"Hunter-gatherers had really good teeth," says Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. "[But] as soon as you get to farming populations, you see this massive change. Huge amounts of gum disease. And cavities start cropping up."

Additionally, they had better spacing due to eating tougher foods like high fiber items and tendons. So there's less dental impacting like we have with wisdom teeth.

[–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

Survivalship bias at it's finest. In literal sence of the word

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 5 points 17 hours ago

Yeah things didn't really get better until Modern Dentistry so it took several thousand years to get better than hunter-gatherer level

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 14 hours ago

I went to eating like the great plains American first people about 2 years ago and haven't brushed my teeth since

About three months ago I had a dentist clean the plaques off my teeth and check them, to ensure I wasn't too misguided and my teeth had no new damage

The ancient people with great teeth also had bigger heads and bigger jaws. They could fit wisdom teeth

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

While true, they exist today, and have a life expectancy of like 30. So mostly they just die before their teeth decay.

https://medium.com/@kennamai/the-truth-of-hunter-gatherers-the-healthiest-but-lower-life-expectancy-why-5bb2f149e165

33% of children die by the age of 15.

There is of course merit to us having active lifestyles, controlling calorie intake, and balancing our diets, but that's in addition to the fact that we live almost 3x as long as we used to due to modern medicine, so we should continue to follow modern medicine, science, and nutrition.

[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Nothing in this article addressed tooth decay or dental formation issues.

Also from the article:

Hunter-gatherers who live until the age of 15 typically experience a lifespan of around 72 years. Among elderly hunter-gatherers, the incidence of diseases such as cancer and high blood pressure is very low. When recalculating the average lifespan excluding child mortality, the average lifespan for hunter-gatherers ranges from 68 to 78 years.

I also never said we shouldn't follow science or modern medicine.