A STONE AGE child living 31,000 years ago in what is now Borneo seems to have had their foot and part of their leg carefully amputated and survived for several years afterwards. This suggests that the huntergatherer community the person was part of had the medical skills to stop someone bleeding to death or dying from infection. These were both common hazards of amputation before modern medicine, says Maxime Aubert at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
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