If everybody has their wisdom teeth yanked...

Other than providing dentists and oral surgeons with a steady source of income, wisdom teeth are useless to us now, but our ancestors needed them. Primitive human beings ate meats so tough that the extra molars in the back of the mouth aided them in ripping and chewing the flesh. As humans evolved, our brains became larger (well, for most of us) and our face positions moved farther downward and inward. Our protruding jawbones moved backward, making the jaw itself shorter — hence, no room for those back teeth! Most people’s jaws no longer have the capacity to accommodate these teeth and, thank goodness, we don’t need them for meat-eating.