Trepanation, which consists of making a hole in the skull with the intention of healing, is older than previously thought, despite being very dangerous.
Archaeologists working in various parts of the world have observed that many cultures practice a medical procedure called cranial trepanation (or trepanation). The procedure is terrible: it involves drilling or shaving a hole in the skull. In ancient times, and also until recently, it was used to relieve pressure caused by blood from a head injury or to treat various health problems. Some Israeli researchers they just found the proofThis type of surgery is even older than previously believed.
The archaeologists who wrote the study were examining the remains of two upper-class brothers from an ancient city called Megiddo, in what is now Israel. They found that one of them had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery: an angular notched burr. It is the first time that this procedure has been identified in the area. It is assumed that trepanation would have been a desperate treatment to treat a serious infectious disease from which the two brothers suffered, which they only survived due to their social condition.
Reconstructed burr site in the head. Credit: Kalisher et al., PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0
While there are signs of trepanation dating back thousands of years, they have not been found as often in the Middle East: there are only a dozen examples of trepanation in the entire region. Megiddo was a very wealthy and cosmopolitan city for its time, and its inhabitants would have interacted with people from Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia during the Bronze Age.
The new finding adds new insights into trepanation, but it’s not clear why exactly these people were doing it. Would they have the same idea of the procedure as we have today, or would they have tried to use it for something more dodgy? In some ancient and medieval cultures, for example, the practice was used to “treat” people who behaved strangely, as a way of releasing what people believed to be evil spirits. It is also not clear why some holes are round and others triangular, nor how common the procedure was to begin with.
The rarity of trepanning in the Middle East indicates that only selected individuals could access such a procedure, and the severity of the pathological lesions already present on the analyzed body suggests that the procedure possibly had a curative purpose in the face of deteriorating health, explain the study researchers.
According to the authors, formerly there was much more tolerance and much more attention to diseases than people realize. There is evidence from Neanderthal times that people cared for each other, even under difficult circumstances.
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