Oldest evidence of amputation found in Indonesian skeleton

The 31,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult found in a cave in Indonesia that is missing its left foot and part of its leftleg reveal the oldest known evidence of an amputation, according to a new study.

Scientists say the amputation was performed when the person was a child — and that the “patient”went on to live for years as an amputee. The prehistoric surgery could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than previously thought, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers were exploring a cave in Borneo when they came across the grave, said Tim Maloney, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and the study’s lead researcher.

Though much of the skeleton was intact, it was missing its left foot and the lower part of its left leg, he explained. After examining the remains, the researchers concluded the foot bones had been carefully removed.

The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over, Maloney said.

The person appears to have lived for around six to nine more years after losing the limb.

This shows that the prehistoric foragers knew enough about medicine to perform the surgery without fatal blood loss or infection, the authors concluded.

Also, the community would have had to care for the child for years afterward, since surviving the rugged terrain as an amputee wouldn’t have been easy.

This early surgery “rewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments,” Maloney said at a press briefing.