Long before civilisation learnt to name pain, Neanderthals were already trying to ease it. A 59,000-year-old molar from Siberia, drilled carefully with a jasper tool, points to dental treatment far older than anything previously tied to Homo sapiens. The cavity’s polished edges show the person lived on and kept using the tooth long after the procedure—painful, certainly, but deftly done. The find also questions the old habit of dismissing Neanderthals as crude beings. Dentistry, traced to the Indus Valley around 7000 BC and later detailed in the Sushruta Samhita, suddenly feels less distant. Every civilisation likes to imagine its wisdom as timeless, until archaeology uncovers something older beneath the dust.
