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| Photo Credit: AP. |
NEW YORK (AP) — The 31,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult found in a cave in Indonesia that is missing its left foot and part of its left leg reveal the oldest known evidence of an amputation, according to a new study.
Scientists
say the amputation was performed when the person was a child — and that the
“patient” went on to live for years as an amputee. The prehistoric surgery
could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than
previously thought, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal
Nature.
Researchers
were exploring a cave in Borneo, in a rainforest region known for having some
of the earliest rock art in the world, when they came across the grave, said
Tim Maloney, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and the
study’s lead researcher.
Though much
of the skeleton was intact, it was missing its left foot and the lower part of
its left leg, he explained. After examining the remains, the researchers
concluded the foot bones weren’t missing from the grave, or lost in an accident
— they were carefully removed.
The
remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over, Maloney said.
There were no signs of infection, which would be expected if the child had
gotten its leg bitten off by a creature like a crocodile. And there were also
no signs of a crushing fracture, which would have been expected if the leg had
snapped off in an accident.
The person
appears to have lived for around six to nine more years after losing the limb,
eventually dying from unknown causes as a young adult, researchers say.
This shows
that the prehistoric foragers knew enough about medicine to perform the surgery
without fatal blood loss or infection, the authors concluded. Researchers don’t
know what kind of tool was used to amputate the limb, or how infection was
prevented — but they speculate that a sharp stone tool may have made the cut,
and point out that some of the rich plant life in the region has medicinal
properties.
Also, the
community would have had to care for the child for years afterward, since
surviving the rugged terrain as an amputee wouldn’t have been easy.
This early
surgery “rewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments,” Maloney
said at a press briefing.
Before this
find, the earliest example of amputation had been in a French farmer from 7,000
years ago, who had part of his forearm removed. Scientists had thought that
advanced medical practices developed around 10,000 years ago, as humans settled
down into agricultural societies, the study authors said.
But this
study adds to growing evidence that humans started caring for each other’s
health much earlier in their history, said Alecia Schrenk, an anthropologist at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved with the study.
“It had long
been assumed healthcare is a newer invention,” Schrenk said in an email.
“Research like this article demonstrates that prehistoric peoples were not just
left to fend for themselves.”
The
Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely
responsible for all content.