Dr. Penny Spikins

Because when we start to talk about medicine, we've got this evidence for kind of medical things.

But what we don't know is, was there a specialist?

Was there a medical specialist?

But these are really small groups.

So we don't know for certain, but maybe there's sort of 12 to 15 in a group.

It just doesn't seem possible

that they would have had a specialist medical person.

It may have been some people who are a bit more specialised than others, but it's probably a knowledge that's just passed on culturally.

This particular flower or bark can heal pain.

This particular thing has antimicrobial properties.

And they probably just experimented and learned over thousands of years.

But I'm surprised by the range of medical abilities they seem to have picked up, developed and passed on.

I think it's fascinating the way in which we can look at this dental procedure and what goes into it takes a huge amount around it, which is all kind of part of kind of

evolution and cultural evolution and social evolution, because just for that one practice to happen, we need to have evolved the motivation to care for someone else.

We need to have the courage to kind of take on all of that pain.

I mean, whoever's like, you know, having that done and whoever's going to do that, that's quite...

I mean, it's brutal.

It's quite courageous what's happening there.

We need to have the social support around.

Somebody was probably holding them.