Why Medieval Peasants Had Better Teeth Than You

From Medieval Way

A thousand years ago, a young woman was buried in England. Her name is gone. Her coffin is gone. But her skull came out of the ground almost whole. When an archaeologist turned the jaw to the light, the teeth were still sitting in it. A full set. Barely a cavity in her head. She never saw a dentist. She never held a toothbrush, because the toothbrush had not reached her world yet. And by one hard measure, her teeth were in better shape than yours are right now. But look closer at that same bone, and it tells a second story, one that will leave you grateful for the dentist you have been dreading. Tonight we are going to read a medieval mouth like a book. We will find out why these people had so few cavities, and what was destroying their teeth instead. Then the exact stretch of history when European mouths began to rot, and whether better is an honest word at all.