Over the summer break, I had a visit to the dentist, but I’m not a fan of the dentist. Having someone prod around my mouth with sharp metal objects is not my idea of a good time. More like a scene from a horror movie! Needless to say, I do whatever I can to keep my visits short. And the best way I keep the dentist out of my mouth is by regularly brushing my teeth. (Big surprise I know). Now while I was at the dentist drooling on myself as a stranger put their fingers in my mouth, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where did toothpaste originate? Is it the practice of using toothpaste and a brush new or has it been around centuries? Millennia? What would ancient people even use for toothpaste? The answers to these questions surprised me and I hope you will find them interesting.
As far back as 3000 BC, people have been thinking about dental hygiene. In Mesopotamia, toothpicks have been found at several archeological sites. Assyrian cuneiform texts even mention dental health, though they do not appear to give specific instructions on how to clean your teeth. I suppose it really shouldn’t be too surprising that 5000 years ago, people were concerned with having clean teeth. I mean, bad breath is gross today, and it was gross back then.
Now, this next bit of information isn’t totally in connection with dental hygiene, but I did find it interesting. The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that men had more teeth than women. This is kind of shocking considering how easy it should have been to test this out. Come on, Aristotle, you didn’t have any lady friends? Hippocrates was another Greek philosopher, and he was also a physician. He actually recommended using a powder for cleaning teeth. Tooth powders are the direct forefathers of our modern-day toothpastes. Common ingredients used by ancient dental hygienists included but were not limited too; bones, oyster shells, eggshells, different essential oils such as myrrh. What you might find in your tooth powder would really depend on who was making it, but tooth powders remained essentially the same for centuries. You would take your ingredients, grind them into a powder and voila! Toothpaste of the ancients.
While it might seem strange to think about brushing your teeth with ground bones or eggshells, their composition is very close to the teeth in your mouth. Even more shocking, is you can still buy powders like this today! While talking to my brother about my discoveries into ancient dental hygiene methods, he informed me that he uses a tooth powder that contains the same ingredients you might have found in a tooth powder 2000 years ago! He even let me try out, and I must say, while it doesn’t give you quite the same minty fresh sensation that modern toothpaste does. It did make me feel like my teeth were cleaned. The knowledge that I was brushing the powdered bones of an animal didn’t bother me in the least either.
It's pretty cool that throughout human history the people have had pretty similar concerns, and the only things that really change is how we address these concerns. The next time you’re at the dentist with a stranger's fingers in your mouth, wishing maybe they had bought you dinner first. Remember that dental hygiene has been important to people for thousands of years and you are participating in its evolution through time.
Comments