What Did Ancient Humans Do When a Tooth Went Bad?

You wake up at night with a tooth that feels like it’s on fire. There’s no dentist, no painkiller, and no antibiotics. So what did ancient humans actually do when a tooth went bad? The real answer is stranger and far more skilled than you’d expect. In this video we dig into the archaeological evidence for prehistoric dentistry: Neanderthal toothpick grooves from Krapina, Croatia, about 130,000 years old A 14,000-year-old cavity scraped out with flint at Riparo Villabruna, Italy Drilled teeth at Mehrgarh, Pakistan, cut with flint-tipped bow drills 7,500 to 9,000 years ago A 6,500-year-old beeswax filling and a 5,700-year-old lump of chewed birch tar A Neanderthal at El Sidrón, Spain, whose plaque held traces of the plant behind aspirin and a mold that makes penicillin A 1.77-million-year-old skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, that shows someone survived with almost no teeth Ancient Egypt’s first named dentist, Etruscan gold bridges, and a Maya jaw with shell implants You’ll also learn why cavities exploded after farming began, how a Boston dentist helped introduce ether anesthesia in 1846, and when humans first saw bacteria under a lens. If you enjoy stickman-style history and survival explainers, subscribe for more videos on how ancient humans lived, survived, and solved problems we still face today. Drop a comment: which of these would you have wanted to try? #ancienthumans #historyofdentistry #prehistoric