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# The earliest dental intervention in human history was performed by Neanderthals
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/samoe-rannee-stomatologicheskoe-vmeshatelstvo-v-istorii-chelovechestva-vypolnili-neandertaltsy/
- Published: 2026-05-15T07:51:57.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:26:06.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archaeology, Science

In Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai, researchers have found a lower left second molar with a large artificial cavity on its chewing surface. Its age is about 59,000 years. Until now the earliest evidence of deliberate treatment of caries was thought to be the tooth of an Epigravettian Homo sapiens from Riparo Villabruna in northern Italy: some 14,000 years ago its owner scraped away the diseased enamel with something like a sharpened toothpick. The Chagyrskaya Neanderthal, it now turns out, outstripped him by 45,000 years, and worked not with a toothpick but with a proper jasper drill.

The authors of the study, Zubova, Zotkina, Olsen and a large team from the Kunstkamera and the Novosibirsk IAET, deployed an arsenal that would do credit to any modern dental consultation: traceology, scanning electron microscopy, micro-CT, Raman spectroscopy. The results agree: three partly overlapping depressions in the crown, V-shaped stepped grooves on the wall, and fine parallel micro-scratches, the characteristic traces of rotary motion. The cavity reaches down to the pulp chamber.

To be quite certain, the researchers reproduced the operation on three modern molars, using perforators made of the same Chagyrskaya jasper. It took between 5 and 50 minutes. The scraping method worked poorly, the drilling method excellently; at the threshold of the pulp the thin layer of dentine began to crumble of its own accord, which explains the shortage of traces in the deepest part of the find. The scenario in which the Neanderthal managed this by accident can be dismissed at once.

In addition, traces of a toothpick were found on the same tooth, in the distal interdental groove. That is, the patient, firstly, suffered from periodontal inflammation as well, and secondly, consistently applied two different instruments to two different problems. Two methods, two tasks, a deliberate choice: this does not look like the instinctive behaviour of primates, who chew bitter bark against parasites. Before us, quite definitely, is a conscious medical tactic.

The authors draw a cautious conclusion: the Neanderthals of Chagyrskaya Cave possessed the cognitive capacity to intuit the source of pain, to grasp that it could be removed, and to choose the most effective intervention. And they did so with all the attendant demands on fine motor skills, purposeful planning and the will to endure pain. Incidentally, the Neanderthals' tolerance of pain was, genetically, higher than ours.

Thus the list of proven Neanderthal achievements, which already includes symbolic art, bone tools and patrilocal social organisation, now gains invasive dentistry.

Incidentally, caries is rare among Neanderthals, but in Chagyrskaya Cave there are already two such cases: beside Chagyrskaya 64 lay the milk tooth of a girl of 9 to 11 years with two carious lesions. Most likely the cause is not a carbohydrate diet but the composition of the oral microflora of this particular population. That is, caries may have been, so to speak, a local Chagyrskaya misfortune, to which the locals responded with an equally local invention.

It follows that the craft of the dentist goes back in history to at least the middle of the Mikulino interglacial.