THE TEETH WE HAVE ARE A COMPARATIVE RECENT DEVELOPMENT

Our teeth of long ago were very much larger and differently shaped. Anthropologists and others have divided the time periods since the advent of stone tools 2.5 million years ago into three different time frames The Paleolithic up to the end of the last Ice Ages, about 12,000 years ago. The Mesolithic, which began at the end of the Pleistocene, is seen as a time of transition leading to the Neolithic. This marks the appearance of fully modern humans in Europe, about 35,000 years ago. We know teeth are pretty much unaffected by environment (with some exceptions, such as trauma or severe nutritional stress). Human tooth size has undergone a clear-cut reduction during the period and the rate of that reduction has accelerated since the end of the last Ice Age.

Tooth size began a gradual reduction during that time at the rate of roughly 1% per 2,000 years until the end of the Pleistocene about 10,000 years ago. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, the rate of reduction seems to have doubled to about 1% every 1,000 years. In Europe, both tooth size and body size have decreased over the last 50,000 years. When tooth size is considered in relation to body size, the reduction is even more dramatic than the reduction in body bulk.

Why did this take place? There could be many reasons but the real ones are simple to understand. Dental reduction is a result of facial reduction. Smaller teeth are an economic advantage; fewer resources go into making smaller teeth. But also as early humans acquired cooking skills, teeth ceased to have survival value and they began just dwindling away. While teeth have a primary use in feeding, the important issue is not so much the food itself but what was done to it before it was eaten. Historically, however, more sophisticated techniques have been used. One is the earth oven--a technique observable today in a Polynesian luau where a pig is baked. If you have ever baked a potato in the hot earth and coals under a campfire, you understand the technique. Meat cooked in such a fashion becomes quite tender. A variant of heated stone cookery is hot-stone boiling, a technique used by many Native Americans at the time of we first saw them. Along with pottery as part of the 'neolithic package was efficient stone pounding and grinding. It is possible that our teeth have not stopped evolving. If you could see 10,000 years into the future you may be very surprised.