Neanderthals may have performed dental surgery 59,000 years ago

Sixty thousand years before the modern dental chair, a Neanderthal sat still while another performed a deliberate procedure on a decaying tooth — and in that moment, something we call medicine may have begun. A fossilized tooth bearing the marks of intentional drilling has emerged from Paleolithic remains, quietly dismantling the long-held assumption that our ancient cousins lacked the cognitive depth for self-directed healing. The artifact is small, but what it implies is vast: that the capacity to recognize suffering, reason toward remedy, and pass that knowledge to another may be far older