Sept. 8 (UPI) — Researchers on Wednesday announced that they have found what appears to be the earliest known evidence of a surgical amputation, from a 31,000-year-old skeleton that was unearthed in Indonesia.
The skeleton was found in a remote cave in 2020 by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists.
The left leg of the skeleton shows what the scientists believe is the result of an amputation. It’s missing its left foot and part of its leg. They also said the amputation most likely was done when the person was a child.
The study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature says the discovery of the “exceptionally old evidence of deliberate amputation demonstrates the advanced level of medical expertise developed by early modern human foragers.”
Researchers said the evidence shows early knowledge of human anatomy, physiology and surgical procedures — knowledge that was probably developed over a long period of time through trial and error.
Dr. Tim Maloney of Australia’s Griffith University, who oversaw the excavation, said the skeleton changes the known history of medical intervention in humans.
The team of researchers concluded that the skeleton belonged to a young person from Borneo who survived the amputation and lived for another several years before their remains were intentionally buried in Liang Tebo cave. The site of the discovery is a limestone karst area that contains some of the world’s “earliest dated rock art,” the archaeologists said.
Further, researchers said they found no evidence of infection in the left leg, which is the most common complication that results from an untreated open wound.
They also said the lack of infection probably rules out an animal attack, which brings a high probability of complications from infection owing to micro-organisms in the animal’s teeth.
Before this discovery, the earliest known surgery on a human occurred around 7,000 years ago — on a European Neolithic farmer whose skeleton was missing its left forearm.
