A NEOLITHIC COMMUNITY OF KENT 
21 
wound. Recent discoveries have explained why an 
opening in the skull may relieve certain forms of 
headache, and it is probable that the operation is 
sometimes performed amongst primitive people for such 
a condition. At other times, perhaps, trepanning is 
performed to allow the evil spirit of insanity, or of 
delusion, to escape. Trepanning was frequently per- 
formed by the ancient Peruvians. During the Neo- 
lithic period, this operation was apparently unusual in 
England, for I have found 
records of only three or 
four examples.^ 
The reader may draAv 
the conclusion that an 
operation performed by 
the natives of New Ireland 
cannot be regarded as a 
mark of a high state of 
mental evolution. Such an 
inference is scarcely just : 
a people who practise the 
operation of trepanning 
must entertain certain be- 
liefs concerning the consti- 
tution of the human body 
— beliefs which provide 
them with the principles 
on which their actions are 
based. 
The instances 1 have just cited have other bearings on 
the problem of man's antiquity. How does it come 
about that in ancient Peru, in Neolithic France, in the 
New Ireland of to-day, we find the same daring and 
difficult operation carried out ? Has each people dis- 
covered the practice for itself, or — as seems to me more 
probable — was it not evolved so long ago that it has per- 
meated the whole stock of modern man ? Further, the 
Fig. io. — Skull from a Neolithic sepulchre 
in France, which had been trepanned 
in three places. The patient had 
recovered, for the margins of the 
openings are healed over. 
lisation which 
See article by Dr Wilson Parry, Lancet, 1914, i. p. 1699. 
operation of trepanning shows us that a civi 
