Brushing Your Teeth: The 12,000 Year War

About this episode

When George Washington was inaugurated, he had only one natural tooth left—a condition far more typical in the past than modern people realize. For thousands of years, tooth pain was simply part of human life. A primary reason for the problem: effective tooth-cleaning methods simply didn’t exist. Join Virginia and Charles as they celebrate two overlooked but vitally important technological innovations: the toothbrush and toothpaste. Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance As schoolchildren learn, the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago was among the great turning points in the human story. Farming created reliable food surpluses that allowed for the creation of big cities and states. It also wrecked humanity’s teeth. The new agricultural diet—full of carbohydrate- and sugar-rich cereals and grains—triggered an explosion of tooth decay. Millennia of oral misery ensued. Painful jaws were an inescapable part of daily life, and nothing could be done about it. As recently as the 1970s, most American 70-year-olds didn’t have a single tooth in their head.  Then the dental outlook changed—slowly, at first, then rapidly. In 1780, William Addis, an