Humans have been replacing teeth for some 2500 to 3,000 years, but it hasn't always been for the reasons you might think. While teeth are important for chewing food, they also have significant aesthetic value—and many ancient examples of false teeth were not designed with function in mind.

For Etruscan women in the 7th century B.C., removing their own teeth and wiring them back into their mouths may have conveyed their important social status. Archaeologists have also discovered Egyptian mummies with false teeth that were probably added during mummification to prepare the wearer for the afterlife.

Full sets of dentures emerged in the modern era around A.D. 1500. These early dentures were expensive and difficult (if not impossible) to eat or talk with, but still provided aesthetic and status benefits to the wearer. It wasn’t until the 19th century that dentures became the kind of functional replacement we associate with false teeth today.

Some of the earliest dental appliances are from the Etruscan civilization, which flourished in Italy before the rise of the Roman Empire. These appliances, which date to the 7th century B.C., consist of gold bands that held extracted teeth in place in the mouths of elite Etruscan women.

Curiously, all of these extracted teeth appear to have been healthy teeth that someone purposely removed from the women’s mouths—leading archeologists to theorize that these early dental adornments were a painful status symbol. The gold bands fit around teeth that were still rooted in the women’s mouths in order to hold these extracted teeth in place.

“The damage to the neighboring teeth is just unimaginable; the pain, probably too much to bear,” says Andrew I. Spielman, a professor of molecular pathobiology and director of the Rare Book Library and Historical Archives at New York University’s College of Dentistry. “Who’s to say what these people suffered in order to demonstrate that they were part of this elite?”

Over in Egypt, archaeologists have found carved ivory teeth wired into mummies’ mouths. Like the Etruscan examples, these were probably not meant to be functional in life. In fact, they probably weren’t meant for life at all.

“I think the wired-in teeth were done to make the body whole for the afterlife,” says Scott Swank, curator at the University of Maryland’s National Museum of Dentistry. “The gold wire in those looks fairly fragile to me, and I really don’t think it would’ve served well in life.”

This would align with other ways in which Egyptians prepared mummies for the afterlife. Archaeologists have identified another mummy with a prosthetic toe that was probably not functional in life, and was added during mummification.

In addition to these examples of replacement teeth, there is evidence of ancient people using wire to secure loose teeth that were still rooted in the mouth. The oldest example of this is a mummy in Giza dating to 2500 B.C. Again, this wiring may have been in preparation for the afterlife.

Archaeologists have also discovered loose teeth secured with wire among Phoenicians in Lebanon during the 4th century B.C. However, there are no ancient examples of what we’d call dentures—those didn’t appear until much later.

We don’t know when people started making full sets of dentures; but when they first appear, it's in in two different parts of the world. The oldest known complete set of dentures come from a grave near Cologne, Germany. These dentures date around 1500, and are made out of bone and attached with two springs. One of the next oldest examples is a set of wooden dentures that date to 1538, and were found in Japan.

Researchers have found multiple examples of Japanese dentures from the 16th through the 18th centuries. Though the first known Japanese dentures are made completely of boxwood, later examples had a boxwood base and a type of stone called pagodite teeth, Spielman says.

In the United States, one of the most famous early dentures wearers is George Washington. Contrary to popular myth, none of his dentures were made of wood. The only surviving full set of Washington’s dentures has a combination of human teeth, animal teeth and carved ivory set in a lead base.

Human teeth were common components of dentures in Europe and North America during the 18th century. We don’t know where the human teeth in Washington’s dentures originated, but we do know that dentists bought teeth that belonged to both free and enslaved people in order to craft dentures. Some of these teeth came from live people—and some came from corpses.

The kind of dentures that Washington had were expensive and definitely not something most people could afford. Still, they were not very functional. Washington had difficulty eating or speaking in them, making these dentures—like many early dental appliances—more of a status symbol than a practical replacement for real teeth.

That all changed with the development of rubber vulcanization in the 19th century. The rubber-strengthening process allowed manufacturers to produce better and cheaper dentures. These were both more functional for eating and speaking than previous versions, as well as more affordable for a wider group of people. 

Today, dentures and bridges (or partial dentures) are actually the cheaper option for people seeking false teeth. Dental implants have taken over as the more expensive alternative to modern dentures. In 2020, over 40 million Americans reported using dentures, which are now much more comfortable and functional than the historical dental appliances that came before them.