Yesterday the U.K. Daily Mail reported that scans of a 2, 250 year-old mummy show that the man died a slow and painful death due to prostate cancer. The man is believed to have been between 51 and 60 years old when he died.
The article reports:
The earliest diagnosis of metastasising prostate carcinoma came in 2007 when researchers investigated the skeleton of a 2,700-year-old Scythian king who died, aged 40 to 50, in the steppe of Southern Siberia, Russia.
‘This study shows that cancer did exist in antiquity, for sure in ancient Egypt. The main reason for the scarcity of examples found today might be the lower prevalence of carcinogens and the shorter life expectancy,’ Paula Veiga, a researcher in Egyptology, told Discovery News.
Evidently we have a higher incidence of cancer today because we live longer and we have more things that cause cancer. Who knew? Might it be possible that we have more incidences of cancer today because we live longer and there are many more of us?
I do actually find it encouraging that cancer has been with us for a very long time. To me, that is an indication that man did not cause it and that science can find the cause and medicine can cure it!