New Delhi: Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest dental treatment, a treated tooth cavity from 60,000 years ago. And the patient wasn’t a Homo Sapiens, they were a Neanderthal. A paper published in PLOS One Journal on 13 May describes how Neanderthals living in the Chagyrskaya Cave in southern Russia used stone tools to drill an infected tooth, remove the infected part and create a cavity.
“The concavity on the tooth (we found) is not natural. It was created intentionally by a human hand, specifically by a Neanderthal, using a pointed lithic tool,” said Lydia Zotkina, one of the co-authors of the study, in a press release. “This, to our knowledge, is the oldest evidence of an invasive dental treatment in human evolution.”
While there is existing archaeological evidence of Neanderthals using toothpicks, and even medicinal plants like poplar tree barks, dental cavities were as yet unexplored. This discovery is striking because removing infected teeth using stone tools requires fine motor skills and planning, which shows an advanced level of thinking in Neanderthals.
The authors of the study, from the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Science, first discovered the tooth as part of a routine excavation visit to the Chagyrskaya Cave. A common Neolithic site, the cave is the site of over 90,000 archaeological finds including human and Neanderthal fossils, stone tools, and bone tools.
The authors observed that the single molar tooth had a significant level of ‘damage’ never before seen in any Neanderthal tooth. They conducted traceological studies to understand whether the damage was from natural wear and tear.
The study revealed that the cavity was not natural, and was caused by repeated, rotational grooves caused by a pointed tool being drilled into the tooth. Moreover, when the archaeologists performed a micro-CT scan on the tooth, they realised that this drilling happened when the person was alive—meaning it was an intentional dental treatment.
“This procedure would have hurt, but it would also have ultimately alleviated the pain of a tooth infection by removing the damaged part of the tooth,” said the press release.
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How was the procedure identified
According to the study, there’s previous evidence of such dental procedures identified in Homo Sapiens in the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and later periods. This led the authors to deduct that the cavity they discovered could also be an intentional medical intervention.
However, to conclusively prove that stone tools could create such a cavity, the scientists also performed real-time experiments on teeth.
“We conducted manual drilling on a modern human tooth and two Homo Sapiens teeth specimens from archaeological collections,” said Zotkina in the press release. “The findings were a clear match.”
Not only was drilling a hole in the teeth entirely effective using a stone tool, the lesions created also matched the ones visible on the Neanderthal tooth.
The study is an important addition in growing evidence of Neanderthal capabilities. It shows that the species was capable of identifying the source of pain in teeth, figuring out how to treat it, and also applying the manual dexterity needed for an efficient operation. More specifically, the paper said that their findings show Neanderthals had the cognitive capabilities to endure painful treatment to alleviate future discomfort.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)