The 31,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult found in a cave in Indonesia shows the oldest evidence of an amputation, according to a new study.
According to scientists, the amputation was performed when the person was a child, and that the patient lived for years as an amputee. According to the study, the prehistoric surgery could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than thought.
The grave was found in a cave in Borneo, which is known for having some of the earliest rock art in the world.
He said that the skeleton was missing its left foot and lower leg. The foot bones were carefully removed after the researchers examined them.
There was a clean, slanted cut on the remaining legbone. If the child's leg was bitten off by a reptile, there would be signs of an illness. If the leg had snapped off in an accident, it would have been expected that there would be a crushingFracture.
The person is thought to have lived for around six to nine more years after losing a limb, and died from unknown causes as a young adult.
The authors concluded that the prehistoric foragers knew enough about medicine to perform the surgery. Researchers don't know what kind of tool was used to amputate the limb, or how infections were prevented, but they theorize that a sharp stone tool may have made the cut.
The community would have had to care for the child for a long time since they wouldn't have been easy to care for.
The history of human medical knowledge and developments has been rewritten by this surgery.
A French farmer had part of his arm removed 7,000 years ago. The study authors said that advanced medical practices developed as humans settled into agricultural societies.
Alecia Schrenk, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was not involved with the study.
Schrenk said that healthcare had been assumed to be a newer invention. Prehistoric peoples weren't just left to fend for themselves, according to research.
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