Secret clues to your history

Your teeth say a lot about you. They indicate what you eat and breathe and even give hints as to your overall health and wellbeing. But they may do more than that. Your teeth can indicate facets of your recent ancestry and may even provide information about the long dead evolutionary past. That’s why knowing more about teeth and how they develop and grow is valuable for people other than your dentist.

Determining your Heritage

Humans tend to live in the present, which is why so much of the past tends to get lost. If you talk to people about their family history, it’s fairly rare for them to be able to go back more than a couple of generations. And if you ask them where their family was a few hundred years ago, most people wouldn’t have a clue.

But dental anthropology can help with that. This is a field that uses dental remains to understand people and the past. And just some of the facts it can determine have to do with someone’s race and heritage. For example, there is a special type of tooth called a talon cusp. Between 1 and 6 percent of people alive today have this unique variation and it’s related to what’s known as the Uto-Aztecan premolar, which is found only in Native American populations. These dental features are found only in populations that are descended from Chinese, Inuit, Aleutian or Native American people. And this connection may indicate a common ancestry somewhere in Siberia as well as other genetic markers that these populations may have in common.

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Native American ancestry isn’t the only one to have distinct dental features. For example, some Europeans have what’s known as a Carabelli Cusp, which is an extra bump on the outside of the upper molars. Their back teeth tend to be flat on top, smooth on the front and the back, and have two roots instead of three. This is unlike many people with Native American ancestry who often have teeth that are shaped differently and have three roots. There is also a gene in East Asian people which causes a very distinctive tooth shape known as the shovel as well as other characteristics.

Your Evolutionary Past

When your dentist looks in your mouth, they can tell a lot about your diet and your health. And it’s the same with the skeletons of the long distant ancestors of humanity. Teeth are a vital source of information. They’re incredibly hard, so they can last for thousands of years, and they also come into contact with food and the air itself. That’s why they’re so valuable in our understanding of the past.

For example, researchers have found that dental problems we experience today such as gum disease, cavities, tartar and abscesses, have existed for countless years. In pre-agricultural societies, between 1 and 5 percent of teeth had a cavity. But Homo naledi, an ancestor of modern humans who lived around 236,000-350,000 years ago, had a cavity rate of 1.36 percent. Homo erectus, who lived about 2 million years ago, had a cavity rate of 4.55 percent. The Neanderthals, who lived around 130,000 to 30,000 years ago had a cavity rate of under 1 percent. And a human population who lived in Morocco around 14,000 years ago had a cavity rate of 50 percent.

The differences in cavity rates between our ancestors probably says something about the diet at the time. High cavity rates usually indicate a diet that’s high in certain carbohydrates. So the high cavity rate in the Moroccan ancestors was probably due to their consumption of plants that contained fermentable carbohydrates. And the low rates found in the Neanderthals was probably due to their diet of tough foods and meats that increased the strength of the teeth and jaws and limited cavities.

The Takeaway

This is all essential information if you want to understand where you’ve come from, and perhaps where you’re going. So if you’re interested in learning more about your past, it might be time to have a talk with your dentist about the history of your teeth.