Many of the burials we inventoried at the INC Lab that had associated cranial also had trepanations. Valerie said that she hasn’t seen this many trepanations in one site before. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, a trepanation is the surgical removal of part of the cranial bones, usually in a circular disk-shape. The interesting thing with trepanations is that many of the ones that we saw, and many that Valerie has previously studied & published an article about, were healed, meaning that the bone had started to remodel around the hole left from the surgery. This means that the individual survived the procedure. This sheds light on how advanced the Inca were. The Inca who performed the trepanation were skilled, they were specialized. In short, they knew exactly what they were doing. Most were clean, neat cuts. Some individuals even had several HEALED trepanations!! It’s really mind blowing, especially when you consider that Novocain & other anesthesia did not exist. They had coca leaves, and whatever the common alcoholic beverage was at the time ( it was likely Chicha: corn beer). So, if you can imagine the scalp being cut & peeled back, and then some sort of knife cutting a circular disk out of the cranium, while the person was likely conscious….yea, it sends shivers down my spine.
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