Gold Coast academic finds ancient amputee
A GOLD Coast researcher leading a team of archaeologists in Borneo has discovered the world’s earliest known medical amputation.
The skeletal remains of a hunter-gatherer were excavated from a remote limestone cavesite in the east of the country, revealing the lower-left leg had been amputated by a prehistoric surgeon 31,000 years ago.
The discovery far predates other examples of stone-age ‘operations’, including that of a 7000 year old skeleton found in France.
The discovery – co-led by Professor Maxime Aubert from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and overseen by Gold Coast based researcher Dr Tim Maloney in collaboration with Indonesian archaeologists – has debunked previously held historic assumptions of humanity’s medical advancements.
“In light of the much younger age of these prior findings, the discovery of a 31,000-year-old amputee in Borneo clearly has major implications for our understanding of the history of medicine,” Dr Maloney said.
It was previously assumed humans lacked the expertise and technology to perform difficult procedures like surgical amputation until after the emergence of farming communities and villages in the last 10,000 years.
“What the new finding in Borneo demonstrates is that humans already had the ability to successfully amputate diseased or damaged limbs long before we began farming and living in permanent settlements,” Professor Aubert said.
When it comes to modern science, amputations only reached regular success rates after the development of antiseptics in the 19th century.