Could it be more of a genetic thing to have straight teeth or are there outside factors involved too? Not to mention having crooked teeth can cause so many issues but it’s common.
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In the days before modern dental care, people were far more likely to lose teeth as adults due to infection or damage. Therefore we have more adult teeth than can comfortably fit in most of our mouths so that we could lose a few and still have a mostly complete working set. Now that very few people lose adult teeth, the extra teeth are just causing overcrowding.
Read ‘Breath’. By James Nestor.
It talks about this and many other things. It’s fascinating.
Diet and evolution.
The human mouth is getting smaller and we’re crowding our teeth out of our heads.
We’re in the process of losing our wisdom teeth but we’ve already lost a set of teeth. Some people call caveman teeth
The other part is our diet, back when we needed all those teeth we used to have to really chew down on fibrous plant material to get any nutrients out of it just to grind it up and the grinding and the constant chewing actually strengthened and straightened our teeth.
Now all of our food is cooked and it’s soft and the combination of a shrinking skull and softening food is kind of messing up our teeth.
I’ve read that it’s due to us eating a lot softer foods during a young age, whereas we used to eat raw meat etc. and this was tougher so it strengthened and widened our mouths.
Because modern people have much better diets and healthcare.
In the older times poorer diets would mean teeth wouldn’t grow so big and bad medicine would mean some teeth would fall out as a person grew older.
All this means there was more room for remaining teeth. Lack of room is what causes them to become crooked.
Having crooked teeth has not prevented people from reproducing and thus straight teeth are not an evolutionary advantage. Natural selection has seen no need to “correct” it.
Human mouths are still shrinking from a snout we used to have as apes. Less and less space for the teeth, but it will settle itself with time, maybe another 2 millions years and we’ll be good.
My orthodontist said teeth are always moving. Apparently, playing trumpet for 13 years can move them, too.
Mostly because our food tends to be soft, which weakens our gums and allows teeth to move.
Studies have found that chewing sticks, like those used in certain parts of Africa and Asia, not only clean teeth but also lead to straighter teeth because the gums are stronger from the frequent chewing.
Evolution. We have slowly been evolving a smaller jaw, with less room for our teeth. Because we cook our food, our genetics no longer prioritize big jaw muscles and extra large molars, hence why our wisdom teeth are often a problem.
Our jaws have shrunken faster than we evolved, having fewer/smaller teeth.
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