Why only two sets?

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Science could perhaps make an exoskeleton for our teeth so they don't enter in contact with food and a lot of our mouth flora and be more resistant to trauma.

[Immoren]

Obviously it would best if humans grew teeth like shark do, so we could use teeth based currency. *nods*

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Obviously it would best if humans grew teeth like shark do, so we could use teeth based currency. *nods*

I don't want to know what it is like to bite your own tongue if we had shark teeth, though.

[Immoren]

Obviously it would best if humans grew teeth like shark do, so we could use teeth based currency. *nods*

I don't want to know what it is like to bite your own tongue if we had shark teeth, though.

Not same teeth as sharks. Just the way they grow them.

[The Batorys]

Growing more body parts is energy-expensive. Unless there's a particular evolutionary drive to do so, it tends to not happen.

But, Humans have been in an environment where receiving said energy is quite a feasible task.
Also, because its uncomfortable shouldn't have anything to do with it, right? Survival's survival.

I don't think you understand how evolution works.

Two sets have proven more than sufficient to get us to breeding age. Therefore, two sets are kept.

More sets likely wouldn't be much more advantageous, and, given that increased crevices would create more havens for bacteria to rot them, and also considering that like other mammals, human teeth are incredibly complex rather than easily replaced, more rows of teeth would actually probably be detrimental.

[Dracoria]

Ancient humans probably didn't live long enough to worry about it so much, nor the mammals we evolved from.

Not sure if there's a correlation, but the evolutionary branches that shed teeth numerous times over the course of their lives tend not to have specialized dentition like mammals; it may be easier to develop replacement teeth when they're all of the same general form.

[The Batorys]

So I was wondering (As I often do, and just now decided to converse about it), why do Humans just get the two pairs of teeth? Wouldn't it be a biological advantage for survival to have? And as such, evolution would have supplied us with more pairs?
What say you, NS? ( That was the first time I've ever said that!).

Evolutionarily, chewing things like grain came along too late to change something so basic. That's my guess, but there is considerable doubt about what the "neolithic" diet actually was.

I really wish it was possible to grow more teeth. My last set are pretty bad. Hopefully science can come up with something better than dentures before that's my only option.

It has. Implants.

Usually only people who get their teeth completely destroyed in accidents get those, though.

[The Batorys]

Evolutionarily, chewing things like grain came along too late to change something so basic. That's my guess, but there is considerable doubt about what the "neolithic" diet actually was.

I really wish it was possible to grow more teeth. My last set are pretty bad. Hopefully science can come up with something better than dentures before that's my only option.

Well, in places where this possibly could occur, it's probably prevented due to the Whole world's gene pool being mixed together due to Global travel and the such. But if you could put Boundary Bubbles around certain areas around the world, it might start to occur.

Among the fossils uncovered of earlier human species is the skull of a Homo erectus who died as a very old man... several years after losing all his teeth.

When we invented cooking, we made dentition markedly less important.

[AiliailiA]

Evolutionarily, chewing things like grain came along too late to change something so basic. That's my guess, but there is considerable doubt about what the "neolithic" diet actually was.

I really wish it was possible to grow more teeth. My last set are pretty bad. Hopefully science can come up with something better than dentures before that's my only option.

It has. Implants.

Better than dentures, or a 'bridge'. Thanks.

Usually only people who get their teeth completely destroyed in accidents get those, though.

I'll buy my own jaw implants ... once I have perfected my algorithm to win the national lottery using astrology.

[The Batorys]

Ancient humans probably didn't live long enough to worry about it so much, nor the mammals we evolved from.

Not sure if there's a correlation, but the evolutionary branches that shed teeth numerous times over the course of their lives tend not to have specialized dentition like mammals; it may be easier to develop replacement teeth when they're all of the same general form.

Ancient humans actually did often live pretty long (though not as long as us in the developed world in the early 21st century), but their dental issues were nowhere near as severe as often imagined, as their diets contained considerably less concentrated sugar.

[AiliailiA]

Well, in places where this possibly could occur, it's probably prevented due to the Whole world's gene pool being mixed together due to Global travel and the such. But if you could put Boundary Bubbles around certain areas around the world, it might start to occur.

Among the fossils uncovered of earlier human species is the skull of a Homo erectus who died as a very old man... several years after losing all his teeth.

When we invented cooking, we made dentition markedly less important.

And this might sound gross, but someone else can chew the food. Then spit it back out for the toothless elder to eat.

Or it could be mixed with water (or saliva) and pounded on a flat rock with a blunt stick. This is within the technological capability of current non-human simians. It would thus be within the technological capability of proto-humans.

[The Batorys]

Among the fossils uncovered of earlier human species is the skull of a Homo erectus who died as a very old man... several years after losing all his teeth.

When we invented cooking, we made dentition markedly less important.

And this might sound gross, but someone else can chew the food. Then spit it back out for the toothless elder to eat.

Or it could be mixed with water (or saliva) and pounded on a flat rock with a blunt stick. This is within the technological capability of current non-human simians. It would thus be within the technological capability of proto-humans.

Precisely. There are ways around toothlessness. Humans are a social species. Even our ancestors with smaller brains didn't leave an old man to die when he'd lost his teeth.

[AiliailiA]

And this might sound gross, but someone else can chew the food. Then spit it back out for the toothless elder to eat.

Or it could be mixed with water (or saliva) and pounded on a flat rock with a blunt stick. This is within the technological capability of current non-human simians. It would thus be within the technological capability of proto-humans.

Precisely. There are ways around toothlessness. Humans are a social species. Even our ancestors with smaller brains didn't leave an old man to die when he'd lost his teeth.

Old people were an asset to society in a way we can barely imagine now. They remember things from long ago, and in a pre-literate society that archive of past collective knowledge would have enormous value.

Obviously I agree with you. But not just on the grounds of "we're a social species" or human nature which I have great faith in.

Compassion for familiar others would have been stronger, with small groups of humans or proto-humans facing challenges from outside the species. And our elders would be particularly valuable to us, as repositories of knowledge, before writing.

I am very proud of our species. We told stories to each other, and taught each other songs (and the old people we kept alive were essential to that tradition). Others of us drew pictures (some of which survive still, being carved in rock). These two traditions converged to make writing, and of course most of the early writing is lost, but writing is what allows humans long dead to communicate with us now. To bring the wisdom of the past, to the present, hundreds or thousands of years after they died.

Of course the early humans cared for their old people. Old people were their library, their internet. A small disability like being unable to chew food, would be easily accomodated by the younger members of society.


Pardon the old-person rant. And don't go easy on me: I started out in complete agreement, but if I said anything you disagree with, then you should say so.

[Desmendura]

The second set of teeth, for one, is pretty hard to remove and are better than the milk teeth, I think it is just unreasonable for humans to have more sets than they already do. What if they get into accidents you ask? Well that is just plain carelessness of mankind etc etc.

[Berdanvia]

Because most animals have two sets of teeth.