Ohalo 2 is a 23,000 year old hunter-fisher-gatherer that was recovered from a burial at a spectacularly well-preserved archaeological site on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. In 2013, I visited Tel Aviv University to collect data on the human fossils curated in the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology for my doctoral dissertation. While examining the Ohalo 2 skeletal material, I noticed, the missing upper central incisor and a fully healed socket. The teeth immediately surrounding this incisor were present - although a few neighboring teeth were broken postmortem (not surprising for a fossil of this antiquity). The dental wear in the upper jaw was fairly typical of a Late Pleistocene hunter-fisher-gatherer; but when I picked up the mandible, I noticed that the lower incisors had an interesting curvature to their wear plane. This modest "arch-like" pattern of dental wear perfectly matched the position of the missing upper incisor. The overall pattern of dental wear and healed socket was starting to look a lot like the intentional tooth removal - or "ablation" - something that had not been suggested in previous analyses of Ohalo 2. Interestingly, the Natufians - the archaeologically-defined culture that existed some 10,000 years after Ohalo 2 - practiced dental ablation. Could there be a biocultural connection between this Early Epipaleolithic forager and the Late Epipaleolithic Natufians? Ten-thousand years is quite a leap in time, but long-term continuity in some aspects of Epipaleolithic human behavior in southwest Asia had been suggested based on other aspects of the archaeological record. Above: The white arrow points to the tooth that was lost antemortem (in life) as indicated by the healed bone and resorbed socket. The dotted white line shows the uneven plane of wear that indicates that the individual was alive long after the tooth was removed, since dental wear continued to progress - albeit unevenly due to the lack of an occluding upper right central incisor. Red arrows show teeth that are broken and missing postmortem. My colleague, Dr. Sarah A. Lacy, also had the opportunity to study the Ohalo 2 skeletal material in Tel Aviv a few years before me, so we decided to collaborate on an assessment of the Ohalo 2 oral pathological conditions. Our thinking was that a differential diagnosis of the tooth loss may help us understand whether the incisor was lost through the intentional cultural practice of dental ablation or by some other cause. Given the small number of fossils from the Eastern Mediterranean that date to this time period, we also thought it would be an important source of comparative data for researchers interested in Late Pleistocene human paleobiology and behavioral reconstructions. Above: The burial of Ohalo 2 during excavation, a close-up of cast of individual's cranium, and an drawing of the skeletal elements after excavation in laboratory. Image modified from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41492570. In addition to the loss of the upper central incisor, we found a number of other pathological conditions: two carious lesions ("cavities"), pulp exposure, and mild to moderate bone loss around the front teeth. Another cool finding is the probable agenesis of the left upper third molar - "agenesis" means that the tooth never developed at all. We noted that these conditions are not really abnormal for a Late Pleistocene human, but the general state of oral health did not seem to contribute to the loss of the upper incisor. So, if the other oral pathological conditions were unlikely contributors to the loss of the incisor, what about loss through a traumatic event? A bad fall, interpersonal violence, or some other kind of accident could have knocked out Ohalo 2's front tooth. At first, we thought trauma was a good candidate since Ohalo 2 has an absolutely astonishing bony growth in their chest. The growth was due to infection (chronic osteomyelitis) caused by localized trauma to the lower thorax. Could the incisor have also been knocked out at the same time? Possibly, but unlikely. We determined that the tooth was more likely lost in early in life (childhood or early adolescence) by examining factors related to the timing of tooth eruption and expectations regarding progressive dental wear in hunter-gatherers. In contrast, the major thoracic injury was more likely a later life occurrence - and a rather debilitating one for Ohalo 2. Intentional tooth removal - "ablation" - seems to be the best candidate for Ohalo 2's lost incisor. The tooth was probably lost around late childhood/early adolescence - an important period of physical and social maturation for a young person. Indeed, it is around this age that body modification practices often occur, as shown by numerous other examples documented from bioarchaeological and ethnohistoric contexts. Above Left: The occlusal view of the maxillary (upper) teeth of Ohalo 2. The white arrow is pointing to the tooth that was lost antemortem (before death). The bone is resorbed/healed. The red arrows point to teeth that were lost postmortem. Above Right: A line drawing of a Natufian individual from Shukbah showing the empty space (white arrow) where a tooth was lost before death in the exact location that is seen in Ohalo 2. Photograph by JC Willman. Line drawing modified from Keith 1931. Since the Natufians also practiced incisor ablation, and many behavioral trends among the Natufians seem to have deep antiquity within the Epipaleolithic of the region, we thought it was interesting to also see this biocultural practice portrayed by Ohalo 2 as well. With so few fossils dated to this time period in southwest Asia, it is hard to say whether or not this is truly a biocultural trend spanning the Early and Late phases of the Epipaleolithic, but it is an exciting possibility. Hopefully, future discoveries will shed more light on the antiquity and patterning of Epipaleolithic body modification practices in southwest Asia. Until then, Ohalo 2 represents one of the earliest probable cases of dental ablation in western Eurasia, and more evidence for the embodiment of human social identities through intentional body modification practices among Late Pleistocene peoples. References and further reading:This study:
Access the paper for free until 19 July 2020 here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1b98C6hTLQdsfi Willman JC, and Lacy SA. 2020. Oral pathological conditions of an Early Epipaleolithic human from Southwest Asia: Ohalo II H2 as a probable case of intentional dental ablation. International Journal of Paleopathology 30:68-76, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpp.2020.04.001. Additional references: Bocquentin F. 2011. Avulsions dentaires et identité régionale chez les Natoufiens. Tüba-Ar (Turkish Academy of Sciences Journal of Archaeology) 14:261-270. Link Bocquentin F, Crevecoeur I, and Semal P. 2013. Artificial modification of the central upper incisors of Homo 4 (Plot XX J burial). In: Edwards PC, editor. Wadi Hammeh 27, an Early Natufian Settlement at Pella in Jordan. Leiden: Brill. p 383-387. Link Edwards PC. 2015. Natufian interactions along the Jordan Valley. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 147(4):272-282, doi.org/10.1179/1743130115Y.0000000001. Hershkovitz I, Edelson G, Spiers M, Arensburg B, Nadel D, and Levi B. 1993. Ohalo II man—unusual findings in the anterior rib cage and shoulder girdle of a 19000‐year‐old specimen. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 3(3):177-188, https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.1390030304. Hershkovitz I, Speirs MS, Frayer D, Nadel D, Wish-Baratz S, and Arensburg B. 1995. Ohalo II H2: A 19,000-year-old skeleton from a water-logged site at the Sea of Galilee, Israel. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 96(3):215-234, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330960302. Keith A. 1931. New discoveries relating to the antiquity of man. London: Williams & Norgate. Link Maher LA, Richter T, and Stock JT. 2012. The pre-Natufian Epipaleolithic: long-term behavioral trends in the Levant. Evolutionary Anthropology 21(2):69-81, https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21307. Nadel D. 1994. Levantine Upper Palaeolithic–Early Epipalaeolithic burial customs: Ohalo II as a case study. Paléorient 20(1):113-121, www.jstor.org/stable/41492570. Snir A, Nadel D, Groman-Yaroslavski I, Melamed Y, Sternberg M, Bar-Yosef O, and Weiss E. 2015. The Origin of Cultivation and Proto-Weeds, Long Before Neolithic Farming. PloS one 10(7):e0131422, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131422. Trinkaus E. 2018. The palaeopathology of the Ohalo 2 Upper Paleolithic human remains: A reassessment of its appendicular robusticity, humeral asymmetry, shoulder degenerations, and costal lesion. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 28(2):143-152, https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2640.
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John C. Willman
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