Scientists Discover Maya Created the World’s First Dental Filling Using Gemstones

Prehispanic Maya dental inlays successful teeth with unfastened apices. Credit: Marco Ramírez-Salomon / SSRN

Ancient Maya dentists drilled into a backmost molar and filled it with a precious gemstone, making it the earliest known lawsuit of a chromatic utilized arsenic a dental filling. Researchers accidental this find reshapes what we cognize astir Maya aesculapian cognition and their attack to utilizing gemstones to dainty dental problems.

Estuardo Mata-Castillo of Francisco Marroquin University successful Guatemala led the study, published successful the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The tooth, a mandibular near archetypal molar, belongs to the decontextualized osteological postulation astatine the Popol Vuh Museum astatine Francisco Marroquin University successful Guatemala, a postulation that has been assembled since the 1970s to sphere archaeological specimens from destruction.

Jadeite chromatic recovered firmly fixed successful a backmost molar

The inlay is made of jadeite, a greenish gemstone, placed astatine the halfway of the tooth’s biting surface and held firmly by a cementing material. Its determination is what makes this find basal out. Every antecedently known Maya dental inlay was placed successful beforehand teeth purely for decoration and societal identity. A backmost molar served nary aesthetic purpose.

To corroborate whether the chromatic was placed during the person’s beingness oregon aft death, researchers utilized cone beam computed tomography, an precocious imaging technique. The scans revealed dystrophic calcification wrong the pulp chamber, a biologic effect the assemblage produces erstwhile reacting to prolonged irritation.

A jadeite gemstone recovered successful a Maya dental filling confirms past dentists treated bony decay agelong earlier modern medicine, a survey reveals. pic.twitter.com/BfbrrE5UxD

— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) April 14, 2026

This confirmed the bony was live erstwhile the process was performed. The interior structures besides pointed to the diligent being a young big astatine the time.

Maya gemstone dental filling suggests precocious past symptom relief

The Maya already had singular dental skills. Historical records amusement that less than 4% of their known drilling procedures accidentally reached the delicate pulp. Their enactment was precise. But those earlier interventions were cosmetic, ever connected disposable beforehand teeth.

This lawsuit suggests thing antithetic was happening. The past Maya had precise precocious rates of bony decay, mostly due to the fact that their fare relied heavy connected maize. Despite this, grounds of immoderate therapeutic oregon palliative dental attraction among the Maya has been highly rare.

Researchers person antecedently documented lone a fistful of cases from Guatemala and Belize showing imaginable interventions connected cavities done drilling, chipping, oregon bitumen filling. Tooth extraction was besides known to beryllium practiced.

Purpose remains uncertain but points beyond the cosmetic

Mata-Castillo and his squad judge the molar whitethorn person had a cavity oregon different achy condition, and the jadeite inlay was placed either to dainty it oregon to relieve the pain. Whether the information was therapeutic, palliative, oregon tied to immoderate antithetic symbolic signifier remains unclear.

Evidence of prehistoric dental enactment exists worldwide, from Stone Age Italy to Neolithic Pakistan to pre-Columbian North America, but nary of those cases progressive a chromatic inlay placed successful a backmost molar. This uncovering adds a much analyzable and applicable magnitude to Maya dental past than antecedently known.