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 Throat of Olduvai, Tanzania, has found some abrasions that it thinks due to the use
of a toothpick.The man, 1,800.000 years ago, passed from a regimen of feeding exclusively vegetable, to feed also of meat.
The use of the toothpick, that could be of bone or wood (it has not been found), had exactly the function to remove
remained little pieces of meat between the teeth. Professor Peter Ungar, with others colleagues,
studies the evolution of the diet of the Ominids. We add that the toothpick is the second extrabody useful tool that is known, after the lithic tools for cutting the skins and the meat of the
animals
Source:english text ,Scientific American,
with photographs,march-april, 2000
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