59,000-year-old Neandertal tooth reveals earliest known dental surgery

In the Altai Mountains of Siberia, a single molar belonging to a Neandertal who lived roughly 59,000 years ago has quietly rewritten the earliest chapter of medical history. The tooth, bearing deliberate drill marks that reach its innermost nerve chamber, suggests that the capacity to identify suffering, select a remedy, and endure a worse pain to escape a greater one is not a uniquely modern inheritance. What we once called primitive turns out to have harbored a recognizably human form of care.