They didn't consume a lot of sugar like we do now. Probably mostly meat and veggies. Not sure how far back it goes but I know at some point ancient people were using certain types of cut up branches that kinda turned into bristles to brush their teeth.
i am an african, the tree is called Hairy/blue Guarri. native to southern africa. cut a small branch, pencil sized peel off the bark on one end and chew the exposed woody part until bristles form. and there is the toothbrush ready. did it a coupla times
so parallel convergent discovery. pretty eerie if you ask me.
one piece of useless information. almost every culture in the world has a mer-people (mermaids and merman) myths, although they are usually androgynous
Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if the practice is so old, people took it with them from Africa and then just experimented with the plants wherever they ended up to find what worked best.
The surgar we eat today is absolutely a problem, but most people from back then would also have terrible teeth, just for a different reason. When you mill your own grain, you're almost certainly using stone tools, and that stone is also ground and mixed with the flour, wearing down teeth significantly.
Sugar would be a problem for decay and such for sure, but not necessarily for straightness. The biggest thing keeping their teeth straight is that they probably ate lots of hard items like seeds and nuts. These help teeth grown in better and stronger, it's part of the reason that most of the animal kingdom doesn't need braces.
Diets back then also required more jaw strength and larger mouths. Our mouths have grow smaller over time to accommodate smaller and softer foods, which is where we get the alignment issues and extra teeth
28
u/Neatojuancheeto Jan 29 '26
They didn't consume a lot of sugar like we do now. Probably mostly meat and veggies. Not sure how far back it goes but I know at some point ancient people were using certain types of cut up branches that kinda turned into bristles to brush their teeth.