【AI前沿】Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago

Og say ahhhh-OW!Neanderthals drilled cavities to treat a toothache 59,000 years ago“Every time I go to the dentist, I think about that guy,” researcher says.Kiona N. Smith–May 13, 2026 2:00 pm|48The hole in the chewing surface of this molar was drilled by a Neanderthal with a stone tool.Credit:

      Zubova et al. 2026The hole in the chewing surface of this molar was drilled by a Neanderthal with a stone tool.Credit:

      Zubova et al. 2026Text
    settingsStory textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth*StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers onlyLearn moreMinimize to navThe world’s first dentist was a Neanderthal, according to a recent study.59,000 years ago in what’s now southwestern Siberia, a Neanderthal had a toothache. It must have been a doozy because they were desperate enough to sit still while someone drilled into the tooth with a sharp stone tool, removing the infected tissue and ultimately relieving the pain.The process left behind a hole in the tooth that paleoanthropologist Alisa Zubova of the Russian Academy of Sciences and her colleagues recognized, tens of millennia later, as dental work. Archaeologists unearthed the tooth at Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia, and it’s now the oldest known evidence of dentistry—oranydirect medical treatment.This tooth is the world’s oldest evidence of dentistry, or any other medical procedure, for that matter.Credit:
                                  Zubova et al. 2026This tooth is the world’s oldest evidence of dentistry, or any other medical procedure, for that matter.Credit:

      Zubova et al. 2026Experimental archaeology in actionThe tooth, found in a layer of sediment laid down 59,000 years ago, is an upper third molar with an unusually large hole in the chewing surface, reaching all the way down into the pulp chamber—the protected inner space of the tooth that houses the nerves and blood vessels. Around the edges of the hole, Zubova and her colleagues noticed scratches, which, in addition to the hole’s unusual size and shape, made the archaeologists wonder if it had been drilled intentionally to relieve the pain of a tooth infection. That possibility “demanded special analysis,” said Zubova in an interview withPLOS.Drilling a hole in a tooth to relieve pain sounds counterintuitive at first, but it’s the easiest, least destructive way to remove the infected tissue. Exposing the pulp chamber leads to the death of the exposed nerves, which takes away the pain. This didn’t become common practice until a few hundred years ago, but at least one Neanderthal apparently figured it out and convinced someone to go along with it.To test whether the hole was made intentionally, Zubova and her colleagues examined the tooth more closely with scanning electron microscopes, micro-CT, and Raman spectroscopy, a technique for identifying the chemical makeup of an object. They also made their own stone drilll or perforator (a sharp stone tool that would have been used to drill or punch holes in hides, bone, and other materials) and tested it on three human teeth.Two of the teeth were museum specimens, whose age and context curators didn’t know, making them less useful for other kinds of research. But one, an upper left third molar with an untreated cavity, came straight from the mouth of one of the authors—for science!(In most scientific papers, a section at the end outlines the specific contributions of each author, which usually means tasks like writing, data collection, production of stone tools, and analysis. This paper’s author contributions did not list “donation of a tooth for experimental archaeology,” so we can only speculate about who bit the proverbial bullet.)The holes and striations left behind by Zubova and her colleagues’ experiments very closely matched what they saw on the molar from Chagyrskaya, which means it’s very likely that the 59,000-year-old tooth was, in fact, the aftermath of an actual Paleolithic medical procedure.We already knew that Neanderthals, and even earlier hominins, took care of their sick, injured, and disabled; archaeologists have found fossil hominins, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, sporting healed injuries and bone infections that couldn’t have survived without, at the very least, someone bringing them food while they healed. But the Chagyrskaya molar is evidence of skilled medical treatment. It’s the difference between chicken soup and minor surgery.“Treating a carious tooth is not just feeding or guarding someone. It requires diagnosing the source of pain, selecting an appropriate tool, performing a painful, invasive action, and persisting despite the patient’s discomfort,” said Kolobova. “That is active, targeted medical intervention.”And—in a frankly impressive success for dental surgery performed in a cave with a sharp rock—the patient went on to use the tooth for years afterward. The molar showed signs of normal long-term wear and tear, which could have only happened