Science Reveals Neanderthals Had Dentists 60,000 Years Ago

0:00And now a word from our sponsor South by Southwest London. Imagine a future where things just make sense. In the 1700s, we had canals. In the 1800s, the railways. Then telecom, fibre optic. And now? In a world that's more unsure than ever before, we need the answers. South by Southwest London presents over 900 speakers, 200 music artists, and 100 films in one location in June. To find out how they merge together and shape the future in person, visit southbysouthwestlondon.com. That's S-X-S-W-LON-DON.COM Penny, what do you think a visit to the dentist was like 60 ,000 years ago? Absolutely terrifying.

0:39Don't make me do this. We are doing this. That's what we're doing. Travelling back in time to... 60 ,000 years ago, the earliest evidence of dentistry from a cave in Siberia. Right. And guess what? What? It's a Neanderthal dentist. A Neanderthal dentist. Not just a 60 ,000 year ago one. And it's also not really our species. Well, that's what we're going to be finding out all about today on The World, The Universe and Us from New Scientist. I'm Dr Penny Sarchet. And I'm Dr Rowan Hooper. So the story here, Neanderthal dentistry, it was a thing. It wasn't just like smashing your face with a club to get the rotten tooth out.

1:17There was a kind of dentistry. And we know this because this tooth that's been found in the cave, 59 ,000 years old. It shows signs of this deliberate, maybe drilling. What? Yeah, drilled out too. And we're going to get all into that, but we're also going to stick with Neanderthals for the whole episode because we also have news of a mysterious Neanderthal knee print preserved in a cave. But first, let's do the dentistry. We've got Sam Wong here to share all the gory details with us. Yes, so this comes from a cave in Siberia, and it's a cave that's full of Neanderthal remains. They've got lots of stone tools in there as well.

1:54It's about 50 ,000 to 60 ,000 years old, this stuff. And the researchers found this strained tooth. It's a molar with a big hole in it. And at first they thought, oh, it's just a broken tooth. Maybe it was damaged when the person was alive or maybe in the thousands of years after it got broken. But the more they looked at it, the stranger it was because this was not just damage. It was like a smooth, round hole in it. And it looked like this tooth had been deliberately drilled into. I'm not going to enjoy this episode. Wince-inducing, isn't it? So, so many questions. But first off, do we have any idea how Neanderthals would have done this procedure, let's call it?

2:32Well, so it is very surprising, but there have been hints that Neanderthals had some amount of medical know-how. So there's evidence that they sometimes ate medicinal plants like yarrow and chamomile, which are, you know, the bitter tasting. They have no nutritional value, but they have been used as traditional medicines for anti-pain or anti-inflammatory effects. They also made birch tar, which is this sticky substance that's got antibiotic properties. So there's some suggestion they might have used that as a kind of wound treatment. But I don't think anybody would have expected that they were capable of this kind of surgery.

3:04Up till now, the oldest evidence of purposeful dental work is from 14 ,000 years ago. That was from a Homo sapiens tooth in Italy. And it was more like, you know, they'd been scratching the tooth with something, nothing like drilling. Wouldn't it be amazing if we learnt dentistry from the Neanderthals? Just putting that out there. Got a few genes and also dentistry from them. Go on, Sam. Yeah. So the detailed analysis of this tooth cavity suggests it was made by rotating a narrow pointed stone tool. Most of the tools in this cave are made of jasper. So the researchers think that that's what they use, this kind of jasper stone point.

3:40So I read up about jasper after this and you'll know what it is. It's this polished gem. You often get it in a cheap gemstone that you can make beads on there. It's quite beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. And it's quartz. And so you can see how it could be used to make a drill bit. And we know that in prehistoric times it was used as drill bits in a bow saw and make patterns in bone or in stone for decoration or to drill holes in it. But to go into a gum and drill into that, How do you know that's what it was? Well, so it does seem improbable. So the researchers want to do some experiments to see if a tool like this really could have made that hole.

4:22So they did some tests on human teeth. Two of them were ancient Homo sapiens teeth. They didn't want to use Neanderthal teeth because they're too rare, too valuable. They also tried it on a modern human teeth that came from one of the researchers' mouths. Well, it was in there? No, no. She had had it taken out because of tooth decay. But she just happened to have had this tooth taken out. So they were like, right, let's have a go on that. So they used these Jasper tools. They had a go at trying to drill with their hands. And they succeeded in making a similar hole in these teeth. But it required really precise work and practice to prevent fracturing the tooth itself when they were drilling this.

5:03When you say drilling, it's more like twiddling. Holding this tool in their hand and twisting it. So, you know, manually drilling. It took them about 50 minutes to do this. And that was in an excised tooth. So doing it in somebody's mouth had obviously been much more difficult while the person's in agony. And yeah, it's just mind boggling. So one of the first things I came into my head when we had this story came in was, why would Neanderthals get tooth decay? Because they didn't have Coke and sweets to eat and gorge on, right? Donuts. But tooth decay, I mean, dental calculus, you know, the plaque on teeth is, we know that ancient people had terrible teeth.

5:46Yeah. And also chimps get cavities and other primates get cavities. And then I found this behaviour called wagging, which sounds really rude, but it's when chimps get fruit, like soft fruit or figs, and stuff them in their mouth. Is it wagging or wadging? Wadging? It's called wagging. Surely it's wadging. It's called radging. And they suck all the juice out of it. And it causes tooth decay for the chimps. And they can do it with honeycomb as well. So, yeah, you can see how there would be... And then bacteria might do it. You could get damage. So, yeah, possibly there is... Yeah, they have actually found bacteria associated with tooth decay on other Neanderthal teeth.

6:28So, yeah, I think it was rare in Neanderthals from what we know. But it did happen. And then, yeah, you don't have to have necessarily eaten lots of doughnuts to suffer from this problem. It's amazing to think about, isn't it? And then part of it is, and I guess this is the story of all medicine and people anyway, but how do you make the leap from, OK, you're in agony, I'm going to drill into your tooth for 50 minutes and it might get better as a result. Yeah. I'd be tempted to just live with the tooth decay. Well, imagine how bad it must be. Or maybe they knock them out. Yes. Yeah, it must have taken some, it seemed like whoever did this drilling knew what they were doing.

7:08They must have been able to intuit the source of the pain, where the pain was coming from, and then had the idea that if you try and remove that tissue, it's going to deal with the problem. So it's a remarkable amount of planning, foresight. Well, knowledge, like how did they pass on this knowledge? because they didn't have dentist books or dentist school or even maybe not language. Yeah, well, if this was happening, you know, on a semi-regular basis, they might have had the experience. Somebody in the group. A Neanderthal shamer. Yeah, there would have been somebody who presumably was responsible for kind of the medical knowledge or the how do we treat these problems who might have done this before.

7:48They might have been told this by their parents or something. They could have transmitted this knowledge. But it seems like they were successful. So that's the most incredible thing is that from the kind of polish, the rounded surface of the tooth, it looks like after the operation, this person was able to carry on chewing for maybe many years afterwards. Well, it's like when we see bones that have healed and fractures, we know that the fracture must have been treated and the person carried on for living so that there was care in that prehistoric society. I don't know if we've seen that in Neanderthals.

8:20I think there has been some evidence of them treating a wound. Yeah, that kind of thing. It's just kind of another piece of evidence in this growing pile that suggests they were really sophisticated and more like us than we ever thought. Stay with us for the mystery of the Neanderthal knee print. But we're going to take a moment to plug a brilliant new podcast from New Scientist. Yes, it's called Change Your Mind, hosted by our colleagues Helen Thompson and Kat Delonge. It's all about your brain, the claims, hacks and wellness trends that promise to make you happier, sharper, calmer even. And from supplements to sleep, cold plunges, even manifesting, they're asking, does any of this actually work?

9:01It's really great. I've heard the first episode. Helen talks about her experience with anxiety. They speak to psychotherapist Owen O 'Kane about all about anxiety and why it may not be something to eliminate after all. Absolutely fascinating stuff. real advice grounded in real science. You can find Change Your Mind from New Scientist wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to their first episode now. OK, Neanderthal knee print. This is going back further even in time than the dentist. Ah, OK. And the important question about the dentist, of course, is how much did they charge? This is Michael LePage, who's here, to ask all the important questions and tell us about an impression made in clay around 175 ,000 years ago.

9:46So that is much further back in time. In this cave where there are mysterious stalagmite circles, Michael, you've reported this story for us. Yeah, so this is a cave in the southwest of France, and it was discovered in 1990. And deep inside the cave, they discovered these mysterious circles that are made out of broken stalagmites. Now, these have been studied for more than 10 years now. And one of the members of the team called Sophie Verheiden, And she reported in Vienna on her latest findings. And I was at her talk and I also spoke to her afterwards. And so, you know, I think the most striking thing is next to one of these stone circles, they found an imprint.

10:25And they think this might be where a Neanderthal man or woman was kneeling next to one of these stone circles. Yeah. And so it's slightly underwhelming, the photo of the knee print. What made them think that this impression is a knee print of a Neanderthal? I mean, footprints can be so evocative. And I also think it conjures up this picture in my mind of this person kneeling there next to these stone circles. And what were they doing? Oh, yeah. No, no, no. It definitely conjures up an evocative image. But how do you know this little impression? Yeah. Well, the first thing is that it's made in clay, but it's been covered over with calcium carbonate.

11:06So that's the same sort of material that sort of drips down and forms the static mites. So we know that it's ancient, first of all. So it's not new. It wasn't left by the cavers or any other people sort of studying these. And then for Hayden's team, they've also recently shown that the cave entrance, when it collapsed about 140 ,000 years ago, and it's remained closed until those cavers found it in 1990. So we know that the people who were there were definitely Neanderthals because there were no modern humans in the region at that time. What also happened in this cave is after the Neanderthals were around, there were a lot of bears that moved in, and they basically obliterated most of the Neanderthal footprints.

11:45There's bloody bears moving into our place. It's a risk in caves. So obviously the question is, is this impression a bear impression? Anyway, they've got in someone who's apparently a bear specialist, and he has said, you're fascinated by this idea. I am. You know, if you're an archaeologist, you have a bear specialist on speed dial to confirm whether something is human or a bear. I mean, it's a useful contact. Yeah, yeah. Is there a mouse specialist and a rabbit specialist? You know. So, yeah, so the bear specialist, the bottom line is he doesn't think it's bear. So if it's human, it's got to be Neanderthal and it's most likely a knee print.

12:24Of course, you know, there are loads of ancient footprints and these are very well studied. knee prints is a whole new thing as far as for Hayden knows this is sort of the first one of this age that's been found yeah because people don't generally walk around on their knees so you know yeah no wonder there's not a field of knee prints so this is a whole new field of study now and she's sort of planning to sort of get a whole bunch of people to sort of kneel in clay and see what kind of impressions they make to try and back up this idea okay so in this burgeoning field of knee print studies um is it all about what it looks like but there's no way to really sort of prove that it actually is a new print?

13:00Well, possibly there is. So this is really amazing. There's work being done that's shown that calcium carbonate can actually sort of take in DNA and preserve it. So after I spoke with Verhaden, she was actually going off to meet with a researcher who sort of made this discovery and specializes in sort of retrieving DNA from these kinds of places. And this researcher thinks there's a chance that they could obtain DNA from the knee prints so we know i should say from crime scene studies of knee prints where they have studied knee prints it's well known that you know in knee prints you can have sort of hair cells and some skin cells and things like that can be left behind that contain dna so the crucial thing is how long was the knee print there before it got covered up so how long was the knee print in that cave before it got covered up by calcium carbonate and if it was quick there could be dna there which It would be absolutely amazing if you could obtain Neanderthal DNA.

13:56Kind of ridiculous from a knee print. From a knee print. Amazing. And so like you say, if this is a knee print, it conjures up what was it doing there. Tell us more about the stalagmite circles that this is next to. Yes, these are really intriguing. Obviously, the big question is what were they there for? So there's several of these circles. They made sort of piles of broken stalemites. Some of them are on their side. I mean, if you had just seen them without knowing the context, you think they remind me of those mammoth bone shelters that the Neanderthals used to make. And so you might think, well, maybe this was some kind of shelter.

14:36In a cave. Well, that's the thing. I mean, they're not just in a cave. They're 300 meters deep in a cave where it would have been pitch black. There are traces of fire on some of the stalagmites, some of the broken ones. So we know that it was lit at the time people were there. But you still think it's very unlikely that you would have built a shelter 300 metres inside a cave. So this suggests that these circles had some kind of ritual or religious significance. The neon holes kneeling to pray. It's so tempting to go there, isn't it? And this is what Verhalen was saying, is that it's very tempting to jump to these kind of conclusions, but we've got to try and find sort of some kind of evidence and get some sort of better idea of what was going on here.

15:20And that's what her team is trying to do. So they went to a lot of effort, though, to break these stalagmites that are deep in a cave. Yeah, it does suggest there's something very intriguing going on. Yeah, well, we didn't know that that's one of the latest findings. So when they found the stone circles it wasn't clear whether the neanderthals had just wandered in and found a bunch of broken stalagmites and they piled them up where they were but what uh verhaden's team has been able to do that with some of the broken off stalagmites they've been able to find the bases where they were broken off from then there's sort of a you know thin layer of calcium carbonate on top of those bases and they can date that they can date the calcium carbonate that's been put on top of the stone circles and they pretty much match up at around 170 years 170 000 years ago i should say not 175 and so they match up and so this is strong evidence that yeah the neanderthals did actually break these static mites and some of them you know they're 20 centimeters at the base so that's not easy to break so they were yeah as you're saying not for you but a neanderthal well they obviously had a delicate touch we know that with the bent string a very delicate touch But yeah, so they went to a lot of effort to break these and pile them up.

16:37And why? What were they for? It wasn't a shelter. What on earth were they doing with them? It's always tempting when we don't know what ancient humans were doing to say, well, it must have some religious or spiritual significance. Is that the way we're leaning? I mean, I think it is. It's the way I'm leaning. Yeah, I mean, it does seem quite plausible. Hayden was telling me that we know, I mean, there's some modern peoples who attach significance to caves, particularly the deep interior of caves. So the Mayan peoples, apparently, they used to make sort of various fertility jewellery and things out of stalagmites.

17:14But they used to collect this from the stalagmites that were deep inside a cave and not the ones that were near an entrance. So the location had a significance of these things. And so that's what her team is trying to pin down exactly. I mean, they found where a few of these stalagmites were broken off, but they're trying to pin down where each of them came from. I mean, maybe some of them came from other caves even, were carried from other caves. So they're trying to pin down the locations, get some sort of idea of, some sort of glimpse into the intentions of these builders. It's also really difficult to say because we only know this because it was in a cave sealed up.

17:50Like there may have been ritual sites all over the place, outdoors in forests and stuff, that have just gone over the thousands of years. I mean, I'm sure that was the case. if you look at what modern people do. It's almost certainly the case. So then we've got this special cave with these intriguing stagomites. We've got this knee print and it's all covered in this kind of quite useful then calcium carbonate. Are we expecting to find anything else there or did the bears just wreck it all? Well, for Hayden was telling me, every time they go to the cave, they find something new. But one particular hope, so some of these layers on part of the cave floor is covered by quite a thick layer now of calcium carbonate that's built up since the Neanderthals used it.

18:30So they're hoping that there might actually be footprints and things preserved under that layer. So she's sort of trying to find ways of scanning through that layer to see what's underneath. Because obviously they don't want to go in and break it up. They want to try and find some non-destructive way to see underneath this and see there could be more footprints, more knee prints, all sorts of things down there. Could reveal what on earth they were getting up to. Absolutely. It's just amazing. every time we do a modern paleontology, archaeology story the things that you can find out from the tiniest remains now teeth, fragments and a knee print It's just extraordinary It makes me think what we'll be able to do in a century's time and what other amazing techniques will we have That's all for this episode, thanks to our guests Sam Wong and Michael LePage and thanks to you for listening Do you follow wherever you get your podcasts?

19:24Goodbye for now Bye Bye.