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Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

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N

NotWii

Banned
The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient.

The operating theatre was not exactly Harley Street — more probably a wooden shelter — but the intervention was a success, and it has shed light on the medical talents of our Stone Age ancestors.

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago — suggesting that the true Flintstones were more developed than previously thought.

The patient seems to have been anaesthetised, the conditions were aseptic, the cut was clean and the wound was treated, according to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).

The revelation could force a reassessment of the history of surgery, especially because researchers have recently reported signs of two other Neolithic amputations in Germany and the Czech Republic. It was known that Stone Age doctors performed trephinations, cutting through the skull, but not amputations. “The first European farmers were therefore capable of quite sophisticated surgical acts,” Inrap said. The discovery was made by Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist.

It followed research on the tomb of an elderly man who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers settled down to agriculture, stock-breeding and pottery. The patient was important: his grave was 2m (6.5ft) long — bigger than most — and contained a schist axe, a flint pick and the remains of a young animal, which are evidence of high status.

The most intriguing aspect, however, was the absence of forearm and hand bones. A battery of biological, radiological and other tests showed that the humerus bone had been cut above the trochlea indent at the end “in an intentional and successful amputation”. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that the patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, might have damaged his arm in a fall, animal attack or battle.

“I don’t think you could say that those who carried out the operation were doctors in the modern sense that they did only that, but they obviously had medical knowledge,” she said.

A flintstone almost certainly served as a scalpel. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that pain-killing plants were likely to have been used, perhaps the hallucinogenic Datura. “We don’t know for sure, but they would have had to find some way of keeping him still during the operation,” she said.

Other plants, possibly sage, were probably used to clean the wound. “The macroscopic examination has not revealed any infection in contact with this amputation, suggesting that it was conducted in relatively aseptic conditions,” said the scientists in an article for the journal Antiquity.

The patient survived the operation and, although he suffered from osteoarthritis, he lived for months, perhaps years, afterwards, tests revealed. Despite the loss of his forearm, the contents of his grave showed that he remained part of the community. “His disability did not exclude him from the group,” the researchers said.

The discovery demonstrates that advanced medical knowledge and complex social rules were present in Europe in about 4900BC, and that major surgery was likely to have been more common than we realised, Mrs Buquet-Marcon said.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7000810.ece

In before Atlantean survivors
 
S

SmokyDave

Member
Damn, ancient Europeans were awesome (Though possibly less awesome than the native Americans of the time). I always find the Stone Age section of museums the most interesting (particularly if they deal with the clearly awesome American Stone Age as well).
 
N

Napoleonthechimp

Member
The more we learn about ancient Europeans the more intelligent they seem to have been. I wouldn't be surprised if our perceptions of them are completely wrong.
 
J

JGS

Banned
Javaman said:
They forgot the part about tying the limb to a split and cooking it to eat for brunch.
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:lol

Honestly, I'm tryng to figure out why this is significant. It seems they just chopped the guys arm off where the bend is. If he was keeping me up at night crying in pain over the damaged arm, I would have chopped it off too.
 
K

Kurtofan

Member
JGS said:
:lol

Honestly, I'm tryng to figure out why this is significant. It seems they just chopped the guys arm off where the bend is. If he was keeping me up at night crying in pain over the damaged arm, I would have chopped it off too.
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Well at least they did it properly.
 
N

NotWii

Banned
On the theme of rethinking human history...

On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners
Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.
Click to expand...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16archeo.html
 
B

Binabik15

Member
JGS said:
:lol

Honestly, I'm tryng to figure out why this is significant. It seems they just chopped the guys arm off where the bend is. If he was keeping me up at night crying in pain over the damaged arm, I would have chopped it off too.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and you would have numbed him, kept the whole area aseptic, stemmed the bleeding and carved a scalpel out of flintstone, using only herbs, sinew as thread and bone needles.

Probably wrestled a bear or two while doing so, am I rite?

Ancient civilizations are awesome and we seem to discover one every other year. Without them being wiped out by landslides, famines, epidemics, volcanos or floods, we could be much more advanced. Think about it, we´d be playing on PS9s right now!
 
G

GT500

Neo Member
JGS said:
:lol

Honestly, I'm tryng to figure out why this is significant. It seems they just chopped the guys arm off where the bend is. If he was keeping me up at night crying in pain over the damaged arm, I would have chopped it off too.
Click to expand...
Trepanning skulls looks way more painful though. Just imagine someone drilling your head in order to "cure" you, ouch!.

It was a common type of treatment in ancient Peru, Bolivia and around those parts in South America.
 
N

NotWii

Banned
GT500 said:
Trepanning skulls looks way more painful though. Just imagine someone drilling your head in order to "cure" you, ouch!.

It was a common type of treatment in ancient Peru, Bolivia and around those parts in South America.
Click to expand...
Dr. Egon Spengler: This is big, Peter, this is very big. There is definitely something here.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head. Remember that?
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
 
P

Peronthious

Member
More interesting would be why they thought amputation would be necessary in the first place. Religious significance? I find it unlikely that they actually discovered a medical reason for it unless it was something blatantly obvious, in which case survival doesn't seem all that likely.
 
P

PumpkinPie

Banned
The human race used to be more advanced than we are now but they led themselves to destruction, just as we are. I don't know why it should come as any surprise that they know a lot of stuff.
 
J

JavaMava

Member
PumpkinPie said:
The human race used to be more advanced than we are now but they led themselves to destruction, just as we are. I don't know why it should come as any surprise that they know a lot of stuff.
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That's so awesome, I had no idea. Can you show me where you learned that?@
 
P

PumpkinPie

Banned
JavaMava said:
That's so awesome, I had no idea. Can you show me where you learned that?@
Click to expand...

I still have knowledge from my previous incarnations. The governments of the world are just public faces, the people higher than them still have the technology but they slowly dripfeed it to us so that we don't progress too fast again and they can keep tabs on us.
 
E

ElectricBlue187

Member
PumpkinPie said:
I still have knowledge from my previous incarnations. The governments of the world are just public faces, the people higher than them still have the technology but they slowly dripfeed it to us so that we don't progress too fast again and they can keep tabs on us.
Click to expand...

This sounds a lot like the plot of Mass Effect...
 
N

nyong

Banned
It's not like human brains were less-evolved only a few thousands years ago. Humans have always accumulated knowledge in one form or another (esp. medical), even in the most primitive of conditions. So yeah, this news is not shocking to me.

I look at it this way: without our preexisting infrastructure and enormous body of knowledge, and without the technical know-how of the few, we would essentially be living in the Stone Age right now. If every GAF member was suddenly transplanted to some barren wilderness, stones are exactly what we'd be using for tools. Anyone know how to extract copper/iron ore and utilize it? Know how to extract tin and combine it with copper to make bronze? How to generate electricity? These are incredibly complex processes that precious few could replicate. Hell, how to make fire without the help of technology (flint, etc)?

I took a theoretical archaeology course where we tried to replicate Stone Age tools. No one could do it with the same degree of precision. Very few can, apparently.
 
Eteric Rice

Eteric Rice

Member
The problem is that there's always some fucked up event and we lose the knowledge that we once had. If we had advanced in a straight line without any dark ages and what not, we'd probably be past Mars already.
 
O

opticalmace

Member
9 month bump?

But more importantly, no one ever asked about this?

PumpkinPie said:
I still have knowledge from my previous incarnations. The governments of the world are just public faces, the people higher than them still have the technology but they slowly dripfeed it to us so that we don't progress too fast again and they can keep tabs on us.
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Pumpkin are you still around?
 
M

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
SmokyDave said:
Damn, ancient Europeans were awesome (Though possibly less awesome than the native Americans of the time). I always find the Stone Age section of museums the most interesting (particularly if they deal with the clearly awesome American Stone Age as well).
Click to expand...
I've been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel lately and was thinking that Europeans couldn't figure out how to domesticate plants for food, a feet that at least five other civilizations managed (to be fair, agriculture was something that humans just randomly stumbled upon and not a reflection of true ingenuity).
 
N

Napoleonthechimp

Member
Mgoblue201 said:
I've been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel lately and was thinking that Europeans couldn't figure out how to domesticate plants for food, a feet that at least five other civilizations managed (to be fair, agriculture was something that humans just randomly stumbled upon and not a reflection of true ingenuity).
Click to expand...
They could figure out a lot of things including using certain plants for medicinal purposes so I'd cast suspicion on the idea that they were too stupid to figure it out.
 
M

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
Napoleonthechimp said:
They could figure out a lot of things including using certain plants for medicinal purposes so I'd cast suspicion on the idea that they were too stupid to figure it out.
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My post wasn't to be taken seriously. Though if you want to make a point out of any of it, then I guess you could say that the Euro-superiority that pervaded much of the early enlightenment is ironic in light of the fact that many of the important discoveries and inventions of the ancient world came from elsewhere.
 
way more

way more

Member
Wii said:
This thread should be for all archaeological discoveries that redefine ancient humanity
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If pushing back the date at which man first used stone tools is redefining humanity you must be a very excitable person. But it's cool that we're discussing actual history.
 
Beardz

Beardz

Member
PumpkinPie said:
The human race used to be more advanced than we are now but they led themselves to destruction, just as we are. I don't know why it should come as any surprise that they know a lot of stuff.
Click to expand...

thundarr_battle.jpg
 
Y

Ydahs

Member
N

Napoleonthechimp

Member
Mgoblue201 said:
My post wasn't to be taken seriously. Though if you want to make a point out of any of it, then I guess you could say that the Euro-superiority that pervaded much of the early enlightenment is ironic in light of the fact that many of the important discoveries and inventions of the ancient world came from elsewhere.
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Uh... discoveries and inventions aren't isolated. They're developed over a very long period of time with knowledge that's passed down over countless generations.

There is quite a lot of evidence to show there was an exchange of information and knowledge thousands of years ago. Without that social aspect of humanity (as on display with these temples and places of worship) we wouldn't be where we are.
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
Wii you've been banned from making threads; even if you try to bump old ones to post your news you'll be banned from GAF itself.
 
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