Why Global Trepanation?
from Aarva Hosted by Scott Alexander
How did a desperate cure for a head wound become a ten-thousand-year medical obsession? Up to ten percent of human skulls from the Stone Age feature holes deliberately drilled into them. Even stranger, bone growth patterns show most of these patients survived without modern antibiotics. A 21 October 2026 essay from Astral Codex Ten takes on this archaeological mystery. Why did ancient people across unconnected continents all decide to perform brain surgery with stone tools? The explanation involves high rates of prehistoric violence and a medical misunderstanding that lasted for thousands of years. A historical and medical explanation for the widespread prehistoric practice of trepanation, or skull-drilling. Early surgeons successfully treated severe head trauma without antibiotics, leading to occasional dramatic recoveries that turned the procedure into a generalized cure-all. The timeline follows the gradual disappearance of the surgery, from a drop in violent injuries during early civilization to the recent collapse of a modern fringe advocacy group. Read at source: Astral Codex Ten For more features and details, visit aarva.app
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