Researchers in Turkey have unearthed yet another trepanned skull. But was this brutal operation the work of magicians or medics? While the academic disciplines of neurology and neurosurgery didn’t begin until the 16th century, trepanation was practiced in many parts of the ancient world and is widely acknowledged as the oldest known neurosurgical procedure.
‘Successful’ trepanation was when a surgeon cut or sawed a section of bone from the skull of a living individual, without damaging underlying soft tissue. Now, archaeologists in Turkey have discovered a 3,200-year-old skull with a triangular section sawed out. The big question is: who undertook this complex and seriously risky prehistorical procedure?
The Extraction of the Stone of Folly by Pieter Quast, circa 1630 ( Public Domain )
Trepanned Skulls in Turkey: From Neolithic times to the Middle Ages
Ancient Anatolia (modern Turkey) was one of the first regions in the world developed by early Neolithic agriculturists after the last Ice Age. In 1958, the first publication on trepanation in ancient Anatolia was released, and subsequent anthropological studies on Anatolian skeletal remains show that trepanation was practiced from Neolithic times up to the Ottoman Empire. According to a 2020 NovoScriptorium article, the skulls of “forty individuals from 23 different Anatolian settlements are identified to have been subjected to trepanation.”
In 2009, a team of archaeologists announced the discovery of “the earliest trepanation of a…
