in reply to A Little Bit of Twisted Humor

Has anyone ever figured out what wisdom teeth were for?

Just to inflict pain on people when they get to middle age, or was it some long lost adaptation, where the wisdom teeth move in to replace lost molars?

I hope this dosn't affect your "monk-wisdom ". :-)

Edited: ~Fri Sep 6 20:48:45 2002 (GMT) by footpad: Replaced <PRE> tags with more appropriate HTML formatting.

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Re: OT: A Little Bit of Twisted Humor
by hacker (Priest) on Sep 05, 2002 at 16:27 UTC
    Wisdom teeth used to serve a useful purpose, but are now considered vestigial organs. A vestige is a degenerative or imperfectly formed organ or structure having little or no utility, but in the earlier stage of development of a species performed a useful function.

    The reasons that wisdom teeth are now "outdated" are many. Until quite recently (on an evolutionary scale), our diet included mostly very coarse food, as well as impurities such as dirt and sand. This coarseness would abrade teeth so significantly that they would take up less space in the jaw. Permanent teeth were also frequently lost at an early age, which would create more space in the jaw.

    Because the diet was so coarse and hard to chew, the jaw itself would develop into a larger bone because of this constant workout. All of these factors would create more space for the wisdom teeth when they came in.

    The heavily processed diet of today does not produce the tooth abrasion or jaw development that we used to see. Modern dentistry has pretty much eliminated significant loss of permanent teeth at an early age. This leaves us with too many teeth and not enough jaw.

    The wisdom teeth still develop as they always have, but they have no where to go.

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