The real reason why we have teeth
We are born without teeth and most of us will die without teeth. We will all have dreams about our teeth falling out or breaking. At one point or another we will be very much concerned about how our teeth look. We may regret not taking better care of them.
We have used our teeth for the most hilarious and sometimes dangerous things.
A man reportedly bit a dog, threw an old woman’s crutches down a flight of stairs and fought seven people at once at a railway station.
The Liverpool Echo — David Raven UK
Teeth apparently are more important than grammar in snagging a date.
When judging a potential date, both men and women rate teeth at the top, followed by grammar.
The online survey of 5,481 individuals was conducted by MarketTools Inc. for the Dallas-based dating website Match.com.
Nobody will argue that teeth are most important in opening plastic packages and bottles. Some plastic wrappers are virtually impossible to open without something sharp, or teeth. Since teeth are always on us, it is usually the teeth that are the tool of choice. Men without an opener will definitely open beer bottles with their teeth rather than go without.
12 million of us have injured ourselves while trying to open packaging, with 5 million sustaining deep cuts and 1.7 million breaking or chipping their teeth.
Anthony Gough, CourierMail September 15, 2013
Google “Do Not Use Your Teeth to Open Things” and you will get pages upon pages of dental clinics. Interesting enough, not a single tool company has thought to use this as a marketing tactic.
It goes to show you that teeth are one of the most important and most neglected assets you have.
94 million Americans spent $250 or more on oral care products.
Statistica.com U.S. Census data 2019
You would think that given all of the modern dental technology and products that are available the quality of our teeth in this day and age would be the best they have ever been. This is actually not the case.
Ancient Romans had no need for dentists, because of one food they didn’t eat
By Olivia Goldhill — Quartz Science reporter
We blame it mainly on the type of food we eat, but I suspect the Ancient Romans also didn’t have so many things to open with their teeth. They used resin to cap off the amphorae and used a sharp instrument to open them, teeth would be of no use to do this job. They had no plastic wrappers and probably didn’t tie knots they couldn’t open without having to use their teeth.
William Painter invented the crown bottle cap in 1892 and thereafter many people broke their teeth opening bottles. Maybe that’s why they called the tooth cap a crown, in honor of his invention?
It’s even worse when you go back even further. Apparently the Neanderthals had better teeth. They too also didn’t have very many silly things to open with their teeth. They cracked open bones with rocks that were very plentiful.
One recent study actually suggests that Neanderthals lost fewer teeth than humans with equivalent diets.
BBC By Melissa Hogenboom 19 April 2016
It’s a toss up. Is it our diets or using our teeth to do things that we should be using tools to do?
Using our teeth to open things saves us time from having to go find scissors or a knife.
It stands to reason, babies are not born with teeth because they don’t ever need to open things, they suck. Think about it, by the time they can open anything they have teeth.
The very old don’t need to open things either because everybody else around them is falling all over themselves to open things up for them out of love and respect or a possible future inheritance.
And more proof, ancient and very ancient peoples had good teeth because they didn’t have packaging that required gnawing and panic to open.
So there it is, the real reason we have teeth is not to eat, it’s to open things.
