OUCH! WHY PAIN IS CRUCIAL

The year is 35,000 BC. A young man – half Neanderthal, half Homo sapiens – stands behind a rock, silently poised. A few metres away is a mammoth, towering above him. On his leader’s signal, the young man raises his spear and runs towards the animal, which turns its huge body suddenly. The man leaps aside, but tumbles down a slope. And as he falls he hears an ominous crack from his left foot.

Then he feels the pain – like thousands of small stabs perforating his foot. His face contorts in agony, and he sees flashes of light behind his closed eyelids. His body feels both warm and cold as he rolls around on the bumpy rock. He wants the sensation to stop. But it continues, mercilessly.

Tens of thousands of years later – in 2014 – the remains of this hunter’s fractured foot is found in a cave in