Caveman Teeth vs The Teeth Of Modern Man…Who Wins?

Even though I’ve never seen a caveman or cavewoman smile, I feel that the human teeth of today are more pleasing to look at and they incorporate many “golden proportion” interrelationships than the more "T-Rexy" dentitions of our early ancestors. Modern Man has even written several memorable songs about nice smiles, as witnessed by “Your Smile” by Angela Winbush,  “I Love Your Smile” by Shanice, and “Your Smile” by Bobby Valentino.

Early Man ate almost exclusively animal meat, with very little grain and plant material included.

Our teeth and bodies have evolved over many thousands of years because of the things we ate and the way we prepared food. About 2.5 million years ago, we, in the form of Homo habilis, started using stone tools, according to fossil records. About 1.9 million years ago, Homo erectis (Upright Man) and Homo ergaster, supposedly exploited fire. And with the invention and the use of pottery, our prepared foods were softer and easier to chew and digest. These advancements, along with other evolutionary pressures, probably helped to reduce the selective advantages of having a super-long, sharp canine teeth (to tear meat in the field) and big jaw bones, with their accompanying muscles, to help masticate tough grains, stems, and leaves.

Since prehistoric times, our teeth and jaws have gotten smaller. We, as a species, mostly don’t have room for our wisdom teeth now. Will third molars cease to exist entirely in our species in the next 200,000 years or so?

So cultural, environmental, behavioral, and technological factors all weighed in on the evolution of the teeth and jaws of Homo sapiens sapiens. As our jaw size decreased over time, our brain case size has increased, along with the calorie-hungry neural matter inside (encephalization), undoubtedly to anatomically and physiologically pave the way to help us enhance our thinking powers for survival purposes.  We have sophisticated our technological-knowhow to harness the elements of the environment to increase our qualities of life. We have figured out how to keep the teeth we have in better health, and how to effectively replace missing teeth, among many other things, through developing the art and science of modern Dentistry and Dental Materials.

A major downside to the foods that we eat as members of our modern civilization, is that much of our consumables contain processed sugars and meats, and other staples that have substances added to them that do not promote the best of health, like chemical additives, preservatives, and sweeteners, like high-fructose corn syrup. Because of this diet difference, Modern Man has had a greater experience of dental cavities, gum problems, obesity, and other problems, it would seem. Early Man had no dietary processed sugar, so they had less or no Strep. Mutans in their mouths. Our cave ancestors win in that regard!


The human mouth, as it turns out, is probably the most important multitasker of the body. It has essentially affected our own evolution, and, by proxy, that of the Earth. I'm happy that all of this took place, because today's human dentition, around which so much of our lives revolve, seems more graceful, esthetic, and poetry-worthy. And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes me smile!

May you have many…evolution proven, freshly hatched, kiss without being cut… smiles!