Bit by bit, teaspoon by teaspoon, the archaeologists shoveled away the dirt.

Their work had taken the team to a remote region of Indonesia, to a cave named Liangtabo.

The soft limestone showed evidence of human occupation, including paintings that clocked

in it over 40,000 years old.

The spot was a favorite for archaeologists, and they had come to look for more prehistoric

signs of life.

So you can imagine their excitement when they came across simple stone markers on the ground

of the cave's largest chamber.

They had an idea about what this might be, and slowly,

methodically, and meticulously began to upturn the earth. At almost five feet down, they found

it. An ancient grave. The skeleton appeared to be a young person, around 20 years old. It was

almost fully intact. Almost. Finding bones in the ground isn't in principle uncommon, but there were many things that made

this find spectacular.

Archaeologists determined that this person died over 30,000 years ago.

The age of the skeleton and its intentional burial felt astonishing to them.

It was one of the oldest examples of this ever found.

The skeleton was missing its foot,

but they found no evidence of infection nor blunt force trauma. On its own, this might not seem

very spectacular, but the team discovered something that made this not just a grapevine,

but a revolutionary one. You see, there was a considerable amount of new bone growth,

evidence of healing.

This and the meticulous intentional way in which the bones seemed to have been removed

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