Ancient cancers undercounted

Past studies of cancer rates in pre-industrial people relied on visual assessments of skeletal remains. But the majority of cancers start in soft tissues, and only some spread to the bones, which means that looking at bones is not the whole story.

Only one-third to one-half of modern cancer deaths involve spread to the bone. Applying those constraints to the medieval skeletons means that between 9 and 14 percent of pre-industrial Britons likely had cancer.