Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Praefectus
This research should also help pin down a date for the earliest form of proto-golf.
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For what looks like a molar it is surprisingly hard to pull effectively without a reasonable set of tools. The roots are deeply set in the jawbone. Amateur attempts at pulling molars are known to break jaws.
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It seems likely that someone could've done this themselves. Someone used to working on animal products turning one of their own tools on their teeth. Just sitting there grinding away, possibly over multiple sessions until the pain went away. I only skimmed the paper but I didnt see anything that suggested it was done in one shot.
Probably because they didnt have pliers or grippy things. I'd assume they'd have to cut, wedge and knock it out. At which point drilling slowly starts to sound like the less bad option.
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This article hits on one of my favorite Archeology facts... the first sign(s) of a true Civilization can be found in the mended Bones of those that should've died! Love triumphs (and gives me goosebumps)! ^_^
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I wonder if and how they sealed the canal(s). In a root canal they remove the infected pulp but also sterilize the canal and seal it to prevent infection from moving up into the tissues above the tooth. Maybe it just heals itself if left open like any wound? The patient apparently lived with it for years afterward.
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I'm pretty resistant to local anesthetics and all of my dentists have understandingly upped the dosage for me except one. He snapped at me "That's not pain, that's pressure!" and refused to give me another shot while I tried not to squirm in the chair. He was also old enough to have performed the procedure described in the article.
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I know you're just riffing on the Geico ads, and I promise I'm not yelling at you about this joke, but it really pisses me off when people use neanderthals as a punchline. Particularly given that we very likely played a pretty damn direct role in extinguishing them.
(It also annoys me that there's no convincing the majority of modern humans that "cavemen" were never a thing. I am not optimally suited for the society I live in...)
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Let's see... going to the dentist to have an old cap removed and an implant installed.
Dose of Valium an hour before? Check.
Lots of local anesthetic? Check.
Nitrous oxide, flow set to "stun"? Check.
AirPods and a special play list of loud, fast music (e.g. The Ramones) to drown out the sound of the drill? Check.
Hour later leave a nervous wreck, a reverse, sweat-stained Shroud of Turin effect of my entire body left on the paper covering the dentist chair? Check.
I am so glad I live now. Wow, and to think Og might have done this to himself? Unbelievable.
Dose of Valium an hour before? Check.
Lots of local anesthetic? Check.
Nitrous oxide, flow set to "stun"? Check.
AirPods and a special play list of loud, fast music (e.g. The Ramones) to drown out the sound of the drill? Check.
Hour later leave a nervous wreck, a reverse, sweat-stained Shroud of Turin effect of my entire body left on the paper covering the dentist chair? Check.
I am so glad I live now. Wow, and to think Og might have done this to himself? Unbelievable.
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I usually go the other direction: Novocaine's aftermath usually hurts me for hours afterward while the pain of the drill is gone as soon as the drill is out of my mouth, so I frequently request no anesthetic.
Honestly, it's not that hard to tolerate. It sucks, yes, but I have not lived a sheltered life free of the necessity to learn how to handle pain when necessary. And I'd prefer five minutes of sharp pain to several hours of dull ache (and possible self inflicted bite injuries), sooo...
I know I'm far from the only one, either, given that none of the four different dentists I've asked to skip the Novocaine objected or said "what do you mean, skip the Novocaine?" One expressed mild surprise, but registered neither objection nor skepticism. The others didn't even register mild surprise.
edit: and honestly, it's not hard to imagine a paleolithic hunter gatherer would have at least as much reason to learn how to tolerate pain as I have. I don't find it hard to believe that a paleolithic group that had already experienced the eventual relief from instinctive "picking" as described in the article would have the bright idea to speed up the process, either!
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my dentist put in my file that I'm resistant to local so they started immediately going for max dose instead of inject, wait, inject some more
one time it still wasn't enough and they were like "next step is injecting the roof of your mouth and that will hurt more than the drill and fill" so I opted out of that and the procedure wasn't really painful, just felt unpleasantly cold
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The majority of flesh wounds heal without treatment. Splinters, when ignored, will usually be encapsulated in dead tissue and naturally flake off with a chunk of epidermis in a few weeks. That doesn't mean that ignoring treatment of either is a good IDEA, but most people pretty badly underestimate the body's actual capacity to handle untreated wounds.
The other thing to realize here is that the tissue was already infected. There was really nothing to lose, here, in terms of additional risk--if the unplugged hole did bring in new infectious material, it wouldn't have been any worse than the infection that allowing oxygen into the hole had killed!
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Same, the last time I had a cavity filled (thankfully many, many years ago, I take better care of my teeth these days) I was at 3X jabs of the local anesthetic and still feeling pain. So I've known the pain of what a sharp implement inside your tooth feels like and I can't imagine how painful this procedure must have been, or how painful the infection was that lead to this procedure being the better choice.
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I can't fathom how they got to a place where they figured out drilling a tooth would help the pain.
Someone with amazing deductive skills noticed someone with tooth pain stopped complaining after they accidentally chipped the tooth exposing the nerves?
Someone with amazing deductive skills noticed someone with tooth pain stopped complaining after they accidentally chipped the tooth exposing the nerves?
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Poor patient was actually called "Theodore," but the dentist only asked what his name was after putting all the tools in his mouth, so he is forever "Og" on his chart, and therefore the archaeological record.
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I once had a lipoma that turned out to go much deeper than ultrasound had suggested removed from my neck next to my spine while under local anesthetic and the surgeon was happy to shoot me up every time I said I could feel the scalpel cutting. Incidentally that procedure cured headaches I'd been having for a decade before the lipoma got so big enough for me to know it was there.
I've also come out of general anesthetic in the middle of procedures twice. One time I opened my eyes to find the oral surgeon had a knee on my chest, a chisel in my mouth, and a hammer in his hand. He sounded very surprised as he said "He's awake!" and "You'll be fine.." and "Give him more." Then I felt the cold drip in my arm again...
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We presume they were cavemen because caves preserve their remains best, so that's where we find them after more than 50,000 years. It's a form of survivorship bias.
We presume there was no anesthetic used because we keep forgetting how often human knowledge was lost during the ages. There were people specialised in treating dental issues long before the beginnings of modern dentistry. Natural anesthetics were used when needed, such as strong alcohol.
Taking into consideration how successful this particular procedure was, the operator may well have been as skilled as a medieval barber surgeon or feldsher. Traditions that are not even mentioned in the article.
We presume there was no anesthetic used because we keep forgetting how often human knowledge was lost during the ages. There were people specialised in treating dental issues long before the beginnings of modern dentistry. Natural anesthetics were used when needed, such as strong alcohol.
Taking into consideration how successful this particular procedure was, the operator may well have been as skilled as a medieval barber surgeon or feldsher. Traditions that are not even mentioned in the article.
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Wonder if it was painful...
I know this is a funny question, but it is very possible that Neanderthals had discovered the painkilling effects of different plants, including the opium poppy.
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I'd be skeptical of any claims the opium poppy or its concentrated derivatives was available to Neanderthals in Siberia. They might have had willow bark and wild lettuce though. And alcohol.
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Couple of days ago somebody died at the dentist while under anesthesia. Their consciousness was lost to the void.
Turns out anesthesiology is a real job.
Turns out anesthesiology is a real job.
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That's interesting - of course I can only speak for myself, but to me the sensation of a local anesthetic wearing off is only very mildly uncomfortable. Dental drilling, on the other hand, I find pretty awful.
I grew up with my dad saying "they'll give you shots and say all you'll feel is pressure, but it's still bad." That was my experience too and I thought it was normal, but sometime in my 20s my dentist said "No, that's not how it's supposed to work. Let's numb you a little more and try again." 5 minutes later and I could've cried: it really was suddenly just non-painful, dull pressure. The weird neural fingernails-on-a-chalkboard feeling and pain were actually gone.
It would never have occurred to me to prefer unmedicated drilling to the side effects of the numbness wearing off - for me, the one is so much worse than the other. It's kind of fascinating that it's the other way around for you. The nervous system is a heck of a thing.
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I have to wonder why pulling the tooth wouldnt be a better alternative than digging a hole in it. Especially considering they probably didnt have fillings back then.
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So, here's the thing about the effectiveness of the Novocaine during the actual procedure: it only works if the dentist hits the actual nerve, instead of just squirting it in the general vicinity and saying "good enough."
My current dentist heard me out when I asked him for no Novocaine, and noticed that part of the reason I gave him then was the same one you mentioned just now: it doesn't really kill all the pain anyway, just some of it, and not really enough of it. He gave me the same explanation I just gave you, and asked permission to demonstrate, which I gave him.
He was right. He's the first and only dentist who ever actually completely numbed the area that needed drilling, and he didn't do it via a more heroic dose, he did it via very precise injection placement. I couldn't feel a damn thing during the procedure.
But I still felt like a mule had kicked me for about three hours later, and also gave myself a couple of unpleasant internal bite wounds. Which was a bigger problem for me than the pain not being completely elided, so I'm right back to "if I have to get drilled again, I'm going back to no anesthetic and gutting it out."
Although I will take nitrous, when offered. Hell, I'll take nitrous for a cleaning. Do I need it? No. Does it make the experience a lot less stressful for everyone involved? YEP.
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You ever tried to sustain yourself on a paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet just by gumming it?
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No, we presume they were cavemen because we have lived in domiciles for hundreds of generations and have difficulty conceiving of large populations that do without permanent shelter.
I say this as somebody who has worked both paleological and archaeological digs, mind you. We find most paleolithic remains where they lived... which was not in caves.
Beyond our "you have to have a box to live in" bias, I think the popularity of the Lascaux Cave Paintings probably had a lot to do with reinforcing the "caveman" myth.
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No, somebody with pretty normal deductive skills figured out that instinctively picking at the painful area (as recounted in the article) eventually caused the pain to go away, and somebody with a lot of self-confidence decided to see if you could speed the process up instead of waiting around a few years for the picking to finally get through the enamel and expose the infected tissue to oxygen.
They didn't need to understand the nerve part, or the oxygen part. They just needed both to notice that when people picked at their painful tooth long enough to break through, the pain went away, and to have the bright idea that maybe you could hurry that process the hell along!
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You go to the dentist cave, the hygienist cleans your teeth and picks out the auroch sinew, they paint your teeth on the wall, Dr. Og comes in, asks if you've been behaving yourself, talks about his new vacation cave in Lascaux, off you go.
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That's not a funny question, in fact, it's not any kind of question?
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