Kathleen Kendall-Tackett writes:

>Some other things I've thought of in this regard was that in cultures where
>co-sleeping and night nursing were the norm, we would expect to see lots of
>caries--but as far as I know , we do not.

Speaking of this topic, I asked my colleague and his graduate students, who
between them have looked at more than 3,000 prehistoric skeletons, if caries
were common in deciduous teeth and they said you almost never see any caries
in deciduous teeth -- and these are populations that we KNOW were only
breastfeeding, and assume were doing so for several years at a minimum.

Alexander has fillings in all 8 of his baby molars (back of the mouth), but
dentist chalked it up to hereditary weak enamel (my mother has it, I got it,
but my sisters didn't, Alex got it but the other two kids didn't) and in his
case complicated by very "crenallated" molars with very narrow deep valleys
that trapped food easily and were difficult to clean.  No mention of bottles
or breasts.  It seems as though if there is something obvious to blame it
on, like heredity and convoluted chewing surfaces in this case, then that is
what it is blamed on.  And if there isn't any obvious reason then it "must
be X" -- either bottle-feeding or breastfeeding.


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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352