What Neanderthals ate to stop tooth pain

Long before dentists, painkillers or toothbrushes, ancient humans still got toothaches — and some of their fixes were surprisingly clever. From Neanderthals picking at their teeth 130,000 years ago to Stone Age "dentists" scraping out cavities with flint, filling them with tar and drilling them with bow drills, here's what people really did when a tooth started to throb. ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 0:00 The 3 a.m. toothache 0:42 Did ancient humans even get toothaches? 1:08 The acorn eaters of Taforalt 2:02 Neanderthal toothpicks 2:46 Stone Age painkillers 4:02 The first dentist 5:04 The first fillings 6:27 The drillers of Mehrgarh 7:34 The twist 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ‣ Cavities before farming — "Earliest evidence for caries and exploitation of starchy plant foods in Pleistocene hunter-gatherers from Morocco" (2014, PNAS) https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1318176111 — hunter-gatherers at Taforalt, 15,000–13,700 years ago, had decay in more than half their surviving teeth; only 3 of 52 adults were cavity-free. ‣ Neanderthal toothpicks — "Prehistoric dentistry? P4 rotation, partial M3 impaction, toothpick grooves and other signs of manipulation in Krapina Dental Person 20" (2017, Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology) — ~130,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth with toothpick grooves and scratches beside crowded, displaced teeth. ‣ Neanderthal self-medication — "Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus" (2017, Nature) https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21674 — plaque DNA shows a Neanderthal with a dental abscess had eaten poplar (natural salicylic acid) and carried Penicillium mould DNA. ‣ Oldest treated cavity — "Earliest evidence of dental caries manipulation in the Late Upper Palaeolithic" (2015, Scientific Reports) https://doi.org/10.1038/srep12150 — a 14,000-year-old molar scraped out with tiny flint tools. ‣ Oldest fillings — "The dawn of dentistry in the late upper Paleolithic: An early case of pathological intervention at Riparo Fredian" (2017, American Journal of Physical Anthropology) https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23216 — ~13,000-year-old front teeth cleaned out and packed with bitumen, plant fibres and hair. ‣ Beeswax filling — "Beeswax as Dental Filling on a Neolithic Human Tooth" (2012, PLoS ONE) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.... — a ~6,500-year-old cracked canine sealed with beeswax, probably while the person was still alive. ‣ Stone Age drilling — "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry" (2006, Nature) https://doi.org/10.1038/440755a — 11 drilled holes in the molars of 9 adults, made with flint-tipped bow drills between about 9,000 and 7,500 years ago. ———————————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ‣ Taforalt — Grotte des Pigeons, a cave in north-eastern Morocco used as a cemetery by hunter-gatherers around 15,000 years ago. Their acorn-heavy diet left them with widespread tooth decay long before farming. ‣ Krapina — A rock shelter in northern Croatia and one of Europe's richest Neanderthal fossil sites, about 130,000 years old. ‣ El Sidrón — A cave in Asturias, northern Spain, where the remains of a Neanderthal group about 50,000 years old were found. ‣ Villabruna — A rock shelter in the mountains of north-eastern Italy, where a man buried about 14,000 years ago carries the oldest known treated cavity. ‣ Riparo Fredian — A rock shelter in the hills of northern Tuscany, Italy, home to the oldest known tooth fillings, about 13,000 years old. ‣ Lonche — A cave in Slovenia where a 6,500-year-old jaw with a beeswax-filled canine was found. ‣ Mehrgarh — One of South Asia's earliest farming villages, in Balochistan, Pakistan, where people drilled teeth about 9,000 years ago. ‣ Gregorio Oxilia — Lead author of both the Villabruna and Riparo Fredian studies, the earliest evidence of humans treating cavities. ‣ Laura Weyrich — Ancient-DNA researcher who led the dental-plaque study that revealed the El Sidrón Neanderthal's poplar and Penicillium. ‣ Alfredo Coppa — Anthropologist who led the Mehrgarh study that identified the world's earliest known drilled teeth. ———————————————————— 🎨 Animation by SimpleMind Explorer #AncientHumans #Prehistory #History