North America’s First Skull Surgery Was At Least 3,000 Years Ago

(Photo: Anne Nygård/Unsplash) The remains of a man buried in what’s now Alabama reveals that the continent’s oldest skull surgery occurred at least 3,000 years ago.

The man’s skeleton was discovered during the 1940s at Little Bear Creek, a reservoir in northwest Alabama. The skeleton was accompanied by 162 others under a seashell-covered burial mound. Though many of these remains were held at a museum moving forward, bioarchaeologist Diana Simpson from the University of Nevada had the opportunity to study the man’s skeleton in 2018. (The museum-held remains have since been returned to local indigenous communities for reburial.) 

Simpson’s studies revealed that the first skull surgery in North America may have occurred far earlier than originally thought. Evidence of skull surgery in North Africa is as much as 13,000 years old, but North American skull surgery had previously only been thought to have occurred about 1,000 years ago. Simpson believes the man’s surgical evidence is anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 years old. 

A bridge over Little Bear Creek in Alabama. (Photo: Nyttend/Wikimedia Commons)

The evidence itself consists of an opening in the man’s skull, surrounded by damage and slight bone regrowth. According to Simpson, the damage suggests someone removed a piece of bone to reduce brain swelling. This may have been in response to a violent attack or a nasty fall, if fractures to the man’s left eye, arm, leg, and collarbone are anything to go off of. Bone regrowth at the edges of the opening imply the man lived for about a year after the surgery. 

Based on clues at the man’s grave site, Simpson believes the man could have been a shaman or other ritual practitioner. He was buried with sharpened bone pins and possible tattooing tools, which have previously been discovered among shamans’ graves at nearby sites that are about 3,000 to 5,000 years old. 

Simpson presented her analysis of the man’s skeleton (titled “Surgery before sedentism: Probable trepanation during the early prehistoric period in southeastern North America”) last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.

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