Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago(arstechnica.com)

42 pointsby Bender8 hours ago3 comments

AngryData5 hours ago
As someone who has experienced serious tooth infection and internal pressure out of reach of dentistry, im not too surprised. It took everything I had even with tons of benzocaine to not go medieval on my face with my toolbox.
If I was living in the stone age I probably would of tried to bust the tooth out with a rock and stick if nobody else had any solutions.
- alterom4 hours ago
  Sure, but they didn't bust the tooth out with a rock and stick.
  They drilled cavities. They did dentistry, with dentistry tools.
  Neanderthals practiced dentistry 59,000 years ago.
  Everything we know about Neanderthals seems to be just the tip of the iceberg given that. Not long ago, we thought Homo Sapiens were obviously more intelligent, it's in the name! (That, and obviously there's more of them in our DNA, so...)
  We might need to rethink that.
Robdel125 hours ago
This is so awesome. This is just a dumb off the cuff thought but I do wonder how hardwired this is into us as a species. I have a crummy autoimmune disease and I can’t tell you how many times when I’m in bad pain my brain is like “cut it off” or something like that.
deafpolygon5 hours ago
Maybe this is proof of time-travel.
- jamiek88an hour ago
  NO. NO TIME TRAVEL. NO ALIENS.
  Every fucking time we learn something cool about our ancestors someone attempts to undermine it with shit like this.
  Neanderthals doing dentistry is way, way, way cooler and more interesting than your fucking woo.
  Every single time.
- 4289076290867an hour ago
  [dead]