Inca surgeons in ancient Peru commonly and successfully removed small portions of patients' skulls to treat head injuries, according to a new study. The surgical procedure—known as trepanation—was ...

Some 2,000 years ago, a Peruvian surgeon picked up a simple tool and began to scrape a hole in the skull of a living human being. Before the surgery was over, much of the patient’s fractured upper ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. If you had a hole drilled through your skull in historical times, the odds of surviving the ...

The Inca civilization may have used “cranial trepanation” — the surgical drilling or scraping of a small hole through the skull — as a treatment for trauma-induced epilepsy. This is the conclusion of ...

It’s easy to think that brain surgery is a relatively modern phenomenon. But the archaeological record shows that humans have been cracking open one another’s heads for thousands of years through the ...

When Incan healers scraped or cut a hunk of bone out of a person’s head, they meant business. Practitioners of this technique, known as trepanation, demonstrated great skill more than 500 years ago in ...

Skull surgery during the time of the Inca in Peru was performed with amazing skill and success, considering the primitive tools available. The surgery, known as trepanation, involves drilling, cutting ...

In the 1860s, a U.S. newspaper editor, author, and amateur archaeologist named E.G. Squier traveled to Cuzco, Peru. He visited the home of a wealthy woman who collected antiquities to view an ancient ...

If you had a hole drilled through your skull in historical times, the odds of surviving the ordeal were far better in the ancient Inca Empire of South America than they were in North America during ...