Comment by epgui
3 months ago
Never in History have humans had as good teeth as they do today. Also consider that until we had vaccines and antibiotics in the early 20th century, the average lifespan was very short.
3 months ago
Never in History have humans had as good teeth as they do today. Also consider that until we had vaccines and antibiotics in the early 20th century, the average lifespan was very short.
average, yes, but living to 70 was reasonably common if you made it past childhood.
I was under the impression living to 70 would have been very rare in, say, 1100 CE
Figure 2 in https://gurven.anth.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.anth... suggests that about 15% of hunter-gatherers would reach age 70.
Not deeply knowledgeable here but imagine this depended quite a bit on where you were living in 1100 CE.
I think it was fairly rare in Europe, but IDK how well those numbers capture what was common for the majority of the human population living elsewhere.
7 replies →
Absolutely false.
Check out Nutrition and physical degeneration book by Weston Price.
All you need to do is to look at the pictures in the book, you don't even need to read it.
Sure. We can also treat cancer better than ever before, but it would still be interesting to know where the rise in cancer cases came from, even if we can patch around the problem and are better off overall. Same for dental health: my understanding is also that people didn't used to need toothpaste to enjoy a comparable dental health
a lot of it comes from better detection as much as poor diets and very low amounts of exercise.
My understanding is that they were often missing multiple teeth.
> Never in History have humans had as good teeth as they do today.
This is absolutely untrue. What is your reference?
Never in history have so many people had such "good" looking teeth, but they involve an enormous amount of prosthesis and amalgam. Veneers aren't good teeth, they're intentionally destroyed teeth used to root false teeth.
And brushing, although it keeps teeth clean and not stinky, deepens the gum pockets around teeth that host the microorganisms that will eventually uproot them.
I'll take my bets on modern day britain having much better dental health than any other british era back to the romans. Starchy food + no brushing = bad news.