Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest evidence for cancer and bony tumours in human ancestor fossils found in South Africa, dating back to almost two million years, suggesting that these deadly diseases may not be a outcome of modern lifestyles. An analysis of a foot bone and a vertebrae of an extinct hominid found in South Africa revealed the oldest dated tumors ever found in human subjects.
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This human fossil is said to be 1.7 million years old.
According to the reports, scientists have found a human foot bone in fossil-rich region of South Africa known as the Cradle of Humankind.
Two recent recent discoveries, of a 1.7 million-year-old cancerous foot bone and a 2 million-year-old vertebrae ravaged by tumors, show that cancer has been bothering us for a while.
“There’s lots of different causes of cancer and they change through history – if you were a chimney sweep in London you were likely to get lung cancer – a lot is context dependent with new diets and new toxins”.
‘Our studies show the origins of these diseases occurred in our ancient relatives millions of years before modern industrial societies existed’.
Cancer is often considered a disease of modern living, but it seems that early humans suffered too.
The cancer was identified as an osteosarcoma, an aggressive cancer that typically afflicts younger modern humans. The toe bone was the only part of the human skeleton found which researchers say was too little to determine if it belonged to an adult or a child or even if the cancer was the ultimate cause of death. “This in fact is the first evidence of such a disease in a young individual in the whole of the fossil human record”.
Professor Lee Berger, the leader of the Malapa project and an author on both papers, highlighted just how much of a game changer in the study of oncology both discoveries could prove to be. “The question is, how can we apply these mechanisms to understand the evolution of cancer from ancient times into this modern world?” Both diseases were diagnosed from the fossils using X-ray imaging. Despite the advancement in technology, several scientists are still struggling to find an absolute cure to this so-called “modern” disease.
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“This is another good example of how the modern clinical sciences and the science of palaeoanthropology are working together in South Africa and with global collaborators to advance our understanding of diseases in both the past and the present.” said Dr Jacqueline Smilg, a radiologist based at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, who is an author on both papers and was involved in the clinical diagnoses.
