Beeswax Filling May Be Oldest Hint of Dentistry

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This is a microphotograph of the tooth crown in occlusal view with indication of the surface covered by beeswax (within the yellow dotted line).
A tooth found in Slovenia seems to have been filled with beeswax to reduce pain from a cavity. (Shown here, a micrograph of the tooth crown showing the beeswax-covered surface, within the yellow dotted line.) (Image credit: Bernardini F, Tuniz C, Coppa A, Mancini L, Dreossi D, et al. (2012) Beeswax as Dental Filling on a Neolithic Human Tooth. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44904. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044904)

An ancient cracked tooth repaired with a filling made of beeswax may be the earliest known example of therapeutic dentistry, researchers say.

The tooth is 65 centuries old and was part of a man's jaw found more than 100 years ago in Slovenia.

Scientists reported online today (Sept. 19) in the journal PLoS ONE that they found the filling as they analyzed a 6,500-year-old lower jaw recovered from a cave near Trieste, Italy. The jaw, which once belonged to a 24- to 30-year-old man, included a left canine tooth possessing a vertical crack in its hard enamel and softer dentin layers. The severe wear and tear seen on the tooth was probably due to activities besides eating, the researchers said  — for instance, men of the time might have used their teeth to soften leather or help make tools, and the women bit down on threads to hold them while weaving.

The researchers found beeswax had been applied to the left canine at about the time of the man's death.

"It was extremely difficult for somebody to identify the dentistry work by naked eye or simple tools," researcher Claudio Tuniz, a nuclear paleoanthropologist at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy, told LiveScience. The lower jaw had remained at the international center "for 101 years without somebody noticing anything strange on the canine," Tuniz said.

The researchers managed to figure out the age of the beeswax using a large ion accelerator, which let them see what carbon isotopes were in the wax. All isotopes of carbon have six protons but differ in the number of neutrons they possess. The carbon-14 isotope is unstable and decays over time, so analyzing the ratio of carbon-14 to other carbon isotopes can shed light on how much time has passed. The researchers also used X-rays from another powerful particle accelerator to get a 3D picture of the tooth with a resolution of about one-thousandth of a millimeter.

They could not confirm whether this filling was made shortly before or after the person's death. If it was when the person was still alive, "this finding is perhaps the most ancient evidence of prehistoric dentistry in Europe," said researcher Federico Bernardini, an archaeologist at the international center, in a statement. It may be the oldest known direct example of a therapeutic dental filling uncovered to date, Bernardini added.

Assuming this filling was a case of dentistry, it was likely meant to reduce pain and sensitivity. The researchers would like to conduct dental experiments with people to see how effective a remedy beeswax is.

"At the moment we do not have any idea if this is an isolated case or if similar interventions were quite spread in Neolithic Europe," Bernardini told LiveScience. "In collaboration with our interdisciplinary team, we are planning to analyze other Neolithic teeth in order to understand how widespread these types of interventions were."

Charles Q. Choi
Charles Q. Choi
Live Science Contributor
Charles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Live Science and Space.com. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica.