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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

Wisdom teeth used to just be a problem that either killed you, or you lived with lots of pain from, or you paid a guy to try and do something about them.

I don't know why people are so big on "we used to not need X in the distant past" tropes: yes we did, but we also just let lots of people die from it, or live a life of agony or being shunned as ugly/unclean/unable.

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Crooked teeth really didn't exist in the farther out past. If you look at the jawbones of Neolithic people, they all have perfectly aligned teeth.

The theory is that we're not chewing hard enough food, which leads to insufficient jawbone growth as a kid, leading to not enough space for your teeth.

I guess I should thank my mom and her well-done steaks for my decent jaw and relative lack of dental issues.

If they killed that many people, how did they escape natural selection?

Killed<>eradicated.

If it happens after the person has a chance to raise offspring to a sufficient survival age, then it would not adversely affect natural selection.

They didn’t kill you. You needed them, after your second teeth - what we call your ‘adult teeth’ - had rotten and fallen out.

Only Americans are afraid of wisdom teeth. 90 percent of the rest of the world keep them with no problems whatsoever.

(Something something medical cartel...)

Where you got that from? They are surgically removed outside of USA regularly when they grow bad and cause infections.

I think the difference is the US is very likely to remove them preemptively.

> when they grow bad

Yes, exactly. Which actually happens not so often and usually around the time the rest of your teeth go bad and you start to need surgery anyways.

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