Do Wisdom Teeth Make You Wiser?

By the age of 13, most people have 28 permanent teeth, including two sets of molars. Then, at age 18 or later, a third set of molars begins to come in.

These molars are called wisdom teeth, because they appear later in a person's life, when he is "supposedly" wiser.

Often, wisdom teeth don't come in at all. Or they cause so much pain as they come in, they have to be pulled out. The reason for that pain is because human skulls are shaped differently today than they were many thousands of years ago.

Primitive man's head was less rounded than ours, and his jaws were large enough to accommodate the third set of molars. Our jaws are smaller, and often there's just no room for the wisdom teeth.