Role of the Teeth

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 3, 5 January 1937, Page 9

Role of the Teeth

TELLING MAN’S PAST In delving into man’s past—his life, habits, and physical appearance—contemporary written history does not take us very far back in the story. Such records deal with a few thousand years only (says a writer in the Melbourne Age). While the written word reveals a train of events and conditions which make fascinating reading and study, it is, for some folk, lacking in that intriguing appeal which is found in the search for knowledge concerning man and his doings during those scores of thousands of years which fade into the dim mists of antiquity. When investigating these distant times, wo are forced to rely mainly on the imperishable relics, which man has left behind him, in the form of fragments of his own body, implements of bone and stone, and occasional examples of his art and other handicraft. Concerning ancient man’s physical make-up, it is the hard portions of his body—bones and teeth—resistant to the ravages of time upon which we have to rely for our evidence. The enamel or outer covering of the crown of a tooth, is the hardest material in all man’s bodily structures; and dentine, which composes tlie main bulk of a tooth, is also a much tougher substance than bone. Teeth have thus proved themselves to be one of the most valuable of all animal structures in providing evidence on which the palaeontologist, or fossil expert, works.

But what caw. wo learn from the teeth of man when they are presented merely as fossil, and sometimes as completely isolated, material? Teeth vary to some extent among the different races of man. There are definite differences between the dentitions of modern civilised man and primitive savage types. The dental arches, the size, shape, and cusp patterns of the' teeth may yield important evidence as to the type and size of the jaws in which they were embedded; and a good deal of the facial architecture is made of these jaw structures. From the teeth some sort of estimation can also be made of the individual’s age. Especially can this be determined fairly accurately of young individuals. The wearing away of the tooth crown may tell something of age and food habits. Pathological conditions associated with teeth will often yield something more than mere occurrence of the disease—something about the factors which possibly caused or contributed to the pathological condition.

Turning to the remains of fossil man which have been discovered from time to time, we soon see the importance of teeth as valuable scientific material.

The Heidelberg mandible, found in Germany at a plaee called Mauer, near Heidelberg, has long been accepted as a fossil bone of undoubted antiquity, and is attributed to an extremely primitive type of human being. In fact, so crude and massive are the general features of this lower jaw, that, were it not for the definitely human type of the teeth it contained; it may reasonably have been considered as belonging to one of the anthropoid ape groups. The Ape-man of Java

Then there are the bones of the celebrated fossil of Java, Pithecanthropus erectus—the ape-man who walked upright. Among its remains was a single upper molar tooth which appears to be human in type, whereas the skull cap is cf an exceedingly primitive structure judged by human standards.

In the south of England,, at Piitdown, in Sussex, were found some skull fragments, portion of a lower jaw, and some teeth. Here, again, the lower jaw fragment, containing several teeth, was strikingly similar to the jaw of a chimpanzee; yet the dental and other evidences howed the specimen to be that of a primitive and ancient human type. In various parts of Europe and in a few other regions there have been unearthed remains of a primitive kind of human being now spoken of as Neanderthal man. With him, also, the shape of his dental arch and some special characteristics of his teeth have constituted important evidence in placing him as a type more primitive than and distinct from modern man—who is known scientifically as Homo Sapiens. The skull of ”Rhodesian man”—also classified as belonging to the Neanderthal group—shows that this particular individual had. carious teeth, and probably suffered the same pangs of toothache as do many present-day folk. The fairly recent discovery of ancient man near Peking, in China—Sinanthropus Pekinensis—is a remarkable instance of an extremely important find of fossil remains, which was the sequel to a discovery, many years before, of a single human molar tooth. This single tooth had been recognised among a miscellaneous cellection of fossil material, but it took about 20 years for its real significance to be appreciated, and eventually lead to a re-examination of the fossil site and the finding of valuable skull material.

The teeth of anthropoid apes, although in some species much larger than those of man, are strikingly similar in many ways to those of the human dental outfit. The apes have exactly the same number of teeth in both their temporary and permanent sets, the various teeth are precisely • the same Kinds as those in the human mouth, the forms of the teeth are the same, and the cusps and patterns of the molar teeth are almost an exact counterpart. In certain of the extinct types of anthropoid ape the similarities are even more marked.