What Did Ancient GUY Do When He Got Cancer ?

What Did a Caveman Do When He Found a Lump Under His Jaw? Did ancient humans get cancer, and if they did, what did their tribes do about it? All research and sources are linked below. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Earliest malignant tumor (Swartkrans, 1.7 million years ago) — "Earliest hominin cancer: 1.7-million-year-old osteosarcoma from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa" (2016, South African Journal of Science) https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/20... ▸ Benign tumor in Australopithecus sediba (Malapa, ~2 million years ago) — "Osteogenic tumour in Australopithecus sediba: Earliest hominin evidence for neoplastic disease" (2016, South African Journal of Science) https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/20... ▸ Neanderthal bone disease (Krapina) — "Fibrous dysplasia in a 120,000+ year old Neanderthal from Krapina, Croatia" (2013, PLOS ONE) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.... ▸ Metastatic cancer in ancient Nubia (c. 1200 BC) — "On the Antiquity of Cancer: Evidence for Metastatic Carcinoma in a Young Man from Ancient Nubia (c. 1200BC)" (2014, PLOS ONE) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.... ▸ Scythian king with prostate cancer (Arzhan) — "Oldest known case of metastasizing prostate carcinoma diagnosed in the skeleton of a 2,700-year-old Scythian king from Arzhan (Siberia, Russia)" (2007, International Journal of Cancer) https://doi.org/10.1002/ijc.23073 ▸ The Iceman (Ötzi) — "The 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori genome of the Iceman" (2016, Science) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad2545 ▸ Why cancer is older than humans — "Cancer across the tree of life: cooperation and cheating in multicellularity" (2015, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B) https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0219 ▸ How tumors evolve inside the body — "Clonal evolution in cancer" (2012, Nature) https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10762 ▸ Neanderthal care for the sick and injured — "Living to fight another day: The ecological and evolutionary significance of Neanderthal healthcare" (2019, Quaternary Science Reviews) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2... ▸ Is cancer a modern disease? — "Cancer: an old disease, a new disease or something in between?" (2010, Nature Reviews Cancer) https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc2914 ▸ Ancient Egyptian medicine — The Edwin Smith Papyrus (surgical text, c. 1600 BC; no DOI) ▸ Origin of the word "cancer" — Hippocrates, "karkinos" (the crab), c. 400 BC (classical source; no DOI) ———————————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Swartkrans Cave (South Africa) — A cave in the Cradle of Humankind, near Johannesburg. A foot bone found here, roughly 1.7 million years old, carries the earliest known malignant tumor in a human ancestor. ▸ Malapa Site (South Africa) — The cave where Australopithecus sediba was found in 2008, about 2 million years old. A vertebra from a juvenile here shows a benign bone tumor, the oldest tumor of its kind found in a hominin. ▸ Krapina (Croatia) — A Neanderthal site more than 120,000 years old. One bone shows fibrous dysplasia, a non-cancerous bone disease, which shows that tumor-like growths go back well before modern humans. ▸ Shanidar 1 (Iraq) — A Neanderthal man from Shanidar Cave, about 50,000 years old. He had a withered arm and serious injuries, yet lived for years, which suggests his group cared for him. ▸ The Nubian Young Man (Amara West, Sudan) — A man in his twenties or thirties who lived around 1200 BC. His skeleton shows cancer that had spread through his body, a case that predates modern lifestyles. ▸ The Scythian King (Arzhan, Siberia) — A man buried about 2,700 years ago with a rich grave. His bones show prostate cancer that had spread, one of the oldest cases of its kind. ▸ The Iceman, Ötzi (Alps) — A man mummified in ice about 5,300 years ago. His stomach carried Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium now linked to ulcers and some stomach cancers. ▸ The Edwin Smith Papyrus (Egypt) — A surgical text copied around 1600 BC. It describes breast tumors and records that no treatment was known. ▸ Hippocrates (Greece) — A physician from around 400 BC who gave the disease the name karkinos, "crab," after the shape of swollen tumors. #AncientCancer #CancerHistory #Paleopathology #Archaeology #HumanEvolution #Neanderthals #AncientHistory #HistoryExplained #Anthropology #ScienceHistory