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WHAT A GLORIOUS FILLING, I'M HAPPY AGAIN!
Researchers have uncovered evidence of prehistoric dentistry in a human jaw bone containing a cracked canine tooth with a beeswax filling.
The recipient of the treatment was a 24 to 30 year old male living 6500 years ago during the Neolithic.
PAST HORIZONS
’Ten!…. nine!….eight!….’ bawled the MC, and looked round expectantly, hoping that the crowd would take up the chant all the way down to zero. The trouble was that he himself wasn’t too sure of the numbers below eight, but when the tattered throng facing him began to look in a puzzled way at their fingers and toes, he realised he was on his own.
The MC was a youngish man with hair that wasn’t too matted and was wearing rags that were a little cleaner and newer than most. He had quite a lot of teeth and thought he cut a rather dashing figure. Some of the girls in the crowd seemed to agree.
‘Erm’ he continued with rather less braggadocio than before, ‘…erm, three? Five?’ ‘
‘Best get this over with’, he thought.
‘One! Zero!!!’
Somewhere in the distance a beacon flared.
‘So it’s farewell to the Neolithic and a huge welcome to the Bronze Age!’ he screamed. There was a ragged cheer as an even more ragged conga started. Some of the elders found it necessary to avert their eyes as several bolder spirits felt there would never be a better excuse for a fertility rite.
As the strains of Auld Lang Syne petered out, one man stood apart from the crowd, surveying the scene with an air of practised cynicism.
‘Bloody Bronze Age’ growled Aethelred Thwaite. ‘Nowt wrong wi’ Neolithic. Always some bugger thinks he can do better. Mark my words, it’ll end in bloody tears’.
‘Oh, Dad!’ scolded Egwyne, his daughter, coming up to him ‘You’re so stuck in the past. Things are changing! It’s a whole new world, it’s called progress!’
‘Progress!’ spat Aethelred. ‘Neolithic’s good enough for me, just like it were good enough for my Dad, and his Dad afore him. Mind, bloody Palaeolithic would have done for him, those buggers had it away with owt, would have suited him down to the ground. Progress!’
Egwyne rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically.
‘And another thing’ went on Aethelred, warming to his theme. ‘Daughter of mine coming out dressed like that. Bottom rag up round your waist, how tha squeezed into t’ top rag at all beats me, showing everything tha’s bloody got. And what’s that all over your face?’
‘Dad, all the girls wear make up now. It’s the new thing, Dad, this is the Bronze Age!’
A more than usually hirsute and filthy figure shambled up. He was pale and thin and his face was largely obscured by acne. He scratched a lot.
‘Tha’s missed t’ big moment, son’ barked Aethelred.
‘Yeah I know. Like, nobody woke me up, did they? ‘Snot my fault. Anything to eat?’
‘No.’
‘Typical. Right, I’ll like get something at Athelstan’s. Like at least his Mum’s always got something.’
‘What’s tha doing at Athelstan’s?
‘Just chilling, like’
‘Chilling?’
‘I didn’t know I needed to like fill in a questionnaire just to chill with a mate!’ Stop getting at me! Like don’t bug me, right!
‘It’s bloody miles to Athelstan’s.’
‘I know where Athelstan’s is, don’t I? That’s why I need to like borrow the wheel, right?’
‘I wasn’t up half the bloody night inventing t’ wheel just so you could swan around with the likes of him. Let me tell you something…..’
‘Give over Dad’ interrupted Egwyne, ‘let him have the wheel and we’ll be rid of him for a day or so. Progress again, you see.’
Aethelred saw the sense in this and reluctantly agreed.
‘OK’, he said to Egwyne, ‘tell me about this Bronze Age then. What’s going to be different?’
‘Well,’ she began ‘We’re going to be able to do loads of things better or more quickly. Grow more crops, make better, sharper tools, perhaps even live a bit longer. You see, we’re finding out how to live healthier, we can cure more illnesses, there’ll be improvements in dentistry…’
‘Dentistry?’
‘You know. Looking after your teeth.’
‘Got a fancy name now has it? I get a tooth that hurts, I just go to t’ fellah who slaps a bit of beeswax on it. Works a treat. Reminds me, I need to go and see him.’
‘Beeswax is so, like, last aeon, Dad, beeswax went out with the…erm...well, anyway, we can do better than that, in fact there’s a new bloke coming to the village next week to do people’s teeth. I’ll make you an appointment.’
‘Appointment?’
Egwyne made sure that her father kept his appointment, and when the day came he was ushered into a shack where a young girl was sitting behind a desk. ‘Name, please?’ she smiled, showing a row of nearly pristine teeth. Aethelred told her and she consulted a list.
‘Oh yes. The dentist wants you to see the hygienist first’.
’The what?’
‘This way, please.’
Another shack. Another young girl, this time wearing a little face mask atop her rags.
‘Sit down please, Mr…..err…’
Aethelred sat down and she started to inspect what remained of his teeth.
‘Oh dear,’ she scolded ‘Oh dear, oh dear. You’ve been a very naughty boy, haven’t you? Tell me, how often do you brush them?’
‘Brush? I don’t.’
‘And how often do you floss?’.
‘Floss?’
‘Use something to clean between them’.
‘Between them? But I haven’t got many.’
‘Then floss more. Every day. Twice a day. Save what teeth you have got. Do you get bits of food stuck? Do the gums bleed?’
‘Yes, yes’
‘Then floss. Floss, floss, floss. It’s a very Bronze Age thing to do. Right, I’ll just do you a scale and polish, shouldn’t take long, then the dentist will see you.’
Aethelred submitted to the scale and polish with mounting indignation, while the hygienist chatted away to a nurse about this and that, occasionally asking him questions he was quite unable to answer owing to the profusion of hands and equipment in his mouth.
‘All finished’ announced the hygienist brightly. She adopted a severe expression. ‘Now be a good boy and keep up the flossing, I don’t want to have to tell you off again’.
Aethelred bridled, but before he could say anything he found himself whisked through to another shack where a man sitting with his back to him appeared to be consulting some notes.
‘Sit down please, Mr… err…’ began the man with his back to him. ‘Any problems?’ he continued, mostly, it seemed, to himself. ‘Good,’ he went on before Aethelred could say anything, ‘we’ll just have a quick look, then’
The dentist turned round and Aethelred recognised the young MC who had welcomed in the Bronze Age.
‘What’s this?’ he asked ‘Two jobs? A dentist and an MC?’
The dentist sighed.
‘I was just trying to make a few bob with that MC business’ he said in a dispirited way. ‘Go into dentistry, they said, dentistry will be huge in the Bronze Age, you’ll clean up.’
‘But you haven’t?’
‘No. These new materials aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Have you ever tried to fill a tooth using bronze? Copper’s even worse. If you think having toothache’s bad, copper makes it hurt ten times as much. Sheer agony. Who’s going to part with good money for that?’
‘What about this one down here that hurts then?’
The dentist took a quick look. ‘What you want for that is a spot of beeswax’ he said. ‘Never fails. Stick a bit on, Bob’s your uncle’.
‘I’ll go and see t’ beeswax man, then’
‘I would’.
Aethelred got up to go.
‘I don’t suppose I can interest you in an annual plan?’ asked the dentist in a resigned sort of way. 'No, I thought not, just pay the receptionist on your way out, would you?’
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ANAGRAM CORNER!!
Anagram corner this month brings out the old teenage revolutionary in Master Autolycus...
DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE
CURB FAKE DEMIGOD!
DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE
CURB CHIEF GODDESS, MA!!
