I've heard somewhere that Romans used some sort of abrasive, but not much else than that. Media discussing hygiene throughout the ages that I've viewed always seems to omit any discussion on dental hygiene, so I'm curious as to the methods that different people used until modern toothbrushes and paste were invented.
One of our own users, u/Spencer_A_McDaniel, very recently wrote about historical dental hygiene! In this blog post she explains the methods people used to clean their teeth in earlier periods (ex. gr. toothpicks and teeth-cleaning twigs), and how tooth decay became a much bigger problem in Europe with the introduction of sugars and other products of the "Age of Exploration". She also looks at evidence from a study of skeleton remains from Pompeii and Herculaneum