Holy fuck.
Can you imagine some guy drilling holes into your teeth with nothing but elbow grease and a stone drill? Desperation will drive you to madness, I guess.
So neanderthals had a more accessible healthcare system than we do gotcha
Friends and sharp rocks stay free, it’s just the nerd shit like medical training and anesthesia you’ve gotta pay for
phew I kinda feel good about living in this modern age. The article doesn’t mention anesthesia but maybe neanderthals used it ? feels like drilling out a cavity with stone tools would benefit from anesthesia
drilling out a cavity with stone tools would benefit from anesthesia
Probably just used a larger stone.
“Nurse, prep patient.”
“Yes, doctor.”
hits patient in the head with a club to knock him out
Yokel anesthesia
😂 In Earth’s Children, the main character occasionally uses anesthetic beverages to operate on others painlessly. I don’t know how documented that is. When I have some free time, I’ll look up anesthetic use during the
neolithicupper paleolithic.I suppose they could make wine, but anything stronger would require distilling. I’m not sure if they were capable of that? Though maybe there were other things they could smoke or ingest. Opium comes to mind, but not sure if that was available in the geographic regions you would find Neanderthals?
ah, yes, alcohol. Why not ! I don’t know where opium grows. In the books they use datura !
I don’t think there is evidence of neanderthals making pottery. Unlikely that they would be able to make alcohol.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/17/in-the-wild-chimps-likely-ingest-the-equivalent-of-several-alcoholic-drinks-every-day/ Wouldn’t necessarily need pottery.
That’s true enough, but also not reliable. There are not perfectly rotten fruits lying around at all times and places to be used for tooth surgery.
There are if you start taking them with you because funny fruit makes you feel good.
Ty, best one ive heard today🤣
We didn’t have any kind of local anesthesia until they figured out cocaine could do this near the end of the 1800s.
Medicinal plants to manage pain have been used since the dawn of time. Western medecine took a while to care about how patients feel though.
Cloves were about as close as you could get before that.
It probably hurt so bad already that this felt like a last resort. People used to say bugs or gremlins or w/e caused tooth pain so Neander Von Thal might have been begging to have it popped
I wonder what they then filled the cavity with.
Reminder that Neanderthals had bigger brains than us on average. FWIW.
Pine resin can be made into a glue that hardens quite well. Easy enough to replace if needed. However I have no idea if they used that.
Amber-style teeth sound pretty rad, honestly.
So, is this a Time Traveler, trying to use technology from the period of time they are supposed to belong in?
