Crowded Teeth
The too closely-packed teeth in the “decreasing” jaws of modern men (p. 13)5 are also suggestive of other causes than use and disuse. Why is there not simultaneous variation in teeth and jaws, if disuse is the governing factor? Are we to suppose that the size of the human teeth is maintained by use at the same time that the jaws are being diminished by disuse? Mr. Spencer acknowledges that the crowding of bull-dogs’ and lap-dogs’ teeth is caused by the artificial selection of shortened jaws. If a similar change is really occurring in man, could it not be similarly explained by some factor, such as sexual selection, which might affect the outward appearance at the cost of less obvious defects or inconveniences?
Mr. Spencer points to the decay of modern teeth as a sign or result of their being overcrowded through the diminution of the jaw by disuse.6 But the teeth which are the most frequently overcrowded are the lower incisors. The upper incisors are less overcrowded, being commonly pressed outwards by the lower arc of teeth fitting inside them in biting. The lower incisors are correspondingly pressed inwards and closer together. Yet the upper incisors decay—or at least are extracted—about twenty times as frequently as the closely packed lower incisors.7 Surely this must indicate that the cause of decay is not overcrowding.
The lateness and irregularity of the wisdom teeth are sometimes supposed to indicate their gradual disappearance through want of room in a diminishing jaw. But a note on Tasmanian skulls in the Catalogue of the College of Surgeons (p. 199) shows that this lateness and irregularity have been common among Tasmanians as well as among civilized races, so that the change can hardly be attributed to the effects of disuse under civilization.