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.
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.
LINK HERE.
