The late Paleolithic period began in Europe 50,000 years ago and continued until the Neolithic Age. The time span of the Neolithic Age was about 10,000 BC to 1800 BC. During the period from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age, humans used their intelligence to develop agricultural practices, plant crops, and breed animals. They polished stone tools, invented pottery, and established small settlements, which were all manifestations of creative behavior. However, during this period, another completely unexpected thing happened, which showed the creativity of the early human mind: the initial perforation on human skull was done surgically with a specialized stone tool. So Neolithic people used scrapers and sharp tools to perform surgery called trepanation (the word "drilling") using scrapers and sharp tools. This is the earliest surgical procedure known to have been performed by humans.
In the 1830s, the first drilled skull was found in the Inca cemetery in Peru. The skull was obtained by US diplomat Ephraom George Squier. In 1865, he gave the skull to the New York Medical Association. In 1867, the skull was taken to Paris and handed over to Paul Broca, who established the world's first anthropological association for inspection. To Broca's surprise, the holes in the skull were obviously caused by specialized cutting tools, which was not a simple surgical procedure. Broca never thought that those "primitive people" in his eyes could have such surgery. This skull encourages others to look for similar bones in France.
This skull in Peru is evidence of displaying ring drilling. The skull was given to the New York Medical Association by Efforry George Squire in 1865 and later to Paul Broca. In fact, this skull is not far away, about 1400-1530 BC. It is currently in the collection of the Museum of Natural History in New York.
In a few years, Broca's colleague Dr Prunières excavated many older porous skulls at the Neolithic burial site. These found holey skulls were the first batch to show that bones around the wound would regenerate, indicating that the patient had lived for months or even years after the surgery. Among many tombs, together with these skulls are smaller treated oval skulls, which have bored holes, called rondelles. These slices are like modern pendants, worn around the neck, obviously for decoration.
At first, people questioned these skulls, especially because ring drilling was a surgical technique with high mortality rates used by hospitals at that time. But with more and more skulls discovered, perhaps for Neolithic surgeons, there is nothing to doubt about the drilling operation as a feasible surgery. Moreover, paleontologists are beginning to realize that drilling holes in the skull can be done quickly. In fact, Broca personally verified this, taking only 4 minutes to drill a hole in the skull of a 2-year-old child, although it would take 50 minutes to drill a hole in a thicker adult skull. Broca also performed ring drilling on a living dog, and the results showed that it was not that difficult to avoid damaging the protective dura and surface of the brain. In fact, we know now that ring drilling is common in Neolithic Europe and, surprisingly, in some places it is still quite common. Such skulls have been found in France, Spain, Denmark, Germany, England, Italy, Russia and the Balkans, with France the most. Although most skulls determine the time of occurrence by estimating the age of the cemetery, there are also a few skulls that determine the time by radiocarbon. These studies show that some skulls unearthed in Ukraine were about 7300-6200 BC, while those unearthed in France were about 5100-4900 BC. However, most ring drilling techniques appeared in 3000 BC to 2000 BC.Interestingly, the earliest cyclone drilling can be traced back to about 10,000 BC and is located in North Africa and the Middle East, indicating that cyclone drilling does not originate from Europe.
A skull from Jericho, Palestinian, dated from 2200 BC to 2000 BC.
The tools used to perform ring drilling are also different at different times and in different places. The skull unearthed at the oldest site was once scraped by sharp stone tools, and people at that time would use their hands to remove bone chips. But over time, the technology has become more advanced, such as slotting, drilling and cutting with sharp edge tools. Despite the rough tools, surgeons are often able to make holes with edges in the skull, which helps them safely remove debris during surgery. In most Neolithic ring drilling techniques, the holes in the skull are round or oval, with a diameter of several centimeters. But in one case, the size of the hole reached 13 cm x 10 cm, almost removing the left half of the entire skull. The openings in ring drilling also mainly appear on the left side of the skull, between the frontal and posterieor axis. Although the most common is that there is only one opening in the skull, several examples of multiple openings have been found.
Neolithic surgeons who performed these surgeries must have extraordinary skills. You should know that cutting the scalp and exposing the surface of the skull is a painful process, and surgery is very challenging, especially in the absence of effective anesthetics. During the operation, surgeons must not injure the brain surface with rich blood vessels, because once the blood vessels rupture, it will cause uncontrollable bleeding and death. The brain is just a few millimeters below the top of the skull, and you must be careful during surgery. In addition, because open wounds are extremely susceptible to infection, patients must undergo some form of postoperative care. Although we are not sure how Neolithic surgeons view the brain, they must have recognized the importance of the brain to life. Despite the obvious risk of surgery, it is estimated that 50% to 90% of patients survived after drilling, some of whom recovered for a longer period of time.
We can only speculate why people in the Neolithic Age had to go through a lot of trouble for this painful and dangerous operation. In Broca's view, the idea that the ring drill is most likely to be to clear the evil spirits in the mind is supported by facts, and today in some regions (such as Africa and Polynesia ), people also perform primitive surgery for roughly the same considerations. Broca also proposed a hypothesis: Most patients who perform ring drilling are babies suffering from infantile spasm , and Neolithic doctors are most likely to interpret this symptom as a result of demon possession. Victorian British neurosurgeon Victor Horsley did not object to Broca's view, but he believed that ring drilling was more likely to be used to treat convulsive fractures of the skull. It is unlikely that we know the exact reason for the drilling. However, as a surgical procedure, the drilling procedure has never been out of history, and people have performed it for a variety of reasons, including treatment of madness, impotence, moral depravity, headaches, removal of foreign bodies, and release of stress, air, water vapor and body fluids.
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