Cancer is not a modern disease. It has existed for as long as complex multicellular life has, with the oldest confirmed case found in a dinosaur bone dating back roughly 76 million years. In humans and our ancestors, the earliest known cancer is a bone tumor in a 1.7-million-year-old foot bone from South Africa. While cancer rates have risen sharply in modern times due to longer lifespans and new environmental exposures, the biological machinery that causes cancer has been part of life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years.
Cancer in Dinosaurs and Early Humans
The oldest diagnosed cancer in the fossil record belongs to a horned dinosaur called Centrosaurus apertus. A leg bone excavated from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Canada, showed unmistakable signs of osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer. Researchers used CT scanning and tissue analysis to confirm the diagnosis, applying the same techniques used in modern human pathology. The fossil dates to approximately 76 million years ago.
Among human ancestors, the earliest confirmed malignant tumor comes from a foot bone (a metatarsal) recovered from Swartkrans Cave in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. The specimen, dated to 1.8 to 1.6 million years ago, was re-analyzed using modern imaging and identified as osteosarcoma. The researchers noted that while modern lifestyles correlate with higher overall cancer rates, there is no reason to think primary bone tumors would have been any less common in ancient populations.
What Ancient Physicians Knew About Cancer
Ancient Greek and Roman doctors not only observed cancer but developed detailed theories about why it occurred. Hippocrates, writing around 400 BCE, used the term “karkinos,” the Greek word for crab, to describe tumors. Later physicians explained the name in a few ways: the swollen veins surrounding a tumor looked like a crab’s outstretched legs, or the disease clung to the body with crab-like stubbornness. Hippocrates treated surface tumors with creams and cauterization. Deeper tumors were sometimes surgically removed, though many were considered incurable.
Galen, a Greek physician practicing in Rome around 130 to 200 CE, built on these ideas. He proposed that thick black bile caused incurable cancer, while thinner yellow bile caused treatable forms. He also introduced the term “oncos” (swelling) to describe tumors, which is the root of the word “oncology.” Galen recommended purgatives to reduce the buildup of bile. These humoral theories, though wrong about the mechanism, reflected genuine clinical observation: ancient doctors could see that some tumors were aggressive and fatal while others were more manageable.
By the medieval period, cancer was widely recognized, particularly breast cancer. It was one of the few cancers surgeons attempted to treat through mastectomy, performed without anesthesia. Cancer during this era was perceived as a disease that primarily affected women, partly because breast tumors were visible and diagnosable with the limited tools available.
Evidence From Mummies and Ancient Remains
Modern imaging technology has allowed researchers to scan ancient mummies without unwrapping or damaging them. A systematic study of 45 ancient Egyptian mummies using whole-body CT scans found bone tumors or lesions in 82% of cases. Most of these were benign, but one case (about 2%) showed likely skeletal metastases, meaning cancer that had spread to the bones. Five cases (11%) revealed suspicious soft tissue masses that were probably malignant.
These numbers may seem low compared to modern cancer rates, but context matters. Most ancient Egyptians who were mummified died young by today’s standards, and many cancers develop primarily in older age. Soft tissue also degrades over thousands of years, making it far harder to detect cancers that originated in organs rather than bone. The true cancer rate in ancient populations was almost certainly higher than what survives in the archaeological record.
Some remarkably preserved remains have allowed even more detailed analysis. The mummy of Ferrante I of Aragon, a 15th-century King of Naples, contained preserved tumor cells that genetic testing identified as an infiltrating malignant tumor, probably of the colon. Molecular analysis revealed a specific mutation in the K-RAS gene, one of the most common mutations in modern colon cancer. Separately, 18th-century mummies were found to carry a mutation in the APC gene, which is strongly linked to colorectal cancer today. These findings confirm that the same genetic drivers behind modern cancers were active centuries ago.
Cancer Genes Predate Modern Humans
The genetic mutations that cause cancer are not new. Researchers screening ancient DNA have identified 55 risk-associated gene variants in ancient human samples. Three variants with confirmed cancer-causing effects stood out: mutations in the VHL gene, the TP53 gene, and the BRCA2 gene. The TP53 variant, which is linked to a wide range of cancers, was found in 19 ancient human genomes and appeared in Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA dating back 50,000 years.
These cancer-causing mutations varied in frequency among ancient populations, just as they do among modern ethnic groups today. This means the genetic risk for cancer has been unevenly distributed across human communities for tens of thousands of years. Cancer is, at its core, a failure of normal cell division, and the genes responsible for controlling that process have been accumulating harmful variants since long before civilization existed.
Why Cancer Seems Like a Modern Disease
If cancer has always existed, why does it feel like a modern epidemic? The simplest answer is lifespan. Most cancers become far more likely after age 50, and for most of human history, the average person did not live that long. In populations where few people reach old age, cancer remains relatively rare simply because other causes of death get there first.
Modern environmental exposures have also genuinely increased cancer risk. But carcinogenic exposures are not entirely new either. Particles of soot and micro-charcoal from wood fires have been found trapped in the dental plaque of human ancestors living over 200,000 years ago. Wood and peat fires were the primary method of cooking and heating for millennia, and the smoke they produced contained many of the same cancer-causing compounds found in modern air pollution. Researchers have argued that indoor wood smoke likely increased lung cancer risk in past populations for thousands of years, long before industrial coal burning or cigarette smoking.
Air pollution in London from fires was already being noted during Tudor times in the 16th century. The difference between ancient and modern carcinogen exposure is one of scale and variety, not of kind. Industrial chemicals, processed foods, tobacco, and radiation have added new sources of cancer risk, but the basic phenomenon of environmental agents damaging DNA and triggering uncontrolled cell growth is as old as fire itself.