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Specialist dentist

Question: What are wisdom teeth?

From Donny, age 11

Wisdom teeth are more properly called ‘third molars’. They emerge at the back of the jaws, two on the top and two on the bottom, completing an adult human’s full set of 32 secondary, or permanent, teeth.

How did they get the name? Sadly, wisdom teeth don’t make you any smarter. They are known as wisdom teeth because they emerge later, between the ages of 17 and 21, when humans are older and so theoretically wiser.

Aside from having a curious name, wisdom teeth are probably best known for being taken out of people’s jaws by dentists like me. The main reason for this is evolution. Tens of

This X-ray of a child’s skull highlights their baby teeth (in white), as well as some of their adult teeth (in yellow) and second molars (in pink) before they emerge.

Baby teeth

Central incisors

Lateral incisors

Cuspid

First premolar

Second premolar

First molar

Second molar

Wisdom

Second molar

First molar

Second premolar

First premolar

Cuspid

Lateral incisors

Central incisors thousands of years ago, humans mostly lived as hunter-gatherers and so needed large, powerful jaws to chew through raw meat and uncooked vegetables.

Now, following the invention of farming and our switch to cooked diets, our jaws have become smaller. Our teeth, however, are still the same size, which means there is not always enough room to fit them all in. As wisdom teeth are the last to emerge, they can come through crookedly, and create a breeding ground for harmful bacterial infections.

Today, some babies are born without any wisdom teeth at all. And in the future, as our jaws continue to evolve, they may disappear entirely.