Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

Weston A Price is really the go-to for the early research in nutrition and dentistry. His book <i>Nutrition and Physical Degeneration</i> was making the rounds back when <i>Nourishing Traditions</i> became popular. Price, conclusively in my mind, showed that the moment the modern western was introduced into cultures who ate traditional foods, the next generation had terrible teeth, jaws that were too small for all their teeth, etc. Pretty great, if terrible findings, stuff. The typical western diet is a shit show, imo

My grandmother chewed betel leaves with a small amount of tobacco, betel nuts, lime (calcium hydroxide aka chuna&#x2F;chun), multiple times a day all her life. Her other diet consisted of tea just as many times per day, and for actual food a diet of rice, fish, and vegetables. For the majority of her life I don&#x27;t think she actually had access to fluoridated toothpaste and probably used neem twigs or even charcoal at times to brush her teeth. Her teeth were gross, tinted red and brown. She lived to 93 and I never heard of her ever getting cavities or fillings or going to a dentist. In the place where she lived the only reason you go to a &quot;dentist&quot; is to have teeth removed.<p>Basically what I&#x27;m saying is that diet and genetics are a huge factor.

&gt; We have very few teeth from this period in Africa. We don’t know if this is unusual or not,<p>Alternative view, cavities were common and the teeth were removed &#x2F; fell out.

Related observations:<p>1) Ötzi had cavities and gum disease.<p>“Ötzi, a Stone Age man who died atop a glacier about 5300 years ago, suffered from severe gum disease and cavities.” [1]<p>2) Sailor Steven Callahan, after 72 days adrift in the Atlantic ocean, where he subsisted on fish and birds, after being rescued:<p>&quot;When I wake up in the morning, I look into the mirror. My God! Who&#x27;s that? The face I see is straight out of Robinson Crusoe. Long, stringy bleached hair, hollow eyes, drawn brown skin, shaggy beard. Michelle Monternot gives me a toothbrush. It feels strange in my mouth. What&#x27;s even stranger is that my teeth are not crusty and slimy but are remarkably clean. I wonder what my dentist would say about that.&quot; [2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;scienceshot-iceman-had-bad-teeth#:~:text=%C3%96tzi%20(inset%20photo)%2C%20a,for%20gripping%20tools%20and%20cutting" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;scienceshot-iceman-h...</a>.<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?redir_esc=y&amp;hl=en&amp;id=ebUKAQAAMAAJ&amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;q=Dentist" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?redir_esc=y&amp;hl=en&amp;id=ebUKAQAA...</a>

When your diet is mostly meat based, and some foraged greens and rare fruit, it is not the ideal environment to feed the process that creates cavities. Also, I&#x27;d imagine tooth extraction predates a lot of modern history, which may skew results, but that is just a guess on my part.

Although this wouldn&#x27;t apply to ancient humans, I have heard the hypothesis that many people in olden times didn&#x27;t have as many problems with cavities because many people drank well water. And well water has naturally occurring fluoride.

The Vipeholm experiments were a series of human experiments where patients of Vipeholm Hospital for the intellectually disabled in Lund, Sweden, were fed large amounts of sweets to provoke dental caries (1945–1955). The experiments were sponsored both by the sugar industry and the dentist community, in an effort to determine whether carbohydrates affected the formation of cavities.<p>Main building of Vipeholm hospital, now a secondary school The experiments provided extensive knowledge about dental health and resulted in enough empirical data to link the intake of sugar to dental caries.[1] However, today they are considered to have violated the principles of medical ethics.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vipeholm_experiments#:~:text=The%20Vipeholm%20experiments%20were%20a,caries%20(1945%E2%80%931955)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vipeholm_experiments#:~:text...</a>.

This made me think of the Popular But Possibly Factoidal Article (TM) that goes around every now and then about fighter plane armor. Militaries tried reinforcing the parts of the planes that were damaged after missions. But it didn&#x27;t help survival rates much. Then Smart Man asked what would happen if they reinforced only the parts of the planes that were NOT damaged, hypothesizing that the planes that didn&#x27;t make it were being damaged there. And it worked, according to Popular Article!<p>So the fact that we don&#x27;t find too many fossils with tooth decay means that it could have been a huge problem. And this is the origin of the joke: you don&#x27;t have to brush all your teeth, just the ones you find on early hominid fossils.

That’s easy.<p>Sugar.

Like to add to this conversation that scientists have found ways to prevent cavities but these are not made available to us. For example, genetically modified streptococcus.

there are endless stories of ancient civilizations and palaeolithic humans dying young from dental abscess, 10 seconds on google defeats this weird spin

genes probably.<p>I’m mid 30s and have never had a cavity. I go to the dentist every 6months. I also have a huge sweet tooth.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston-Price&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0916764206" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Westo...</a>

Calorie density? Teeth may have been &#x27;designed&#x27; for low-caloric-density foods. The art of civilization is increasing that density, so we have time to do other things (civilized things)

Because brushing&#x2F;flossing&#x2F;scraping the teeth with a stick is a learned behavior that even today isn&#x27;t fully learned by our species.

Calcium helps make strong bones and teeth. So milk drinkers had good teeth. Norway is northern Europe where they have the gene to digest milk.

The fact that we have &quot;wisdom teeth&quot; seems to indicate that ancient humans did, in fact, get cavities and lose teeth to them.

Our ancestors ate less sugar, especially as children.<p>Next question.

Perhaps due to only drinking water, and consuming the proper diet, in the region in which they were adapted.

They didn’t eat Cadbury cream eggs and drink extra large sodas.

Alcohol.

they didn&#x27;t eat mickey D and other crap. no high fructose corn syrup. no sodas.

Betteridge&#x27;s law applies. It&#x27;s well understood that hominids experienced tooth decay throughout their evolution. Causes and contributors and rates over time may be up for debate, but the evidentially confirmed fact that our ancestors got cavities is settled.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tooth_decay#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tooth_decay#History</a>

Is this a rhetorical question?

Because back then bears ate beets. Then we got hooked on them and made beat sugar and now we eat beets. Bears still beat battle star galatica though.

So apparently some think cavities (caries) are contagious via mouth fluid exchange in kissing... if so, then perhaps an ancestor became an unwitting host through some unknown mechanics. Perhaps poorly cooked jowls of some sort.

1 drop clove oil, 1&#x2F;2 cup water. Swish regularly. It&#x27;s an antiseptic.<p>19 years ago I went to the dentist and he told me I needed to have a cavity filled. I skipped that. I didn&#x27;t go back (or to any other dentist) until last year. Got the x-rays. No cavities.<p>Stuff works.<p>Oh and stop eating sugar.