{"id":223,"date":"2009-05-20T16:15:31","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T20:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/?p=223"},"modified":"2018-09-10T15:14:54","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:14:54","slug":"spark-blog-video-ancient-dental-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/featured\/spark-blog-video-ancient-dental-cleaning\/223\/","title":{"rendered":"Spark Blog: Video: Ancient Dental Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-223-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/tooth-lady.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/tooth-lady.mp4\">https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/tooth-lady.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>When <a href=\"http:\/\/home.gwu.edu\/~ahenry\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amanda Henry<\/a> went through airport security in Washington on her way to Boston she made the inspector nervous when her bag revealed dental instruments \u2013 apparently the security officer hates going to the dentist. The officer may have been even more freaked out if she knew the teeth Amanda was on her way to clean with her dental picks belonged to a 100,000-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>A very famous 100,000-year-old at that \u2013 at least in archeological circles. The teeth are still all neatly in place in a skull now at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University [tons of <a title=\"images of Skhul V\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peabody.harvard.edu\/node\/448\" target=\"_blank\">images here<\/a>], where it has resided in secure climate-controlled storage since it was unearthed in the 1930s from a cave in Mount Carmel, in present-day Israel. We had met the skull the day before, when Dan Lieberman had arranged for it to be brought out of storage and introduced to Alan.<\/p>\n<p>Known as Skhul 5, the skull is the oldest known human with almost modern features, and so plays a pivotal role in our story. He poses the central puzzle we\u2019re trying to get to the bottom of: people looked like us apparently long before they started behaving like us \u2013 at least according to the commonly accepted view that the modern human mind \u2013 with what we are calling the Human Spark \u2013 didn\u2019t evolve until tens of thousands of years after the owner of the Skhul skull and his like lived in the Middle East \u2013 most likely alongside, or at least at the same time as, their cousins the Neanderthals.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captionRight\">\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/files\/2009\/05\/224_blog19_skhulv.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-225\" title=\"Amanda Henry demonstrates her dental scraping techniques\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/files\/2009\/05\/224_blog19_skhulv.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"252\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Human Spark<\/em> camera rolls while Amanda demonstrates her dental scraping techniques to Alan. Photo: Maggie Villiger<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>As we\u2019d just been learning <a href=\"\/wnet\/humanspark\/blog\/spark-blog-rewriting-the-history-of-the-modern-human-mind\/205\/\">from Alison Brooks<\/a>, it\u2019s now looking increasingly likely that the Human Spark in fact started to glimmer much earlier in Africa, perhaps even before the ancestors of Skhul 5 made their way north. So archeologists would love to know as much as possible about how Skhul 5 lived. It was Alison who told us about Amanda, a student of hers at George Washington University, who \u2013 armed with her dental picks \u2013 was going to demonstrate to Alan how she\u2019s figuring out what Skhul 5 ate.<\/p>\n<p>After carefully removing the skull from its padded box, Amanda showed us how she very, very gently scrapes dental plaque from the skull\u2019s molars (much more gently than your oral hygienist cleans yours).\u00a0 Plaque, she explained, is the perfect material to preserve microfossils from the plants Skhul 5 ate \u2013 starch grains and tiny silica bodies called phytoliths that Amanda will be able to identify under the microscope and tell what plants they came from.<\/p>\n<p>Amanda\u2019s care in her scraping wasn\u2019t only because, as she reminded us, the skull is priceless, but also because, \u201cI have to leave some plaque behind in case somebody comes up with a different way for studying it in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alan wanted to know if she poked around in his teeth, could she find out what he\u2019s eaten.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Amanda:<\/strong> Well it depends, how good are you at brushing and flossing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alan:<\/strong> Oh just great, yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amanda:<\/strong> I\u2019ve actually done some experiments where you eat whatever you normally eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At the end of the day , you take one of these dental picks\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alan:<\/strong> And you could say what the person had eaten?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amanda:<\/strong> Some of it, sure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alan:<\/strong> No kidding.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amanda:<\/strong> It\u2019s quite easy.  It\u2019s not just in the plaque.  It\u2019s in any of the pellical, basically the scum that builds up on your teeth. As that hardens into plaque then it\u2019s more permanently kept on your teeth.  I don\u2019t know, actually, how far back I\u2019d be able to tell what you ate, whether I could just tell this morning what you had for breakfast, or what you had three weeks ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortunately for Amanda, and despite the astonishingly good shape of Skhul 5\u2019s teeth, he lived a good long time before the invention of dental floss, so she has high hopes of discovering what he ate 100,000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Alan summed up the reaction of all of us: \u201cAstonishing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Graham Chedd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Amanda Henry went through airport security in Washington on her way to Boston she made the inspector nervous when her bag revealed dental instruments \u2013 apparently the security officer hates going to the dentist. The officer may have been even more freaked out if she knew the teeth Amanda was on her way to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267,505,34,654,69],"tags":[5024,476,567,5018,563],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","category-blog","category-featured","category-human-evolution","category-video","tag-early-humans","tag-evolution","tag-graham-chedd","tag-skeletons","tag-teeth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Spark Blog: Video: Ancient Dental Cleaning | The Human Spark | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/featured\/spark-blog-video-ancient-dental-cleaning\/223\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spark Blog: Video: Ancient Dental Cleaning | The Human Spark | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Amanda Henry went through airport security in Washington on her way to Boston she made the inspector nervous when her bag revealed dental instruments \u2013 apparently the security officer hates going to the dentist. The officer may have been even more freaked out if she knew the teeth Amanda was on her way to [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/featured\/spark-blog-video-ancient-dental-cleaning\/223\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Human Spark\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-20T20:15:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-09-10T19:14:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/files\/2009\/05\/224_blog19_skhulv.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tanner vea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tanner vea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script 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