9,000 Year Old Dentistry Evidence Found in Pakistan

Researchers were impressed by how advanced the society was in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 5500 B.C. and 7000 B.C., an article in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature reports. Researchers carbon-dated at least nine skulls with 11 drill holes found in a Pakistan graveyard. That means dentistry is at least 4,000 years older than first thought — and far older than the useful invention of anesthesia. This was no mere tooth tinkering. The drilled teeth found in the graveyard were hard-to-reach molars. And in at least one instance, the ancient dentist managed to drill a hole in the inside back end of a tooth, boring out toward the front of the mouth.