Dentistry: drilling of teeth
Odontología: perforación de caries con taladro
- Date
- c. 7000 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Mehrgarh, Balochistan, Pakistan
- Credited to
- Neolithic communities of Mehrgarh
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Eleven molars from nine individuals with holes drilled in life, using a bow drill with a flint tip, into carious areas. The first therapeutic intervention on the body using technical instruments.
What it led to
- Transfer of craft technology (bead drilling) to medicine
- Treatment of dental pain aggravated by a ground-cereal diet
- The idea of reparative surgical intervention
Built on
- Saddle quern and mortarc. 9000 BCE
- Bow drillc. 7000 BCE
- Saddle quern (flour-based diet)
Made possible
- Cranial trepanationc. 5100 BCE
- Instrument-based surgery