Humans have been battling cancer for longer than previously thought, new research has found: Scientists have found archaeological evidence that shows ancient Egyptians attempted to surgically remove cancerous lesions, a practice dating back more than 4,000 years.
Previous research has found compelling evidence that ancient Egyptian physicians accurately described specific cancer types, even though a clear understanding of cancer and effective treatments appeared in the historical record much later. To gain a better understanding of how cancer was thought of in the region, scientists from Spain, Britain and Germany studied a pair of skulls kept in the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge.
The skull and mandible, known as specimen 236, belonged to a man in his 30s who is thought to have lived between 2687 and 2345 BC. The other skull, specimen E270, belonged to a woman over 50 years old who lived between 663 and 343 BC.
Using a microscope, the researchers found signs of large cancerous lesions in both skulls, which had caused widespread tissue damage. Skull 236 in particular had smaller lesions scattered throughout the skull, likely a sign of advanced metastatic cancer. But surprisingly, the researchers also found cut marks around the lesions in 236, indicating that doctors had attempted to surgically remove as much of the cancer as possible, possibly with sharp metal instruments.
If the team’s findings are genuine, they would be the first recorded case of surgical cancer treatment in human history. Published Wednesday Journal The cutting edge of medicine.
“When I saw the tumor cut under the microscope, I was very skeptical at first, even though it was so clear,” Edgardo Camaros, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain and co-author of the study, told Gizmodo in an email. “It took me a while to realize that I was visualizing a groundbreaking piece of evidence in the history of medicine.”
Surgery alone can sometimes treat solid cancers, but it is most effective when the tumor is localized and detected as early as possible. However, given the overall condition of 236’s skull and the authors’ conclusion that the incision marks were made shortly before death, this particular treatment was almost certainly doomed to fail. It is also possible that the incision was made shortly after death, which may indicate that ancient Egyptian physicians were trying to understand this dreaded disease thousands of years in advance. It is officially called cancer..
Their work should shed new light on the origins of medicine and the people who lived in ancient Egypt, the authors say, but archaeological remains are often incomplete, and scientists can have different hypotheses about what the evidence tells us.
For one thing, the team believes they also found evidence that skull 250 had previously suffered trauma and been successfully treated for it, so the woman may have been involved in some kind of warfare in the region. However, the team notes that more research and data is needed to validate this hunch and to confirm and expand on the findings about cancer in the ancient world.
“The next step is to understand the relationship with cancer early in human evolution and history,” Kamaros says. “Our goal is to complete the history of cancer from the beginning of human history.”
