Tooth wear as an indicator of acculturation process in remote Amazonian populations.

Abstract

Riverine populations are typical of the Amazon region that depend on nature for subsistence. These people are considered an intermediate population between the urban and indigenous, the original Amazon habitants. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate the relationship between tooth wear and age in a remote riverine population from the Amazon, located by the Tucumanduba River (n = 94), and to compare them to previous findings obtained from semi-isolated indigenous (n = 223) and urban populations (n = 40) from the Amazon region, which were examined using the same methodology. Using linear regression, tooth wear explained 54.5% of the variation in the ages of the riverine subjects (p<0.001). This coefficient is mid-way between those obtained in semi-isolated indigenous populations (65-86%) and urban subjects (12%) living in the Amazon. Our findings suggest that tooth wear, a direct evidence of what an individual ate in the past, may be an indicator of the acculturation process in remote populations.