How Farming Gave Humans Overbites and the Ability to Pronounce ‘F’ and ‘V’
23rd May 2022
“F’s” and “v’s” belong to a group of sounds known as labiodentals. They happen when you raise your bottom lip to touch your top teeth and are used in more than half of today’s human language. But science suggests we didn’t always have this linguistic ability.
As hunter gatherers, our ancestors ate a diet that was minimally processed and required more effort to chew. As a result, by adolescence their teeth would develop what’s called an edge-to-edge bite, where the jaw is elongated so that both the bottom and top teeth are completely flush with one another.
Cue the Neolithic period, where widespread agriculture meant more soft foods like stew and bread and less laborious chewing. Over time, the slight overbite that most people are born with stayed preserved, because chewing was less of an arduous process.
Except, of course, that you can do the same thing by touching your top lip to your bottom teeth, the human lower jaw being quite versatile. Yeah, you’ll feel like Mongo The Cave Man, but you can do it.