Stone Age Skull Surgery: 



A General Review, with Emphasis 



on the New World 



By T. D. Stewart 



Curator, Division of Physical Anthropology 

 United States National Museum 



[With 10 plates] 



Nearly a century has elapsed since anthropologists first realized 

 that Stone Age men practiced operations on the living human head — 

 operations which sometimes were spectacular and often were success- 

 ful. This came about as a result of a trip to Peru in 1863-65 by 

 E. G. Squier, the American diplomat-anthropologist. While in Cuzco 

 Squier obtained part of a human skull that had a rectangular opening 

 in the forehead made by canoe-shaped cuts crossing one another in 

 a tick-tack-toe pattern^ fig. 1). Not having seen such a thing before 

 and wondering whether the opening could have been made in life, 

 Squier sought the opinion of Paul Broca, the leading French physical 

 anthropologist of the day. The latter saw signs of infection in the 

 porosity of the surrounding bone and therefore declared (1867) that 

 this Peruvian Indian had lived about 15 days after his operation. 

 Although the present writer raised doubts recently (1956) about the 

 accuracy of Broca's interpretation in this instance, this belated criti> 

 cism did not negate the fact that discoveries of many specimens during 

 the 1870's and 1880's in both the Old and New Worlds had confirmed 

 the antiquity of skull surgery. These discoveries also had told much 

 about how and why the operations were practiced so commonly and 

 so widely. 



Two cases little publicized heretofore bear witness to the spectacular 

 nature of skull surgery (trephining or trepanning) as practiced in the 

 New World (pis. 1 and 2). One of these, like Squier's case, comes 

 from Cuzco but differs in showing 7 healed circular openings (the 

 largest number previously reported is 5 — MacCurdy, 1923). Very 

 likely this individual had undergone seven separate successful oper- 

 ations. The other case is a mummy from Utcubamba, probably in the 



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