Stone Age 'doctors' amputated man's arm (how would they no this its all hear say)

Archaeologists were amazed when they unearthed the 7,000-year-old skeleton of a Stone Age man - with an amputated arm.


The discovery, near Paris, means Stone Age medicine was far more advanced than previously thought.


Early Neolithic surgeons used a sharpened flint stone and rudimentary anaesthetics to amputate the elderly man's left forearm, and treated the wound in sterile conditions, experts believe.


The man, who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers began subsistence farming, was found to be missing his forearm and hand bones.


Tests showed that the humerus bone had been severed above the elbow in what scientists described as "an intentional and successful amputation".


The patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, is thought likely to have damaged his arm in a fall, animal attack or battle.


Pain-killing plants such as the hallucinogenic Datura are likely to have been used in the operation, and the wound was probably cleaned using antiseptic herbs like sage, the scientists said.