{"id":1635592,"date":"2022-09-07T15:52:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1635592"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:53:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:53:47","slug":"archeologists-discover-evidence-of-oldest-surgical-amputation-in-one-legged-skeleton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/archeologists-discover-evidence-of-oldest-surgical-amputation-in-one-legged-skeleton\/","title":{"rendered":"Archeologists Discover Evidence Of Oldest Surgical Amputation In One-Legged Skeleton"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Farcheologists-discover-evidence-of-oldest-surgical-amputation-in-one-legged-skeleton%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1635592&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Archeologists discovered what they believe to be evidence of the oldest known surgical amputation: a 31,000-year-old one-legged skeleton, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-022-05160-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">paper<\/a> published Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Australian and Indonesian researchers excavated the skeleton in 2020 from a limestone cave in the Indonesian section of Borneo, an island divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The skeleton, missing its lower left leg, is the oldest known example of surgical amputation, according to a report published in Nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a huge surprise that this ancient forager survived a very serious and life threatening childhood operation,\u201d University of Sydney bioarchaeologist Melandri Vlok <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/worlds-oldest-evidence-of-surgical-amputation-lay-hidden-for-31000-years\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a>, adding \u201cthat the wound healed to form a stump, and that they lived for years in mountainous terrain with altered mobility \u2013 suggesting a high degree of community care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Researchers say the amputation was successfully performed on a child, who likely lived between 6 and 9 years after the procedure. The report called the discovery \u201cunexpectedly early evidence\u201d of a successful operation of its kind, leading researchers to believe people of the time, at least in tropical Asia, had medical knowledge and skills not previously attributed to the time period.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The body\u2019s remains were placed in the Liang Tebo cave on Indonesian Borneo, the third largest island in the world, in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. The area is also known for having some of the earliest-dated rock art in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Prior to this discovery, the earliest known evidence of an amputation \u201coperation\u201d was a 7,000-year-old skeleton of a European farmer\u2019s left forearm, just above the elbow, which was found in France. According to the report, this amputation partially healed and would have required technical skills and knowledge of human anatomy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The shift of populations to settled agricultural societies from hunter-gatherer lifestyles, known as the Neolithic Revolution, has been attributed as the beginning of the evolution of medical knowledge because the introduction of new health problems required evolving practices in medicine. This revolution occurred nearly 10,000 years ago, far more recent than the 31,000-year-old amputee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt had long been assumed healthcare is a newer invention,\u201d anthropologist Alecia Schrenk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/science\/science-news\/one-legged-stone-age-skeleton-may-show-oldest-amputation-rcna46671\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told<\/a> NBC News in an email. \u201cResearch like this article demonstrates that prehistoric peoples were not left to fend for themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Researchers previously thought amputations occurred on fingers and were strictly for either punishment or ceremonial purposes. The discovery of the 31,000-year-old successful amputee is significant, considering successful surgical amputation didn\u2019t become a medical norm in Western societies until the last 100 years, the report said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Scientists ruled out the possibility that the amputation was a punishment based on the care given in burial and the treatment of the amputee for the remainder of their life. The skeleton was aged using radiation levels in its tooth enamel, then matching the results to the radiocarbon dating of the rocks and sediment the body was buried in, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/worlds-oldest-evidence-of-surgical-amputation-lay-hidden-for-31000-years\">Science Alert<\/a> reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Researchers said the excavation was careful and that the skeleton\u2019s right leg had all bones intact. The \u201ctrauma pattern observed is not consistent with clinical descriptions of non-surgical amputation,\u201d meaning the bone had clean cuts, the paper explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Archeologist Tim Maloney, one of the project\u2019s leaders, said at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/09\/07\/1121535411\/31000-year-old-skeleton-amputation-surgery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">press conference<\/a> that the discovery \u201crewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archeologists discovered what they believe to be evidence of the oldest known surgical amputation: a 31,000-year-old one-legged skeleton, according to a paper published Wednesday.\u00a0 Australian and Indonesian researchers excavated the skeleton in 2020 from a limestone cave in the Indonesian section of Borneo, an island divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The skeleton, missing its &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1635594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1635592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1635592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1635594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1635592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1635592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1635592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}