The remains of a young adult who lived 31,000 years ago in what is now Borneo exhibit telltale signs of surgical amputation, a study published today (September 7) in Nature reports. The case predates the previous earliest evidence for a complex medical procedure by roughly 24,000 years and suggests the advent of surgery occurred thousands of years before that of ceramics.
Tim Maloney, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and coauthor of the paper, said in a press briefing that the case “rewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments,” the Associated Press reports. It indicates that hunter-gatherers were capable of “quite advanced forms of healthcare,” coauthor Melandri Vlok of the University of Sydney tells New Scientist.
The research team found the remains while working in a region of Borneo known for its Stone Age rock art. The skeleton was largely intact but lacked a left foot and ...
