Did Ancient Humans get Cancer? Ancient Oncology

#AncientHumans #CancerHistory #HumanEvolution Most people think cancer is a modern disease. The fossil record says otherwise. In 2016, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand scanned a foot bone from Swartkrans Cave in South Africa using high-resolution 3D imaging. The bone is 1.7 million years old. It belonged to an early human ancestor — either Paranthropus robustus or Homo ergaster. The diagnosis: osteosarcoma. Malignant bone cancer. Identical under imaging to a modern specimen. Cancer looked exactly the same 1.7 million years ago as it does today. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, one of the oldest medical texts ever found (c. 1600 BCE), describes breast tumors and concludes: no treatment. Hippocrates named the disease karkinos — Greek for crab — because the veins around a tumor spread like legs. The Roman physician Celsus translated it into Latin. That word became cancer. We have been using it for 2,400 years. The reason ancient humans got cancer less often had nothing to do with lifestyle. It was lifespan. Most prehistoric humans died before 35 — from infection, injury, and predators. Most cancers develop after 50. Cancer never had the chance to find them. And then there is the elephant. African elephants have 20 copies of a tumor suppressor gene called TP53. Humans have one. Joshua Schiffman at the University of Utah found this in 2015. A startup called PEEL Therapeutics is now working to deliver elephant TP53 to human cancer cells via nanoparticles. The answer to a 1.7 million year old disease may be inside an animal that evolved the solution independently. Cancer has been in the bone since before we had a word for it. For the first time in 1.7 million years, we are beginning to understand why. 🔔 Subscribe for more forgotten history that changes how you see the world 💬 Did you know cancer existed in prehistoric humans? Does knowing that change how you think about it? #Paleopathology #DeepHistory #Anthropology