4300 YEAR OLD BRAIN SURGERY EVIDENCE IN INDIA-HARRAPAN CULTURE

The Harappan skull indicates,"trepanation"surgical practice done 4300 years ago in India.

Scientists at the Anthropological Survey of India claim to have found evidence of an ancient brain surgical practice on a Bronze Age Harappan skull.

The skull, believed to be around 4,300 years old, bears an incision that indicates an “unequivocal case” of a surgical practice known as trepanation, says a research paper published in the latest edition of Current Science. India is the place where plastic surgery was invented and Shushrut -Samhita was a surgical book describing many methods of surgery.

Trepanation, a common means of surgery practised in prehistoric societies starting with the Stone Age, involved drilling or cutting through the skull vault, often to treat head injury or to remove bone splinters or blood clots caused by a blow to the head.

Other instances

 

While evidence of the practice has been found from regions in Peru, Europe and Bronze Age Jericho of Palestine, this is the first time the trepanation has been found in the Harappa civilisation.

According to the research paper, a trepanated hole was found in a Harappan male skull that had been kept in the Palaeoanthropology Repository of the Anthropological Survey of India in Kolkata.

In the case of the Harappa skull, the trepanation was intended as therapeutic as there is a clear indication of cranial trauma in the form of a visible linear depression, probably resulting from a severe blow, says the study by A.R. Sankhyan and G.R. Schug.

There is evidence too of healing, “indicating that the victim survived for a considerable time after the operation,” the paper adds. “Scholars have recorded striking similarities in trepanation techniques across the continents, and therefore consider it as important evidence for prehistoric movements of people and for transfer of surgical skills from one society to another,” the authors say.

 THE HINDU NEWS PAPER

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