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NEW YORK – Fluctuating disease rates, innovative treatments and White House announcements of launching a cancer mission likening it to a space program could make the cancer seems like a modern calamity. But a new discovery highlights how humans faced disease and sought cures as early as the time of the ancient Egyptians.
A group of scientists led by Edgard Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, was studying an Egyptian skull about 4600 years old when he found signs of brain cancer and its treatment.
“There was an awkward silence in the room, because we knew what we had just discovered,” Camarós said.
Using a microscope, he and Tatiana Tondini, of the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Albert Isidro, of the Sacred Heart University Hospital in Spain, the other authors of the study, found cut marks on the edges of the skull around dozens of injuries which previous researchers had linked to brain cancer metastasis. The shape of the cuts indicated that they had been made with a metal tool. This discovery, reported in a study published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, suggests that The ancient Egyptians studied brain cancer through surgery. If the cuts were made while the person was alive, they may even have attempted to treat it.
The new discovery not only expands scientific knowledge of Egyptian medicine, but may also push back the chronology of humanity’s documented attempts to treat cancer by as much as 1,000 years.
Cancer has plagued humans for as long as we have existed, and even afflicted life on Earth long before that.
“Cancer is as old as time,” said Camarós. “Even dinosaurs suffered from cancer.”
Paleopathologists like Camarós study the evolution of a disease, as well as attempts to understand or treat it. For example, we know that prehistoric humans suffered from cancers that no longer exist. He and his colleagues hope that unraveling the changing nature of cancer over millennia can reveal information that will help design treatments for today.
Although cancer was probably not well understood, Egyptian medicine was advanced compared to much of the ancient world. An Egyptian document called the Edwin Smith Papyrus, written about 3,600 years ago, refers to what some researchers believe is a case of cancer. The text describes “a serious illness” for which “there was no treatment.”
In ancient Egypt too The skull was operated on in other ways. Camarós’ team also reports in the study that they found evidence of a successful treatment for a traumatic injury in another skull, this one 2,600 years old.
Casey L. Kirkpatrick, a bioarchaeologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, says that The new work presents the first physical evidence of a possible cancer treatment by the ancient Egyptians.
And by documenting additional ancient historical evidence of the disease, Kirkpatrick said the study had another benefit.
“It can also remind us that cancer is not a modern disease,” he said, “which could help alleviate some guilt for those currently suffering from cancer who are concerned about the role their lifestyle played in its development.”
Just as cancer treatment was a frontier for the ancient Egyptians, modern researchers’ exploration of the deep past is fraught with uncertainties. Researchers say it is impossible to determine whether the surgical marks on the skull were made before death — suggesting treatment — or afterward. Additionally, many cancers arise in soft tissues and do not affect bones. This presents a challenge for modern scientists, since bones are the only thing that typically survives in the fossil record.
Despite these obstacles, Camarós affirms that the new discovery offers scientists a new perspective on what to look for. He plans to look for similar evidence at ancient sites in Kenya.
“I’m sure this is just one example,” he said.
By Jordan Pearson
The New York Times
