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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open
Journal article
Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo
Nature: international weekly journal of science, Vol.609(7927), pp.547-551
09/2022
PMCID: PMC9477728
PMID: 36071168
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Abstract
The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of settled agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago (the Neolithic Revolution) gave rise to a host of health problems that had previously been unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medical practices1,2. Such changes included the development of more advanced surgical procedures, with the oldest known indication of an ‘operation’ formerly thought to have consisted of the skeletal remains of a European Neolithic farmer (found in Buthiers-Boulancourt, France) whose left forearm had been surgically removed and then partially healed3. Dating to around 7,000 years ago, this accepted case of amputation would have required comprehensive knowledge of human anatomy and considerable technical skill, and has thus been viewed as the earliest evidence of a complex medical act3. Here, however, we report the discovery of skeletal remains of a young individual from Borneo who had the distal third of their left lower leg surgically amputated, probably as a child, at least 31,000 years ago. The individual survived the procedure and lived for another 6–9 years, before their remains were intentionally buried in Liang Tebo cave, which is located in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, in a limestone karst area that contains some of the world’s earliest dated rock art4. This unexpectedly early evidence of a successful limb amputation suggests that at least some modern human foraging groups in tropical Asia had developed sophisticated medical knowledge and skills long before the Neolithic farming transition.
Details
- Title
- Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo
- Creators
- Tim Ryan Maloney - Griffith UniversityIndia Ella Dilkes-Hall - University of Western AustraliaMelandri Vlok - University of SydneyAdhi Agus Oktaviana - Griffith UniversityPindi Setiawan - Bandung Institute of TechnologyAndika Arief Drajat PriyatnoMarlon RirimasseI Made GeriaMuslimin A R EffendyBudi IstiawanFalentinus Triwijaya AtmokoShinatria Adhityatama - Griffith UniversityIan Moffat - Flinders UniversityRenaud Joannes-Boyau - Southern Cross UniversityAdam Brumm - Griffith UniversityMaxime Aubert - Griffith University
- Publication Details
- Nature: international weekly journal of science, Vol.609(7927), pp.547-551
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Identifiers
- 991013053613402368
- Copyright
- Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2022
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Science and Engineering; Science
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article