No one enjoys getting a cavity filled, but it could be worse. Imagine your dentist’s office is inside a cave where the best available tool is a sharp stone point for manually drilling into your teeth. You can forget about Novocaine—that won’t exist for another 60,000 years or so. Oh, and by the way, your dentist is a Neanderthal . This isn’t just some weird dentistry-related thought experiment. Neanderthal dentists were a real thing, according to a study published today in PLOS One. After analyzing the unusual features of a 59,000-year-old molar discovered inside a cave in western Siberia, the researchers found that they were created by an ancient cavity treatment. Previous research has shown that Neanderthals likely used toothpicks to clean their teeth as well as medicinal plants, but the study’s authors believe this molar—called Chagyrskaya 64—presents the earliest evidence of invasive cavity treatment in human history . It’s also the first documented evidence of this behavior outside of Homo sapiens .…