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Fun fact. Stone-age level tech people or hunter gatherers have perfect teeth. Their teeth meet perfectly, they have no wisdom teeth issues for example (in fact

• creep 8y ago
  Do you know anything else about teeth? I have 2 baby teeth with no adult teeth to replace them, and I was also born without 4 back molars (one on each side, top and bottom). Consequently, now that my wisdom teeth are coming in, I seem to have lots of room and may not need to have them removed.
  • andrepd 8y ago
    I suggest seeing a doctor rather than ask diagnoses to strangers on the internet :)
    • creep 8y ago
      A doctor was how I found out about these things. They don't know why. Anyways, nothing is particularly concerning me, I'm just curious.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • nate_meurer 8y ago
      There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for peoples' thoughts on a discussion forum that's built for, you know, discussion.
  • nate_meurer 8y ago
    I highly recommend keeping your wisdom teeth if you have room for them. I have all four -- a full rack as my dentist says -- and they're nice to have; I chew pretty far back in my mouth so they get lots of use. Cleaning them hasn't been a problem so far. I'm 42 years old. Like you, I also had a baby tooth that didn't fall out. It was anchored to the bone somehow. It interfered with the movement of my adult teeth as they came in and thus had to be removed in my teens. It was a pain to get out. It had to be broken into pieces and dug out, and since there was no adult tooth to replace it, they put in an implant, which has also worked just fine.
    • creep 8y ago
      My baby teeth are anchored to the bone as well, but not very strongly. They discovered them when fitting me for braces and decided they would just leave them. They didn't put anchors on the babies and just told me to pray they wouldn't fall out and they haven't! I will probably keep my wisdom teeth. They're not fully in yet but I like the idea of not pulling anything out of my face, you know?
• filoleg 8y ago
  Neanderthal skulls in on average were more massive than modern humans, not just jaws. That alone would explain it
  • ohf 8y ago
    Neanderthal isn't a synonym for stone-age.
• andrei_says_ 8y ago
  It’s likely they also didn’t stress-grind their teeth 24/7. Living in constant stress will destroy one’s teeth over time. That, and longer life expectancy.
  • wafflebear 8y ago
    Many stone age people definitely lived in constant stress 24/7. A rival tribe could raid your village at any moment and kill/rape/enslave you.
    • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      Even if there aren't any rival tribes around, worry about other creatures (lions, tigers, bears!) and unpredictable natural events (flooding &c.) could be a bit stressful.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • andrei_says_ 8y ago
      not sure if this would cause a stress field similar to the one of living in capitalism, with the addition of a media machine existing solely on distress, amplifying fear, distraction and anxiety as a means to get business. No way to check this hypothesis, fortunately or unfortunately.
    • underwater 8y ago
      That sounds like a caricature on cavemen civilisation. I’ve read sources that suggest some hunter gatherers were extremely violent and others weren’t. But, really, we just don’t know.
    • firmgently 8y ago
      The standard modern view on why stress is so bad for our health is that it builds up levels of cortisol and other stress hormones, which prepare us to act explosively in a fight or flight response, the doing of which uses up the stress hormones... a bit like a spring coiling up then releasing. But because in our modern lives we don't do the running away or fighting we don't use up the cortisol and it just simmers away in us. I don't think it makes much sense to compare our modern concept of stress to very different times in the development of our society. Wild animals are in constant threat of being killed but I wouldn't think it makes sense to imagine them as stressed. They just live in the moment in a very different way to us. Maybe 'stone-age' isn't far enough in the past to be different enough to modern life in that way. Even if that is the case, humans are very adaptable, the way a modern city dweller feels if they get attacked isn't necessarily the same way someone would feel who has experienced it many times. I've had my own very small experience related to this. Just over a year ago I gave up my bricks and mortar home in the city and moved into a caravan. It was a wreck and I had to completely rebuild the interior and re-do the electrics and plumbing myself. I learned that my walls and windows provide no security - you could break into my home with your bare hands, with a hammer or axe it would be very easy. I carried a lot of fear in my head at first. In bed I'd be worrying that there'd be a gas explosion or fire because of something I'd done wrong. Once I found a couple of massive surly travellers eyeing up my solar panels, thinking I wasn't around. I had to go out and show that I was around and confident and not a target. I've met all kinds of people and not grown up sheltered at all but these two carried a real heavy, violent air - for a good week or two I was expecting them to turn up in the night to try to rob me, it was very hard to get that thought out of my head, and then to sleep in basically an unprotected tin can with plastic windows. Now I stay on a farm hundreds of miles away from any friends or family, there's no contract or notion of stability, if I fell out with the farmer I might have to leave immediately. I don't drive and at times haven't had enough money to pay to be towed somewhere else (work has been tricky... especially in winter when I'm trying to keep my laptop alive by solar, I've limited mobile data and it's 0-5C indoors), so a few cross words and I could basically be instantly homeless. Shops are an hour walk away, once I put a foot wrong on a track which nobody (not even locals) walks along and instantly sunk up to my waist in thick, sucking sinking mud and genuinely felt I might die there. LOL. The point I'm ramblingly trying to get around to making is that after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before. I've learned that the kind of stresses I have now are somehow easier to bear than the kind I used to have in my old life. I'd somehow rather fight off an intruder in the night than try to navigate a Kafka-esque phone menu system and be condescended to by a passive-agressive CSR. Cold is a feeling I can distract myself away from by writing some code or mending something, whereas receiving a bill with big red capital letters on it could negatively affect my state of mind for several days. When I'm standing over a pit emptying my reeking toilet I just compare it (favourably) to talking to a letting agent. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding...
• positr0n 8y ago
  When I was a young child I told my mom I shouldn't have to brush my teeth since cavemen didn't have to brush their teeth. She replied "yes, but cavemen could die at 20 years old from painful tooth infections that spread up to their brain" I never complained about brushing my teeth again.
  • ww520 8y ago
    You have one heck of smart mom.
    • buvanshak 8y ago
      But the argument is kind of stupid. It would have made a little sense if she said something like "Cave men didn't ate candy bars" or something like that..
  • jacobolus 8y ago
    If you want to avoid tooth infections, the #1 thing you can do is stop eating sugary food / drinking alcohol or sugar water; for a more complete caveman approach, cut back on other starchy foods like rice, bread, and pasta. The #2 thing you can do is occasionally visit the dentist for a checkup or whenever your teeth give you trouble. The #3 thing you can do is occasionally apply topical fluoride (it’s not clear what difference there is between drinking fluoridated water, brushing weekly, brushing daily, ...). Getting a nutritious diet is also probably important. Our modern culture taboos anything less than brushing multiple times per day, but it’s not clear how reliable the evidence is supporting this as a blanket requirement (the studies I’ve seen had many other confounding variables, but admittedly I did not do an exhaustive literature review), and most of the tooth infections probably result from other causes. There are people with perfect teeth who brush rarely, and people with frequent caries who brush religiously after every meal. On average, hunter–gatherers have better teeth than people in agricultural societies, including modern ones. They don’t have access to oral surgery, so when things go bad they can go very bad. But that’s not really related to brushing.
    • madengr 8y ago
• gowld 8y ago
  Babies drink milk. Your source mentions "chewing harder foods" but not babies. Some people don't even have wisdom teeth, so that seems like a mutation that had been spreading, not caused by chewing softer foods.
  • toasterlovin 8y ago
    Some of us have even fewer. I have 24 teeth (instead of 32).
    • wetpaws 8y ago
      Interesting. I have 30 teeth and I know some people can have 28, but I was not aware you can go beyond that.
      • soperj 8y ago
        How do you get 30? I have 31, but that's because I have only 3 front ones on the bottom due to an anomaly.
        • wetpaws 8y ago
          I have no bottom wisdom teeth. Never had them. IIRC any combination of 28-32 is relatively common.
      • spydum 8y ago
        ? I've got 34 technically. Behind my wisdom teeth I have little buds of teeth which can never surface (not nearly the size of a full wisdom tooth/molar) Supernumerary I believe it's called. I happen to have a pretty long jaw, so still have my full set of wisdoms surfaced.
    • stevesimmons 8y ago
      I have no eye teeth. My sister got an extra set of eye teeth. Obviously she got mine. Teeth are weird. And correlation isn't causation.
  • 8y ago
• oh_sigh 8y ago
  A more correct thing to say would maybe be they have less dental crowding than humans who are living in the modern world. There are many other oral maladies beyond dental crowding that people without access to modern dental care just have to live with.
• inteleng 8y ago
  This comment is ridiculous and not based in fact.
• Empact 8y ago
  Another major aspect of jaw development is tongue posture. Resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth and breathing through your nose results in increased jaw development, e.g. a broader palate, thanks to the bone's natural response to give and grow under pressure. I've been playing with this myself, thanks to discovering recently that I grew up with an undiagnosed mild to moderate tongue tie. I've changed my tongue position, and even as an adult have noticeably expanded my palate such that there is more room in my arch than their was before (as determined by modest gaps developing between my mid-molars). In short it's been a big discovery for me this year, and the results are manifest in my life. Sad that this is not well understood by orthodontists and such everywhere.
  • moonman272 8y ago
    Could you tell me more how you’ve done this?
    • busterbaxter 8y ago
      See my above comment
  • graeme 8y ago
    Can you point me to more on this? A technical name for it, etc I have bruxism at night. Generally, my jaw grinds down too much. Hard to stop, because I'm asleep. I tried pushing my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, and it feels like the opposite of grinding. I'd like to research and see if there's any link. (I'm really out of options for reducing bruxism) Are you pressing the tongue or just resting it up top?
    • busterbaxter 8y ago
      The practice is called orthotropics. I can vouch for this user's experience myself, have had difficulty breathing for many years which led to poor teeth and a narrow palate. Once I received a palatal expander i realized how important it was to keep tongue pressure flat on the roof of the mouth. I practice regularly now and have seem improvements to teeth, breathing, and facing structure. It's a shame this stuff isn't taught more. You can find more details in this video: https://youtu.be/eh9OqEd5z1k https://youtu.be/eh9OqEd5z1k
• delbel 8y ago
  testosterone levels can elongate jaw development later in life. On another note, I got rid of fluoride based toothpaste because the scientific evidence is bad, and switched to just coconut oil and eat pro-biotics. If my teeth hurt, I assume my body is robbing the calcium to neutralize something and I take calcium and try to eat better.
  • skj 8y ago
    Is your policy based on good scientific evidence?
    • spookthesunset 8y ago
      Probably not.....
    • delbel 8y ago
      coconut oil was in one of my tissue culture protocols (sorry forgot which plant) so I thought, what the hell I'll try it as tooth paste. It has a known mild anti-bacteria effect and oil is hydrophobic. It coats your teeth well and stays there. There were other people from a google search that use it, it just worked for me. If its good enough for a petri dish then its good enough for me. hell, here's a crackpot theory website linking to a study saying its the best possible toothpaste known so far... https://www.davidwolfe.com/coconut-oil-is-better-than-toothpaste/ https://www.davidwolfe.com/coconut-oil-is-better-than-toothp...
      • justasitsounds 8y ago
        If David 'Avocado' Wolfe said that water is wet I would reflexively have to check the faucets. 'Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact it's the energy of the center of the sun. It's a male energy that comes down off the sun and it.. actually, of all the plants, the cacao is right on line target the center of the sun, which we call in our body, the heart, and actually cacao is right up with the center of the sun, which is the center of the heart, which is called the sacred heart.' - David Wolfe, new-age huckster and scam artist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80O4gezNSnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80O4gezNSnY
• John_KZ 8y ago
  No. They definitely did not have anything even resembling "perfect teeth". You article only refers to crowding. Bad teeth and infections were roughly as common 20,000 years ago as they are today. The difference is that back then, they could kill you.
• gregwebs 8y ago
  up-voted for pointing out this disruptive fact. However, the explanation is over-simplistic. Perhaps a bigger contributory factor is whether diet contains the nutritional factors require for proper teeth formation. The case for this factor was made convincingly a century ago [1]. [1] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch5