What The Heck Are Wisdom Teeth And Why Do We Have Them

I had my wisdom teeth taken a few months ago. I was the last of most of my friends and my siblings to have gotten my wisdom teeth removed. I had planned on getting them taken out the summer of 2020 after school let out, but after everything happened with the pandemic, I instead found myself having to wait another full year before I could get my teeth out. Since having to wait so long, the dentists were saying that my teeth would be a bit harder to pull out because they have become a lot more developed. I wasn’t really too worried about the whole process, until I showed up to have them taken out that morning.

As we did the x-rays to make sure of which teeth were going to be removed, the doctors ended up finding two more teeth that were stuck way up in the back part of my mouth. This meant that I had 6 wisdom teeth instead of 4 - a rarity that apparently only occurs in 2% or less of the population. I was scared after learning this news because I didn’t want my parents to have to pay more money to the surgeon and I didn’t want to have more complications with the surgery. However, the dental surgeon assured me that it would not cost extra to get them out and that it would be a simple addition to those extra teeth.

Getting my wisdom teeth removed got me thinking; why the heck do we have wisdom teeth? It seems like the only purpose for those dumb teeth is to absolutely screw up people’s mouths and cause a lot of pain and problems for people. So I did some research about wisdom teeth and it actually turned up some pretty interesting stuff. I was curious what people did before modern medicine when their wisdom teeth came in.

I mean, if we have to have such advanced medicine and anesthetic available to comfortably get those teeth, what happened to some peasant in the 1500s who needed to get those suckers removed? Well I didn’t find the exact answers to my question that I wanted to, but I did find some pretty interesting stuff. It turns out that 85% of Americans have their wisdom teeth taken out, and only 2% of people that don’t get their wisdom teeth taken out can make it through life without those 3rd molars becoming cavities or leading to gum disease or something. So it begs the question, what’s the point of those 3rd molars if they exist simply to destroy our precious mouths?

Well, some research suggests that those molars were more useful to our ancestors that lived more hunter/gatherer lifestyles, which could make sense because their mouths were better suited for crushing and eating plants and seeds that they come across. It is also said that the human brain has increased in size by a significant amount over time (which is why I’m smarter than every person who lived before the year 1200) and this meant that it had to expand the size of our brain cavity in our head. Consequently, human jaws have been shrinking to make room for the brain to increase in size and our wisdom teeth in back have just had to deal with it I suppose. Another interesting thing about wisdom teeth is that they are completely made up.