Archive | June, 2011

Implants in 600 AD!!!

By • June 23, 2011 • Implant Process and Restoration, Random Facts: tooth, insurance, stories • Leave a comment

To many of us, tooth implants are a rather new concept. The common solution after loosing a tooth is to leave the space open, or do a bridge to replace the space. Since the technology is developed to a point where an implant can be placed successfully and easily, more and more dentists are providing this as a regular service. Although implants are new to most of us, the Mayan civilization has been shown to have used the earliest known examples of endosseous implants (implants embedded into bone). Research has revealed that the Mayans had been replacing missing teeth over 1,350 years before we started working with titanium implants! While excavating Mayan burial sites in Honduras in 1931, archaeologists found a fragment of mandible of Mayan origin, dating from about 600 AD. This mandible (lower jaw bone), which is considered to be that of a woman in her twenties, had three tooth-shaped pieces of shell placed into the sockets of three missing lower incisor teeth. For forty years the archaeological world considered that these shells were placed after death in a manner also observed in the ancient Egyptians. In 1970 a Brazilian dental academic professor  studied the mandibular specimen and took a series of x-rays. He discovered bone formation around two of the implants determined that the implants were placed DURING LIFE! The Mayans were a uniquely advanced civilization to say the least.

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