小柯机器人

近日，澳大利亚格里菲斯大学Tim Ryan Maloney等研究人员合作发现婆罗洲3.1万年前的外科截肢术。2022年9月7日，《自然》杂志在线发表了这项成果。

研究人员报告了在婆罗洲发现的一个年轻个体的骨骼遗骸，其左下肢远端三分之一被手术截去，可能是在儿童时期，这至少是在31000年前。这个人在手术后幸存下来，又活了6-9年，然后该遗体被有意地埋在Liang Tebo洞里，该山洞位于印度尼西亚婆罗洲的东加里曼丹，在一个石灰岩喀斯特地区，那里有一些世界上最早的岩画。这个出乎意料的成功截肢的早期证据表明，至少在热带亚洲的一些现代人类觅食群体，早在新石器时代的农业过渡时期就已经发展了复杂的医学知识和技能。

据了解，关于医学演化的主流观点是，大约1万年前定居的农业社会的出现（新石器时代革命）引起了大量的健康问题，而这些问题在非定居的觅食人群中是未知的，这刺激了史前医学实践的首次重大创新。这种变化包括更先进的外科手术的发展，已知最古老的"手术"迹象以前被认为是由一个欧洲新石器时代农民的骨架（在法国Buthiers-Boulancourt发现）组成，其左前臂被手术切除，然后部分愈合。这个被接受的截肢案例可以追溯到大约7000年前，它需要全面的人体解剖学知识和相当高的技术水平，因此被认为是复杂医疗行为的最早证据。

附：英文原文

Title: Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo

Author: Maloney, Tim Ryan, Dilkes-Hall, India Ella, Vlok, Melandri, Oktaviana, Adhi Agus, Setiawan, Pindi, Priyatno, Andika Arief Drajat, Ririmasse, Marlon, Geria, I. Made, Effendy, Muslimin A. R., Istiawan, Budi, Atmoko, Falentinus Triwijaya, Adhityatama, Shinatria, Moffat, Ian, Joannes-Boyau, Renaud, Brumm, Adam, Aubert, Maxime

Issue&Volume: 2022-09-07

Abstract: The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of settled agricultural societies around 10,000years ago (the Neolithic Revolution) gave rise to a host of health problems that had previously been unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medical practices1,2. Such changes included the development of more advanced surgical procedures, with the oldest known indication of an ‘operation’ formerly thought to have consisted of the skeletal remains of a European Neolithic farmer (found in Buthiers-Boulancourt, France) whose left forearm had been surgically removed and then partially healed3. Dating to around 7,000years ago, this accepted case of amputation would have required comprehensive knowledge of human anatomy and considerable technical skill, and has thus been viewed as the earliest evidence of a complex medical act3. Here, however, we report the 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 31,000years ago. The individual survived the procedure and lived for another 6–9years, 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 art4. This unexpectedly early evidence of a successful limb amputation suggests that at least some modern human foraging groups in tropical Asia had developed sophisticated medical knowledge and skills long before the Neolithic farming transition.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05160-8

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05160-8

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