31,000 Year Old Amputation

A discovery of skeletal remains of a young individual from Borneo who had the distal third of their left lower leg surgically amputated, probably as a child, at least 31,000 years ago. The individual survived the procedure and lived for another 6–9 years, before their remains were intentionally buried in Liang Tebo cave, which is located in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, in a limestone karst area that contains some of the world’s earliest dated rock art.

The lack of infection further rules out the probability of animal attack, such as a crocodile bite, because an attack has a very high probability of complications from infection owing to microorganisms from the animal’s teeth entering the wound.

The discovery of this exceptionally old evidence of deliberate amputation shows the advanced level of medical expertise developed by early modern human foragers in a Late Pleistocene tropical rainforest environment.

To read more about one of the first amputations discovered visit https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05160-8