Earliest known amputation of human appendage occurred 31,000 years ago

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Perhaps it took place in the shelter of a cave, or maybe outside where the tropical sun made it easier for the surgeon to see. The nervous young patient could have been fully alert, or sedated somehow with a concoction of medicinal plants from the surrounding forest, before the sharp stone did its grim work. Such fascinating details will likely always be speculation but an amazing fossil find makes one fact clear; 31,000 years ago, a young hunter-gatherer in Borneo had their lower left leg surgically amputated—and they survived.

Archaeologists working in a remote part of Indonesian Borneo have discovered what may be the earliest known example of a successful amputation—predating the next oldest such surgery by an amazing 24,000 years. A team of Indonesian and Australian researchers described the find this week in Nature.

The skeleton shows that a youngster’s lower left leg was skillfully severed and, despite the deadly risks of blood loss and infection, healed successfully. The leg bones show growth proving that the patient, though not very mobile, lived for years after the amputation, likely thanks to extensive community care during their convalescence and beyond. Scientists aren't sure whether the patient was male or female, but the stature makes male more likely. The amputation suggests that at least some foragers of Southeast Asia had developed significant medical knowledge and techniques long before the Neolithic Revolution some 12,000 years ago, after which other examples begin to appear in the archaeological record.

“It’s a remarkable find, and I do think it’s consistent with an amputation that’s been done surgically,” says Charlotte Roberts, a bioarchaeologist at Durham University who specializes in paleopathology and wasn’t involved in the research. “I can’t imagine what that child went through.”

The largely complete skeleton of a 19- or 20-year-old Homo sapiens was found during 2020 excavations at a site called Liang Tebo. The cave is in the remote Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, a rugged, rarely-visited landscape of limestone cliffs and forest accessible only by boat.

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