(February 1, 2017) Along the left bank of the White Nile an all-Italian discovery. The gallstones, have been found among the bones of the pelvis of an elderly person lived more than 9,000 years ago, in the prehistoric cemetery of Al Khiday, located 20 kilometers south of Omdurman, the largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. The analyses on the three stones, conducted by Lara Maritan, Gilberto Artioli and Gregorio dal Sasso from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Padua, have unequivocally established the prostatic origin excluding other forms of stones, such as kidney diseases more common among prehistoric peoples. The research “Late Pleistocene / Early Holocene evidence of prostatic stones at Al Khiday cemetery, Central Sudan” has been published in recent days on the prestigious “PloS One” magazine. The individual was found in the excavation of the cemetery investigated area for about 1500 square meters by the Italian archaeological mission led by Donatella Usai and Sandro Salvatori of the Sudanese and Sub-Saharan Studies Center of Treviso, scientifically supported by the University of Padua, Parma and Milan, and with the contribution of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To date the site has returned 200 burials relevant to four different chronological groups: pre-Mesolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Meroitic. (Red)
