Andean cranial trepanation
Trepanación craneal andina
- Date
- c. 400 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Paracas Peninsula, Pisco, Ica, Peru
- Credited to
- Paracas, Wari and Inca cultures
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Opening of the skull with obsidian knives or metal tumis, practised thousands of times, with survival rates that reached over 75% in the Inca period. It is the largest series of prehistoric cranial surgery in the world.
A tradition independent of the European one. The Inca survival rate (c. 75-83%) exceeds that of American Civil War surgery (Kushner et al., 2018).
What it led to
- the treatment of skull fractures from mace blows
- the systematic improvement of the technique over 2,000 years
- palaeopathological study since 1867 (Squier, Broca)