I know that there have been many questions about why teeth were functional without brushing before the invention of toothpaste, but I haven't seen anything addressing what happened to wisdom teeth. Given that they frequently grow in weirdly, did people just keep them in? Did they just fall out?
Typically by the time wisdom teeth came in, you had already lost a few, so there was less risk of impacting. Also, people have been able to pull teeth for a long time. The code of Hammurabi mentions tooth extraction (as a punishment)
The biggest advance that came from modern dentistry was actually fixing teeth as opposed to just pulling them out as they went bad.
Source: /u/ADogNamedChuck
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gjwna/wisdom_teeth_before_modern_dentistry/cal027x
According to this previous answer on ask history the wisdom teeth had room to come in due to teeth already being pulled or falling out prior to the wisdom teeth coming in. Also there has been evidence of teeth being pulled as far back as 7000 BC by the Indus Valley Civilization.
How much of wisdom teeth growing in weird is because of our modern use of braces? I'm just wondering because none of my extended family used braces and we have all of our four wisdom tooth intact. Everyone I know who has braces has had to have their wisdom tooth pulled out. Was braces a cause, or was it just an effect (as in the wisdom tooth would have grown out crooked anyway without the braces because their teeth were naturally going to grow that way)?