How Humans Treated Illness 31,000 Years Before Modern Medicine?

Humans didn't invent medicine. We inherited it. An orangutan in Sumatra treated its own wound with a medicinal plant. A Neanderthal in Spain may have chewed bark to ease an abscess. A child in Borneo survived a surgical amputation 31,000 years ago. In this video, we travel from nearly two million years ago to the edge of recorded history to see what ancient humans actually did when illness and injury struck. In this video: 00:00 Humans didn't invent medicine 00:26 The orangutan who treated his own wound 02:01 The toothless Homo erectus who survived (Dmanisi, 1.77 million years ago) 03:10 The woman poisoned by liver (KNM-ER 1808) 04:06 The Neanderthal with the abscess (El Sidrón, 49,000 years ago) 06:22 The 31,000-year-old amputation in Borneo 08:18 Prehistoric dentistry 09:09 Ötzi the Iceman's medicine kit 10:18 The 5,700-year-old chewing gum 11:01 The plague that didn't need fleas 12:06 The immune system we inherited from Neanderthals 13:34 What it all adds up to Subscribe to Humans Before History for more videos on how our ancestors lived, healed, ate, slept, and survived, long before anyone wrote it down. Note: Some findings in this video, such as the Neanderthal self-medication evidence and Ötzi's tattoos as treatment, are still debated among researchers. We flag where the evidence is uncertain. Sources and further reading: Rakus the orangutan: Scientific Reports, 2024 Dmanisi skull: Lordkipanidze et al., Nature, 2005 El Sidrón Neanderthal dental calculus: Weyrich et al., Nature, 2017 Borneo amputation (Liang Tebo): Maloney et al., Nature, 2022 Ötzi: Eurac Research / South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology Ancient plague (ymt gene): Rasmussen et al., Cell, 2015 Neanderthal immune genes: Zeberg & Pääbo, Nature, 2020