Stone Age dentists
That’s not some sort of metaphor or epithet. Apparently, there really were Stone Age dentists:
Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment.
The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner.
While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable insights into Neanderthals’ advanced behaviours – and possibly their gritty disposition.
Dr Kseniya Kolobova, an archaeologist at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, said: “This discovery powerfully reinforces the now well-supported view that Neanderthals were not the brutish, inferior cousins of outdated stereotypes but a sophisticated human population with complex cognitive and cultural capacities. [It] adds an entirely new dimension – invasive medical treatment – to the growing list of advanced Neanderthal behaviours.”
The dentist was pretty good, too:
A dental professor, who reviewed images of the tooth but was not part of the research, rated the Neanderthal’s work as “a decent job”.
“If I was marking this for a dental student, I wouldn’t give it an A, but given the circumstances it’s pretty impressive,” said Justin Durham, a professor of orofacial pain at Newcastle University and the British Dental Association’s chief scientific adviser.
The smoothed edges of the drilled cavity, and wear patterns inside it, suggested the individual survived and continued to chew with the tooth for some time after the procedure.
The tooth, which has been dated to be 59,000 years old, was found in Chagyrskaya, where the remains of Neanderthals and thousands of stone tools have been excavated. The lower molar features a deep hole in the centre of the tooth extending into the pulp cavity. Microscopic X-ray imaging revealed changes in mineralisation that indicated severe tooth decay.
The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and same patterns of microscopic grooves could be created by manually rotating a narrow, elongated tool made from local jasper, between two fingers.
That was in the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic. The surgical technique thought till now to be oldest is trepanning – drilling holes in skulls – from the New Stone Age (Neolithic). It apparently was quite widespread:
Trepanation is a worldwide practice that was extremely common during the Neolithic era. The main pieces of archaeological evidence are in the forms of human remains. At one burial site in France dated to 6500 BCE, 40 out of 120 prehistoric skulls found had trepanation holes. At the time only around 40% of people survived the procedure.[13] A skull of a child in an Harappan burial at Lothal dated to 2200 BCE shows signs of trepanation.
More than 1,500 trephined skulls from the Neolithic period (representing 5–10% of all cranial remains from that era) have been uncovered throughout the world – from Europe, Siberia, China and the Americas. Most of the trephined crania belong to adult males, but women and children are also represented.
More and more of the findings these days about ancient humans indicate that they were more sophisticated than previously thought. And perhaps even more stoic.
Ancient people had nothing but time. That’s why they could figure out megaliths and brain surgery and dentistry and what not.
Doesn’t mean they just sat around, of course. The getting and processing of food was something that they always had to put some time into, except at the times and places when there wasn’t any. (In June of 1806 Captain William Clark describes finding a trail by means of the trees that local people had stripped of bark for food.) What I mean by “nothing but time” is really that was the resource they had. Problems could be solved simply by putting enough time into them, as they simply didn’t have any deadlines except the somewhat variable ones set by the seasons and whatnot, and little to do with their time once they’d been fed.
Stoicism probably came with a large helping of alcohol.
A really bad toothache can provide unremitting severe pain for weeks, even months. I can understand the willingness of early humans to try DIY dentistry for possible relief.
The more we learn about early humans, the more we realize they weren’t as primitive as we thought.
Nick o domus looks back in time, which is precious to him, but not to those old timey folks, to tell us what they did.
We are not worthy
If you were a reasonably advanced human and were stranded on a primitive foreign planet, would you just forget all that you knew about medical procedures?
No, you would not. You would improvise.
Hence, the Neanderthal dentists (and subsequent trepannists et al).
I had a Stone Age dentist when I was a kid. I had lots and lots of cavities, and this dentist didn’t use novocaine or anything. Maybe that was more common back then, not sure, but it was horrifically painful.
@ Tom >”If you were a reasonably advanced human and were stranded on a primitive foreign planet, would you just forget all that you knew about medical procedures?”
Maybe even some of those folks passed on their lore to the indigenous humans able to learn.
https://nypost.com/2026/05/16/us-news/four-species-of-aliens-have-been-pulled-from-crashed-ufos-ex-government-researcher-claims/
Unicorns don’t floss? Who knew!
Jimmy — your dentist while growing up:
Gosh, I’m so sorry! What a nightmare!!
Seems childhood is too often a survival test.
God bless you.
Jimmy on May 17, 2026 at 12:36 am:
So did I !!!!
I can still smell the odor of a burning tooth.
The dentist would use a CABLE DRIVEN drill that had no mechanism to cool the tooth while drilling.
I was scared of needles so I did not take novocain.
It was pure torture.
So does this mean that the Neanderthals also invented doors?
Has anyone read Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series? It’s set in Neanderthal times, and postulates the Clan’s medicine woman did all kinds of medical procedures, including root canals and tooth extractions. Very interesting. The first book is Clan of the Cave Bear.
I agree with Niketas. I will say their concept of time was different than ours.
My childhood dentist’s name was Dr. Fain. My siblings and I called him Dr. Pain.
I’ve forgotten if there was any novocaine involved, but I definitely recall the smell of burning tooth. I’m still pretty jumpy when it comes to sitting in the dentist’s chair.
“…their concept of time…”
Not sure how we can possibly know.
Mightn’t it be entirely possible that the Neanderthal, knowing that his life expectancy wasn’t exactly stellar, said to himself (sitting around the campfire, pulling woolly mammoth wool out from between his teeth) something along the lines of, “If I want to leave the world a better place than I found it I’d better get cracking…”?
One might imagine that the Neanderthal were on the cusp of significant discoveries in orthodontics, as well, but they were—too soon, alas— absorbed by the Cro Magnon (i.e., Homo Sapiens) before they could hammer out all the kinks…and thus the initiative was lost…
Perhaps pre-history’s first stone-age irony….
AI tells me that there are hundreds of thousands if not a million untranslated Sumerian and Akkadian tablets which are now being processed by AI tools.
Probably turn out to be all tax records and beer recipes.
@Chases Eagles:Probably turn out to be all tax records and beer recipes.
More complaints about copper merchants, I should expect.
@ Niketas > “who complained he had not received his copper yet, while another said he was tired of receiving bad copper.”
So, the used-car salesmen we have always with us?
Jimmy and John above, yep I was one of those kids in the olden days, now I am 81 years old, and I did not want the needle so they drilled my bad teeth out with a slow spring driven drill. My dentist was a good dentist for the time and he was a nice, red headed, man with green eyes who would whistle while he worked..
I was so afraid of dentistry for most of my life that I avoided them until I had a tooth ache problem, including a front tooth broken by a gun barrel when I was in the Army, in my 20s, and another soldier turned around and whacked me in the mouth. I had a drunk dentist at one in the morning messing with that and I also had shatter lines in the adjacent teeth I had to live with for years.
That stuff was about 60 years ago and now after getting all of my teeth in good shape including two implants I have six months cleanings and I am taking good care of my mouth that is full of a ton of dental work.
I knew better when I was younger but I did not do a good job until it finally dawned on me that prevention is a lot cheaper than all of the other bad stuff that costs a lot. So there’s that, wisdom from an old man, the OldTexan.
Re: AI translating old texts
I’m waiting for AI to translate rongorongo (Easter Island script) and the Voynich Manuscript.
But not past my bedtime.
Easter Island translation – Wooly Mamoths arrive on the beach, push over the heads, stomp on the breadfruit, and leave!
om:
Guess you’ve seen these fun videos too:
_____________________________
@vincentx2850
Fun fact: study on fossil droppings revealed that mammoth and other extinct elephant relatives were the main seed disperser for wild pumpkins in North America. Guess the love for pumpkins runs in the family.
–“Elephant Smash Giant Pumpkins”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psxIrjt5SX4
Why the heck would 5 to 10% of skulls have holess drilled in them?Seems like a very high number. What were they trying to cure?
huxley:
No I hadn’t seen it. Thanks!
CultivatingMan:
Obesity, pre-Ozempic?
@CultivatingMan:What were they trying to cure?
Really hard to say, but it’s very widespread, Asia, Europe, the Americas, from the Stone Age to today. Lots of cultures came up with it apparently independently. Pre-modern Western Europeans might have had totally different reasons from pre-Columbian Peruvians. There are some very strange people today who try to do it on themselves, and they have various mystical theories.
Migraines.
Probably something along the lines of:
– I feel awful.
– My head is pounding.
– Never been this bad.
– Gotta release the pressure.
– Where did I put that drill / hammer / nail?
(One can begin to understand why the discovery of the therapeutic benefits of willow bark was so revolutionary…)
The boss man’s time is what is important.
The most common weapons was the club , you hit your enemy on the head he goes down , you progress to the next enemy .If they don’t die immediately , they get subdural hematoma . This happened a lot so drilling a hole to relieve the pressure makes sense , might as well try it ,they were gonna die anyway