PALEOLITHIC ART MAGAZINE




AFRICA

A TOOTHPICK OF 1,800,000 YEARS AGO

The anthropologist Peter Ungar of the University of the Arkansas, analyzing a human tooth, found in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, has detected some abrasions that he believes due to the use of a toothpick. Man, 1,800,000 years ago, passed from a regimen of feeding exclusively vegetarian, to feed also of meat. The use of the toothpick, that could be of bone or of wood (it has not been found), had just the function to remove shreds of meat remained between the teeth.
Professor Peter Ungar, with other colleagues, studies the evolution of the diet of the Hominids. We add that the toothpick is the second utilitarian extracorporeal tool that is known, after the lithic tools that were used to cut the skins and the meat of the animals of which the man fed.
Source: english text Scientific American, with photograph,march-april, 2000.

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