[Original headline: Dental discovery fills in details about ancient Mexican life ]
WASHINGTON - Thousands of years before screen idols began beautifying themselves with cosmetic dentistry, ancient Mexicans were getting ceremonial dentures.
Researchers reported last week that they had found a 4,500-year-old burial in Mexico that had the oldest known example of dental work in the Americas.
The upper front teeth of the remains had been ground down so they could be mounted with animal teeth, possibly wolf or panther teeth, for ceremonial purposes, according to researchers led by Tricia Gabany-Guerrero of the University of Connecticut.
"It's like he was using the mouth of some other animal in his mouth," explained James Chatters, an archaeologist and paleontologist with AMEC Earth and Environmental Inc. in Seattle, Wash., and a member of the research team.
Such modifications, typically using beasts of prey, became more common centuries later in the Maya culture, Chatters said in a telephone interview, but this is the earliest example that has been found.
The individual, aged 28 to 32, would not have been able to bite with his front teeth but appears to have been well-fed nonetheless, Chatters said. The body indicated he didn't do hard work, perhaps having been an important person in society.
Found in the Michoacan area, the body had been placed on a large rock with another rock on top of it, Chatters said.
"The teeth were filed down so much that their pulp cavities were exposed, leading to an infection," Gabany-Guerrero said in a statement.
"During the Late Post Classic period, shortly before the Spanish came, we have seen evidence of insertion of turquoise and filed teeth in different forms, but this is the earliest evidence of a dental modification by about one thousand years," she said.
