Buried in a shallow grave deep inside a remote Indonesian cave, archaeologists have found the bones of a young person they say could change the history of medicine.
Using radiocarbon dating techniques, scientists estimate that the body had lain untouched for 31,000 years inside Liang Tebo Cave in Borneo’s East Kalimantan province, according to research published in the journal Natur.
The most striking aspect of this discovery is that the young man or woman’s lower left leg is missing, with signs that it was carefully amputated when the person was a child or early teenager. The patient survived the surgery and died of unknown causes when he was between 19 and 21 years old, the scientists said. The skeleton was found in 2020 by Australian and Indonesian archaeologists, who say the amputation reveals considerable surgical skill and is the earliest example of this type of operation. This discovery, according to CNN, changed our understanding of the sophistication of Stone Age people.
“It is significant because it significantly changes our species’ knowledge of surgery and complex medicine,”
said Maxim Aubert, a professor at the Center for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University in Queensland.
“They had to have a deep knowledge of human anatomy, how to stop the blood flow, how to anesthetize the patient, prevent sepsis. All that became the norm only recently,” said Aubert.
Experts believed that human ancestors did not know how to perform difficult procedures like amputation until the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements transformed human society in the last 10,000 years. Before this discovery, the oldest known example of amputation was an elderly farmer whose left forearm was removed just above the elbow 7,000 years ago in present-day France, the study said.
It was only 100 years ago that surgical amputation became the medical norm in the West. Before the development of antibiotics, the study states, most people would have died during the amputation.
“Blood loss, shock and subsequent infection were the main sources of death until relatively recently in human history.”
said Tim Maloney, a researcher at Griffith University and one of the study’s co-authors.
Community Care
This person had his lower left leg amputated as a child and survived six to nine years after the operation, according to experts. There were no signs of infection in the bones, and new bone growth formed in the amputated area – something that takes a long time. In addition, while the rest of the skeleton was the size of an adult, the amputated bones stopped growing and retained the size of a child.
The surgeon or surgeons who performed the operation 31,000 years ago, probably with knives and scalpels made of stone, must have had a detailed knowledge of anatomy and the muscular and vascular system in order to discover and connect the veins, blood vessels and nerves and prevent fatal blood loss and infection , according to the study.
After amputation, care was vital, and the wound had to be regularly cleaned and disinfected.
“I think what’s most amazing is that this is real, direct, tangible evidence of a really high level of care in the community,”
said Maloney.
To live with an amputated leg in mountainous terrain for years, an individual would need a lot of constant help and care from their community.
“That this child survived the procedure and was estimated to have lived many years afterwards is astonishing,” said Charlotte Roberts, a professor in the Department of Archeology at Durham University in the UK, in a commentary published with the study. She was not involved in research. Roberts agrees with the assessment that the limb was deliberately removed – an accidental injury would not show a clean slash. Nor is it likely that the foot was cut off as punishment, given that the person lived for years after the amputation and was carefully buried, said Roberts, who trained as a nurse before becoming an archaeologist. The Australian team said it’s possible these hunter-gatherers had knowledge of medicinal plants, such as antiseptics, that grew in the rainforests of Borneo.
An exciting region for discovery
The child’s remains were dated in two ways: radiocarbon dating of charcoal remains in the sediment layers above, on, and below the skeleton; and a tooth dated by measuring the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes, the chemical elements found in tooth enamel. It is also the oldest known deliberate burial in island Southeast Asia, with limestone markers placed on top of the grave, the body placed in a bent, fetal position and a large globule of ocher – a mineral pigment used in Stone Age cave art.
The skeleton was discovered in a region that has become an exciting site for paleoanthropology: Liang Tebu, a large limestone cave with patterns of human hands on the walls, located in a remote, mountainous area that can only be reached by boat at certain times of the year. The world’s oldest figurative rock art has been found in caves elsewhere in Indonesia, and extinct human species such as Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis have been found on islands in the same region.
“From this area, people traveled by boat to cross the islands of South Asia to reach the mainland of Papua and Australia (the first successful great sea voyage),” Aubert said. “They were advanced artists, and now we know they had advanced medical knowledge. “
“At Liang Tebo, we came across this prehistoric person who was amputated 31,000 years ago less than a meter from the surface and we know we still have 3-4 meters of sediment to excavate before the bedrock,” he added. due to the spread of covid, and archaeologists based in Australia rushed home to avoid a border closure that would last more than two years.
“We want to go back. Maybe we will find more human remains, and maybe the remains of unknown species,” they said.
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