Earliest Evidence of Man-Made Pollution Found in Tartar on 400,000-Year-Old Teeth

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Human teeth from Qesem Cave. Israel Hershkovitz/Tel Aviv University

An excavation of Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv yielded 400,000-year-old teeth containing the oldest direct evidence of an indoor barbeque – and the manmade environmental pollution that resulted. “On the one hand, we are dependent on technology, but on the other, we are inhaling its pollutants,” Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University says in a news release. “Progress has a price.”