Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence of human surgery. A Stone Age hunter-gatherer who lived more than 30,000 years ago has been found to have an elaborately amputated leg, making it the earliest known operation, dating back tens of thousands of years.The discovery was made during archaeological excavations in 2020 at Liang Tebo, a limestone cave on Borneo island. There, scientists found the remains of a human that was missing the left foot and the lower part of the leg.
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But it wasn’t just a bad injury or a bone lost after death — careful examination by paleontologists revealed growth patterns around the wound, suggesting it had healed. This suggests the limb was intentionally amputated between 6 and 9 years before the person’s death, the team said.
Dr Melandri Vlok, author of the study, said: “In fact, this ancient forager survived a very serious and life-threatening childhood surgery, the wound healed to form a stump, and then they lived in the mountains for many years with some mobility. Change – it shows they have a high level of community care.”
Using a dating technique called electron spin resonance on teeth, as well as radiocarbon dating of the sediment in which the remains were buried, the team calculated that the man died about 31,000 years ago. This makes it the oldest known evidence of surgery in human history.
It was previously thought that the first surgery humans performed was trepanation, the drilling of a hole in the skull, which was believed to relieve a range of neurological problems. But the oldest evidence of the practice dates back “only” about 14,000 years, less than half the age of amputation.
The complex procedure — and its apparent success — suggests that understanding of anatomy and infection prevention is far more complex than researchers previously thought, the team said.
Professor Maxime Aubert, co-author of the study, said: “The new findings in Borneo show that humans had the ability to successfully amputate diseased or damaged limbs long before we started farming and living in permanent settlements.”
It’s unclear whether the people living in this region (now Indonesia) were far ahead of their time, or if this is the first known example of extensive advanced medical knowledge, the team said. Future discoveries may help shed light on this question.
The research was published in the journal Nature.