the patients lived to tell the tale of their dental visit is proved, he says, by subsequent wearing down of their teeth and by deliberate smoothing and widening of the holes later on.

The dentists may have been highly skilled artisans at Mehrgarh, where beads of imported lapis lazuli, turquoise, and carnelian were found drilled with holes even smaller than the ones in the nine individuals. Discovered among the beads were finely tipped drill heads.

“The drilling of teeth is very rare in the anthropological record,” said Professor Macchiarelli, noting that work similar to that done at Mehrgarh does not recur until much later, among the Anasazi Indians of the southwest United States around 1100 A.D., and in Europe around 1500 A.D.

source : https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.531111/2015.531111.dentistry-in_djvu.txt

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