Human beings are often touted as at the pinnacle of evolution. Even if this may or may not be true, one thing is certain; different parts of the body evolve at different pace. For example, one can reasonably conjecture that our brains are at the peak of the evolutionary line. Such a claim would not be made about our teeth :-). Compared to most mammals, human teeth are highly crooked, and disordered (NewScientist). Now scientists have come up with a reason for this: Cooking!

Human TeethAccording to anthropologist Peter Lucas of George Washington University, the evolutionary pressures are different for the front and the back teeth. This, and due to the lack of space inside a human jaw, the teeth are always competing with each other, often resulting in malocclusion. Teeth can be missing, broken, growing on top of each other, wisdom teeth often do not have space to come out! Other mammals do not face this problem. Other primates often have hollywood teeth.
The human front teeth are used to chop food into small pieces. The back teeth (molars and premolars) grind down harder pieces. According to Peter Lucas, cooking has allowed humans to pre-soften the food. We do not require a lot of teeth to cut food into smaller pieces, so the human front jaw has become smaller. But we still need molars to grind the harder pieces, and our jaw is not large enough to hold them all. The "Rise of The Molars" pushes the other teeth, thereby causing the disfigurement, and the pain in the neck that are the wisdom teeth.