In the long history of trepanation—removing a piece of the human skull—residents of the Andes were relative latecomers, likely beginning the practice around 400 BCE, based on archaeological data. But ancient Peru stands out for the variety of techniques used and the scale at which trepanation took place. More than 800 pre-Columbian trepanned skulls have been discovered in that country, more than in any other place in the world.
Many of those were unearthed by a team led by Danielle Kurin, a bioarchaeologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Beginning in 2010, she and her colleagues excavated several burial caves containing the skeletal remains of 284 Chankas, a people known to have been mortal enemies of the Incas. Of those, 32 had holes in their skulls—sometimes more than one. The holes “were clearly man-made,” says Kurin. “They had some kinds of cut marks.” Based on marks on the skulls, ...
