Prehistoryc. 3300–3000 BC · Ipatovo, Stavropol Krai, Russia
Grape-sized stone in a 5,300-year-old grave shows a Bronze Age herder lived with a painful infection
Mineral tests on a 2.1 cm stone from a kurgan in southern Russia identify it as a urinary stone caused by a long bacterial infection.
In brief 3 key points
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- A 2.1 cm stone found among a Bronze Age man's bones
- Its minerals point to a chronic bacterial infection
- Kidney or prostate origin cannot be told apart
A stone about the size of a grape, found with the skeleton of a man buried around 5,300 years ago in southern Russia, is a urinary stone caused by a long-lasting bacterial infection. Researchers at Lomonosov Moscow State University and the German Archaeological Institute report the find in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
The man was buried in a kurgan, a burial mound, at the site of Ipatovo-5 on the Stavropol Upland in the North Caucasus. He was in his forties when he died. The grave belongs to the Steppe Maikop horizon of about 3300 to 3000 BC. A flint arrowhead lay near his pelvis.
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Found among the hand bones
The researchers noticed the object only in the laboratory, among the bones of the hands. It is brownish and round with several bumps, and measures about 2.1 cm across. A small crack showed crystals inside.
The team analysed it with several methods, including X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction and micro-CT scanning. Its main elements are calcium and phosphorus. It consists of carbapatite or hydroxyapatite with whitlockite, a rare calcium mineral. In medicine, that mix is a hallmark of a stone formed during a bacterial infection.
The stone contains no calcium oxalate or uric acid, the minerals of stones caused by diet or metabolism. The authors therefore conclude that infection, not diet, made it.
Kidney or prostate
The data cannot show where in the body the stone formed. The paper gives two equally plausible options. It may be a kidney stone from a chronic infection of the upper urinary tract, or a stone that formed in the prostate during chronic prostatitis.
“His last years were probably marked by considerable and more or less constant pain.”
Natalia Berezina, Lomonosov Moscow State University, lead author, to Live Science
It is not known whether the condition contributed to his death. The rest of his skeleton points to a hard life. He was well muscled but had joint disease in his spine, shoulders, hips, hands and feet, and healed fractures in his right shoulder, ribs and forearm.
“These were people who worked with cattle and heavy wagons on the open steppe, and the injuries that follow from that are the injuries we find.”
Natalia Berezina, to Live Science
The authors describe the stone as direct physical evidence of chronic illness that would have badly affected the man's quality of life. Urinary stones are rarely studied in prehistoric remains.
Sources (2)
Peer-reviewed paperfrom Lomonosov Moscow State University and German Archaeological Institute
- 5,300-year-old kidney stone the size of a grape found in Bronze Age man's burial near Black Sea (Live Science: archaeology)
- Grape-sized kidney stone found in 5,300-year-old herder's grave near the Black Sea (Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences)
Paper: Berezina NYa, Statkus MA, Kalmykov AA, Abdrashitova IV, Kolesnik IV, Platonov VB, Shashurin DA, Garmay AV, Korobkova VV, Ryleeva VS, Gresky J. Urolithiasis in the Early Bronze Age of the North Caucasus: a paleopathological case study and insights into ancient lifeways. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 18(10), 209 (2026). DOI: 10.1007/s12520-026-02574-7
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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