5,300-year-old kidney stone the size of a grape found in Bronze Age man's burial near Black Sea

livescience ^ | 11/03/2026 | By Kristina Killgrove Edited by Laura Geggel, Laura Mondragón, Nicoletta Lanese

[BenLurkin]

A Bronze Age man buried in a monumental tomb near the Black Sea may have died from complications of a urinary tract infection (UTI) more than five millennia ago, according to a new study. Archaeologists identified a grape-size object consistent with a kidney or bladder stone in the man's burial.

"He lived with a chronic urogenital infection," study lead author Natalia Berezina, an anthropologist at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, told Live Science in an email.

"It was not a brief episode," she said. "His last years were probably marked by considerable and more or less constant pain."

Berezina and colleagues investigated a small, stone-like object found in an Early Bronze Age burial in the Stavropol Upland region of southwestern Russia. They published their findings Sept. 30 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

The burial was part of a kurgan cemetery, an ancient steppe funeral tradition that involved constructing a large mound of dirt over a grave. Archaeologists discovered a catacomb when they excavated the mound, and inside was the skeleton of a man who was in his 40s when he died around 5,300 years ago. The researchers found a flint arrowhead near the man's pelvis.

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TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: ancientautopsies; bronzeage; godsgravesglyphs; kurgan; oldstone

[Ken522]

The poor fellow died from a UTI, maybe a kidney stone - that’s a heck of a way to go ...

[Magnum44]

[Bayard]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wuyqTPv7srw

[Texas Eagle]

His appointment to have it removed is next week in Toronto.

[Bob434]

horrible way to go- had one large enough that it got stuck and that caused passing out pain for 56 hours (not steady- but kept blacking out periodically the pain was so intense)- had to get catheter for month and when they remove it- stone material had accumulated on the OUTSIDE of the tube- You guessed it- it felt like ripping barbed wire out of me- the amount of stone material that came out was unreal-

Cant imagine dying from a stone- the pain must have been unreal

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[Red Badger]

Probably ate too much cheese!.........

[ApplegateRanch]

Should have just let the moose have the cheese; maybe then it wouldn’t have bit his sister.

[null and void]

Morphine.

[Bob434]

I had oxycodone (left over from operation) but it didn’t help much. Went to hospital, they just sent me home without anything. Next day went back, and they called in kidney doc, who ueted the catheter. It did help, but woe was it horrendous removing it.