Three views of the Neanderthal tooth with evidence of dental treatment Hexian Culture, Tourism and Sports Bureau, Ma’anshan A 59,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth found in a Siberian cave shows signs of deliberate drilling to treat a deep cavity, pushing back the earliest evidence of dentistry by about 45,000 years. The lower second molar – plagued by…
Bruniquel cave in France contains circular structures made of broken stalagmites Etienne FABRE/SSAC Around 175,000 years ago, Neanderthals ventured deep inside a cave in what is now France, broke off stalagmites and used them to build mysterious circular structures. Later on, bears moved in and obliterated almost all of the footprints and other traces they…
Reconstructions of a Neanderthal man and woman at the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany AP Photo/Martin Meissner/Alamy An analysis of Neanderthal DNA has helped piece together the story of many millennia of hard times that finally led to the demise of our ancient human relatives. Faced with a cooling climate, their population shrank and they…
