Ancient Borneo skeleton indicates amputation surgery 31,000 years ago

According to scientists, a skeleton found in a remote area of Borneo rewrites the history of ancient medicine and provides evidence that amputation surgery was successfully performed some 31,000 years ago. 

The earliest known amputation, a 7,000-year-old skeleton discovered in France, was previously thought to have only occurred in developed agricultural communities. 

The discovery also implies that East Kalimantan in Indonesia's modern province of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers had extensive medical knowledge of anatomy and wound care. 

Tim Maloney, a research fellow at Australia's Griffith University and the project's principal investigator, said the findings "rewrite our understanding of the development of this medical knowledge."

The skeleton was discovered in 2020 in the massive Liang Tebo cave, which is famous for its 40,000-year-old wall paintings. 

Scientists painstakingly excavated sand to reveal an astonishingly well-preserved skeleton, which they did while being surrounded by bats, terns, and swiftlets and occasionally interrupted by scorpions. 

Only one conspicuous feature was absent: its left ankle and foot. 

The ankle and foot were likely purposefully removed because the base of the leg bone had an unusual form with knobbly regrowth over an apparent clean break.

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A fall, animal assault, or injury from crushing would have resulted in bone fractures and healing that were different from what was observed in the skeleton's leg. 

The skeleton is at least 31,000 years old and belonged to a human who passed away at roughly 20 years of age, according to a tooth and the surrounding silt. 

Based on the recovery of the leg bone, they appear to have survived the terrible trauma of amputation six to nine years after the procedure and did not experience any significant post-operative infections.