Humans have been prying out cavities for longer than previously thought, a new study has found. 
 
 A reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, and a modern human version of a skeleton, left, on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York on Jan. 8, 2003. A new study published in Scientific Reports has found that early humans have been using primitive dentistry techniques for about 14,000 years. 
 
 Even cavemen had cavities, and now scientists have discovered that they also took pains – literally – to remove them. 
 
 A 14,000-year-old molar sheds new light on humankind’s history of dentistry, which began much earlier than previously believed, a new study has found. The tooth, part of the preserved skeleton of a 25-year-old man found in Italy’s Dolomite mountains, shows signs of having been cleaned with flint tools, representing the oldest yet evidence of dental treatment, according to the study. 
 
 “It predates any undisputed evidence of dental and cranial surgery, currently represented by dental drillings and cranial trephinations dating back ... about 9,000 to 7,000 years ago,” Stefano Benazzi, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Bologna who led the team behind the study, told Discovery News. 
 
 The skeleton, discovered in 1988 in a rock burial site in Northern Italy, is likely between 13,820 to 14,160 years old. Its age means its owner lived during Upper Paleolithic Age, or the late Stone Age – the era of cave paintings and basic tools, just before the dawn of agriculture. 
 
 Scientists agree that our ancestors at the time had figured out how to use toothpicks, probably made of bone and wood, to remove food scraps between teeth. 
 
 But when Dr. Benazzi and his team placed the tooth – diagnosed with tooth decay – under a scanning electron microscope (SEM), they found two things: that the size of the decayed tissue was much smaller than the cavity itself, and that chippings and striations were present “even in the most inaccessible parts” of the cavity. 
 
 These suggest that someone had tried to dig out the rotten part of the man's tooth with a stone implement, such as a shard of flint. 
 
 The researchers concluded that the period saw wood and bone flints shift from use as simple toothpicks to primitive tools for excavating cavities, and that humans’ first attempt at dentistry involved “scratching and levering activities,” not drilling practices. 
 
 The findings place humans’ first dental activities about 5,000 years earlier than previous studies suggested: Beeswax dental drilling was discovered in a 6,500-year-old human tooth found Slovenia in 2012, while holes in 9,000-year-old molars, found in a Pakistani graveyard in 2006, implied the use of Stone Age bow drills to remove infections. 
 
 The study also reveal the extent to which our ancestors understood the importance of dental hygiene. Dr. Benazzi told Italian newspaper Il Resto del Carlino: “This finding also suggests that in the final Upper Palaeolithic era man was aware of the harmful effects of [cavity] infection and the need for action ... to remove it and clean it in depth.” ||||| Tooth plaque from an ancient fossil uncovered by researchers in Sudan has revealed more about our prehistoric ancestors' diet, as well as shown that these people understood plants long before the development of agriculture. [Pictured: One of the three richest Late Meroitic graves identified at the cemetery, that of a young male.] (Photo : Donatella Usai/Centro Studi Sudanesi and Sub-Sahariani (CSSeS); CC-BY) 
 
 Tooth plaque from an ancient fossil uncovered by researchers in Sudan has revealed more about our prehistoric ancestors' diet, as well as shown that these people understood plants long before the development of agriculture. 
 
 By extracting chemical compounds and microfossils from dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) from ancient teeth, the researchers were able to provide an entirely new perspective on our ancestors' diets. Their research suggests that purple nut sedge (Cyperus rotundus) - today regarded as a nuisance weed - formed an important part of the prehistoric diet. 
 
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 The studied dental records were found at Al Khiday, a pre-historic burial site on the White Nile in Central Sudan. Analysis shows that for at least 7,000 years, before agriculture became a major way of life, the people of Al Khiday ate the plant purple nut sedge, possibly understanding both its nutritional and medicinal qualities. The plant is a good source of carbohydrates and indeed does have many medicinal and aromatic uses. 
 
 "We also discovered that these people ate several other plants and we found traces of smoke, evidence for cooking, and for chewing plant fibers to prepare raw materials," lead author Karen Hardy, a Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, said in a statement. "These small biographical details add to the growing evidence that prehistoric people had a detailed understanding of plants long before the development of agriculture." 
 
 Of the five archaeological sites at Al Khiday, one of them was predominantly a burial ground of pre-Mesolithic, Neolithic and Later Meroitic age, providing researchers with more long-term data. 
 
 Not only did purple nut sedge make up the bulk of our ancestors' diet both before and after agriculture existed, but it also helped prevent tooth decay, as evidenced by the relatively low number of cavities in the tooth specimens. 
 
 Hardy and researchers believe that this study could revolutionize the "perception of ecological knowledge and use of plants among earlier prehistoric and pre-agrarian populations." 
 
 Their findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.
– Prehistoric man got cavities, too, and just like us, they had to go to the dentist. Researchers studying a 14,000-year-old infected molar say someone tried to clean it with flint tools—a discovery that amounts to the first known evidence of dentistry, reports Atlas Obscura. The patient was a roughly 25-year-old man who lived in what is now northern Italy. When researchers examined his tooth with a microscope, they found "extensive enamel chipping." And while prehistoric people were known to have used toothpicks made of wood or bone, this clearly wasn't the result of that. “It predates any undisputed evidence of dental and cranial surgery," the lead researcher from the University of Bologna tells Discovery. Previously, dental drilling had been detected on 9,000-year-old molars found in modern Pakistan, but this more primitive scraping technique predates that by a mile. It looks like somebody "tried to dig out the rotten part of the man's tooth with a stone implement," in the words of the Christian Science Monitor. Though it wasn't entirely successful, the effort at least shows that even people of that era, the Upper Paleolithic to be precise, recognized the importance of dental hygiene and the danger of infected teeth, the researcher tells an Italian newspaper. (Someday, your cavities might fill themselves.)