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Why Our Ancestors Drilled Holes in Each Other’s Skulls?

For a large part of human prehistory, people around the world practised trepanation: a crude surgical procedure that involves forming a hole in the skull of a living person by either drilling, cutting or scraping away layers of bone with a sharp implement. But despite its apparent importance, scientists are still not completely agreed on why our ancestors performed trepanation.

Anthropological accounts suggest that trepanation was performed to treat pain – for instance, the pain caused by skull trauma or neurological disease.