Human remains excavated from an ancient grave in Israel have shed light on one of the oldest brain surgeries in history.
Archaeologists have discovered evidence of a type of surgery called “angular notched trepanation” performed on a male patient who lived more than 3,000 years ago.
In modern medicine, trepanation is an operation to remove skull fragments from the brain and relieve pressure in the head caused by a traumatic accident.
In the new study published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Plos One, it was stated that the person who underwent the surgery was between the ages of 20 and 40 and lived in the 15th century BC.
[su_posts posts_per_page=”1″ tax_term=”22834″ offset=”1″ order=”desc” orderby=”id” post_status=”any” ignore_sticky_posts=”yes”]
The research team, led by archaeologist Rachel Kalisher from Brown University in the US, found that the patient’s scalp was cut and then a square piece of the frontal bone was removed with a sharp instrument.
“We have evidence that trepanation was a universal and common type of surgery for thousands of years,” Kalisher said.
“But we didn’t see it very often in the Near East,” the archaeologist said:
“There are only about 10 examples of trepanation in this whole region.
It may seem very difficult to perform an operation as delicate as brain surgery in the absence of advanced modern medicine.
However, historians have repeatedly proved that the origins of the operation date back thousands of years. Some experts even believe that neurosurgery is the oldest medical “speciality” of all time.
“There was a lot more tolerance and a lot more care in ancient times than people think,” Kalisher said.
“We have evidence from the time of Neanderthals showing that people took care of each other even in difficult conditions,” the scientist added:
“Yes, there were gender and class-based distinctions in the past. But people were still people.
