Cancer may seem like a modern disease, but it has affected humans for eons. Scientists have discovered numerous prehistoric human remains indicating the presence of cancer. So, what's the earliest case of cancer on record? And what's the first time that humans wrote about it in medical texts?
The earliest evidence of human cancer comes from an early human relative who lived around 1.7 million years ago. This individual, likely of the species Paranthropus robustus or Homo ergaster, lived with a malignant tumor in their left toe bone. Archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains inside Swartkrans cave, a limestone deposit in South Africa that's often called the Cradle of Humankind for being home to the largest concentration of human relative remains in the world.
