Scientists claim that a skeleton discovered in a remote region of Borneo rewrites the history of ancient medicine and gives proof that successful amputation surgery was carried out some 31,000 years ago.
Prior to the discovery of a 7,000-year-old skeleton in France, it was believed that only advanced agricultural cultures had undergone amputation.
The finding suggests that the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age in East Kalimantan, a contemporary province of Indonesia, had a thorough understanding of anatomy and wound care.
The study’s primary investigator, Tim Maloney, a research fellow at Griffith University in Australia, said the results ‘rewrite our view of the emergence of important medical knowledge.’
According to a tooth and the nearby silt, the skeleton is at least 31,000 years old and belongs to a human who died at the age of about 20.
They do not appear to have suffered any substantial post-operative infections and, based on the regeneration of the limb bone, appear to have survived the terrible shock of amputation six to nine years after the treatment.
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