gh CRANIOTOMY OF ANCIANT PEOPLE OF EURASIA

In prehistoric era people used to perform the ceremony of initiation, i.e. a ritual transition of a person to a new state. This ordeal was often severe and dangerous for life. A hole or several holes of various shapes were drilled, knocked out or scraped off in the skull. Maria Mednikova, Senior Research Assistant, Institute of Archeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, has determined that the injuries to the cranium found in the course of investigation of ancient remains may be part of the initiation ceremony. Previously, the traces of craniotomy were studied only by paleontologists - specialists on the ancient people's diseases. They proceeded from the fact that such operations had been carried out for medical purposes, for example, to cure severe headache or epilepsy, but there may not be strong proof of that. But if several people of the same culture have similare injuried on the skull, often symmetrical patterns of scars or cicatrices, then it can be assumed that this is the evidence of some rite.

Having investigated the remains of 3,875 persons and having summarized the data known from the scientific literature, Maria Mednikova determined where and when the craniotomy ceremony had been popular. A trephined skull dating back to ten thousand years was found in the Ukraine and Dnepropetrovsk Region - this is the most ancient finding in the territory of Eurasia. More ancient craniotomy example (12 thousand years ago) was found during the archeological dig only in Northern Africa (Morocco). Craniotomy was very frequent in the Bronze Age, this art declining in the Iron Age and resuming again in the 10th and 11th centuries in Hungary. The areas where the findings of ancient trephined skull are particularly numerous are as follows: Portugal, south-east and north-west of France, southern England, southern Sweden and Denmark, central Germany and the upper Elbe. "Each case should be considered independently to determine the reason and purpose of craniotomy. Particularly noteworthy are the post-mortem cases of craniotomy - there was certainly nothing to cure in that case and this manipulation was part of a complicated funeral ceremony ", says the resarcher.

Quite often one can see geometrical scars or cicatrices on tortoises. For example, the skulls of neolithic population of Europe, more often those of women, are decorated by cuts in the form of letters T and L. These might have been the signs of mourning or ornaments. The skull cicatrization was also applied by nomads of the early Middle Ages.

Maria Mednikova believes that as early as in ancient times people started to perform complicated painful operations on the human body. By the marks on the skull the contemporaries judged on the social status, the tribe membership or profession. Probably, in some cases the craniotomy was intended to cause mental alterations of a personality. When the left cerebral hemisphere is injured, a person becomes worried, if the right hemisphere is damaged - the person, on the contrary, becomes equable. The majority of people lived for many years after the craniotomy. Statistics prove that the surgeons of the late Stone Age (seven to eight thousand years B.C.) in central Germany were the most skillful - the survival rate after craniotomy was 90.5%. In general, during the late Stone Age or the early Iron Age, 79% of people survived craniotomy. For reference: death-rate after similar operations in European hospitals of the 17th - 19th centuries was approaching 100%. Only after antiseptic was discovered or rather rediscovered in 1867, doctors became more successful.

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