6 ms·
> The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over I'm very curious about what sort of tool they might have used for this. Perhaps they sa
by MichaelCollins 4y ago
> The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over
I'm very curious about what sort of tool they might have used for this. Perhaps they sawed through the bone with the serrated edge of a knapped stone blade?
- lostlogin 4y agoWhat rules out an accidental amputation that healed? Hell of an injury to survive though, and medical knowledge would have been required to save the individual from that. "The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over"
- saurik 4y agoHow did you accidentally get a clean cut through bone?
- CSSer 4y agoChopping wood or similar, maybe? I think it’d be a miracle they didn’t bleed out but I’m not a doctor. The next sentence in the article suggests it couldn’t have been an accident but the reasoning seems odd.
- rippercushions 4y agoCauterizing wounds with fire as a way of stopping bleeding out and infection has been known for a long time. Alternatively, when slave boys were castrated/emasculated to become eunuchs, they would be buried up their necks in sand until the wound healed. Apparently the death rate was still massive though.
- scohesc 4y agoDo you have any reading material about this? I'm genuinely curious what burying surgical wounds in sand would do to help encourage healing... Or maybe it didn't?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 4y agoWhat kind of tools did they use to chip wood back then?
- MichaelCollins 4y agoHand axes, probably formed using with biface knapping but possibly with ground edges. But either way, hafted axes aren't known to have existed that far back, so a leg-severing axe accident seems implausible to me.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoThey probably knew to bind off the limb.
- nxmnxm99 4y agoCutting wood with a tool sharp enough 30k years ago to hack off a limb in one fell swoop is... unlikely lol
- noselasd 4y agoThey contacted and worked with a handful of doctors/surgeons specializing in amputations, which examined the bones and explained how an amputation that resulted in the damage observed could have happened, and could not have happened - and they all independetly agreed that this had to be deliberate. At least that's the short summary I remember from one of the scientist on the bbc science podcast.
- lostlogin 4y agoIf deliberately done, why was the other leg showing signs of having had the bone cut? It’s a confusing situation. Thanks for the additional information.
- CSSer 4y agoCurious, indeed. I guess it depends on what they mean by clean here. I would think serrations would leave traces (very small, jagged edges) on the bone, but if it did I’d also think they’d mention it. It’s very odd. I guess the alternative is that they chopped it clean off. That’s pretty gnarly to think about.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoThose traces might not be distinguishable after seven years of bone remodeling.