The Oldest Recorded Cancer in the Human Lineage: 1.7 Million Years
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Day 2 (Cancer History in 365 Days Series)
The Oldest Cancer Case in Human History: What Do the Bones of an Ancestor Who Lived 1.7 Million Years Ago Tell Us?
Cancer often brings to mind the burdens of the modern world: factory chimneys, genetically modified foods, chemicals. Many believe it is an artificial disease. Yet science tells a very different story through a 1.7-million-year-old bone unearthed from the ground.
A fossil toe bone discovered in a South African cave demonstrated that cancer is more than a side effect of modern life: it is an evolutionary reality rooted deep in our biology.
In our earlier article, Cancer Found in a 76-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Fossil , we explored the disease's prehuman origins. Now we turn the time machine toward human history.
This is more than the story of an old bone: it is a scientific detective story about cancer's origins and its place as a complex cost of nature and life.
Pain Turned to Stone: The Metatarsal Found in a Cave
Our story begins as paleoanthropologists examining countless bone fragments in South Africa's Swartkrans Cave encounter a left metatarsal labeled SK 7923 . It initially appeared to be an ordinary fossil, but its shape was strangely distorted: an abnormal, cauliflower-like bone growth stood out on its surface.
Was it merely a healing fracture or a prehistoric infection? Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand used modern medical technology to find out.
A Diagnosis Made 1.7 Million Years Later: Osteosarcoma
The fossil was scanned using micro-CT, a technique with much higher resolution than hospital CT. Its internal structure was mapped in near-cellular detail. The findings matched cases seen in oncology clinics today:
- Disorganized Internal Structure: The spongy tissue inside the bone had been completely disrupted and replaced by chaotic tumor tissue.
- Aggressive Spread: Bone growth extended outward uncontrollably in a typical sunburst pattern. This is the hallmark appearance of osteosarcoma, a malignant bone tumor.
This cancer, now common particularly in children and young adults, followed the same biological rules 1.7 million years ago.
Who Was the Patient? A Human?
An important scientific distinction is needed. 1.7 million years ago, modern humans (Homo sapiens) did not yet exist; our species emerged approximately 300,000 years ago. The bone belonged to one of two possible distant relatives in our family tree:
(An early human species)
(A hominin relative)
Whichever species it belonged to, this individual was a bipedal hominin. The bone's condition suggests severe pain and difficulty using the foot and walking. How long the individual survived in harsh wild conditions, unable to escape predators or hunt, remains a mystery.
How Does This Discovery Change Our View of Cancer?
This fossil challenges the popular belief that cancer is merely the price of modern life, redefining it as a biological reality:
- 1. Cancer Is Not "Modern": Cancer existed before the Industrial Revolution, cigarettes, and processed foods. Environmental factors increase risk, but cancer is more than pollution alone.
- 2. A Biological Price: Our cells must divide to renew themselves. Errors—mutations—in this complex copying process are inherent to evolutionary biology and the code of life. Cancer is a statistical price paid for being multicellular.
- Odes EJ, Randolph-Quinney PS, Steyn M, et al. Osteogenic sarcoma in a 1.7 million-year-old hominin from Swartkrans, South Africa. South African Journal of Science. 2016;112(7/8). doi:10.17159/sajs.2016/20150471
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