Cancer is NOT a modern disease: World's oldest example of a human tumour found in 1.7 million-year-old foot bone

The team discovered a 1.7 million year old foot bone at the site of Swartkrans in South Africa, which contained definitive evidence of malignant cancer. 


Although the exact species to which the foot bone belongs is unknown, it is clearly that of a hominin - an early ancestor of modern day humans. Archaeologists also found a two million-year-old fossil of a benign cancer in the vertebrae of a child.