How did prehistoric people cut their toenails?

11 May 2022

Shutterstock/Wahyu Ramdani

How would prehistoric people have cut their toenails?

John Davies Lancaster, UK

Our nearest relatives, the great apes, have fingernails that they don't cut, because these are worn away by being used to hunt, dig and scrape a living.

This would have also been true of our prehistoric relatives. Only once farming was invented did life become less hard and so nails needed cutting.

Stephen Arbitter via email

Besides wear from use, prehistoric people undoubtedly chewed their toenails.

Albert Beale London, UK

For much of my life so far I have managed quite well without needing any tool to cut my toenails.

When soaking in the bath, I would bite off any excess nail. However, as I have got older, I have become less supple – perhaps because of doing different types or amounts of exercise (I do no yoga these days), or as an inevitability of ageing – and hence have resorted to scissors.

Maybe prehistoric people rarely got old enough to be unable to deal with their toenails as I always used to.

Mike Follows Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK

Chances are that prehistoric people didn't need to cut their toenails: while they were walking around barefooted, their nails would have been naturally abraded by contact with the ground. This is why toenails continue growing throughout our lives.

Toenails grow at half the speed of fingernails – 1.6 millimetres per month compared with 3.5 millimetres per month in adults, according to a 2010 study. This suggests that there is an evolutionary component to these growth rates, perhaps due to different rates of wear and tear. Interestingly, the growth rate of the nail on the big toe is significantly higher than that of the other toes, according to a 1937 study.

Cutting toenails was certainly required once people started wearing shoes and switched to more sedentary lifestyles.

Apparently, Marie Antoinette used a nail file made of pumice stone, a rock that contains tiny air bubbles and is created by explosive volcanic eruptions. Given that pumice is geographically widespread, perhaps this or something similar would have been picked up and used by prehistoric people to file their nails if necessary.

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