Prehistoric skeleton reveals oldest surgical amputation — in a hunter-gatherer society 31,000 years ago
The amputation happened when the individual was perhaps 12 years old, the skeleton indicates. Gone is the lower portion of the left leg. And somehow, the individual survived the surgical procedure — a remarkable feat given that it happened some 31,000 years ago.
The skeleton, discovered in a cave on Borneo, in what is now Indonesia, appears to be evidence of the oldest known surgical amputation — 24,000 years earlier than that of a farmer in France, who had his left arm cut off an estimated 7,000 years ago.
