Yet many centuries prior, the Inca healers prevented infections, unlike the more technologically advanced Civil War doctor-butchers. How? Uh, we’re not totally clear on that, but it seems like they must have. Given the high number of skull surgeries (some of which featured many holes drilled at different times), it’s possible trepanation was used to treat headaches or other such complaints. It’s also likely some kind of anesthetic was used, be it straight coca leaves or a fermented beverage. So, seeing your doctor for a headache and ending up with an opioid addiction is apparently not a modern problem.
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Gruesome, Gruesome Violence In The Desert
Modern landowners settle property line disputes with a game of cornhole, a fistfight, and a Budweiser, not always in that order. But 3,000 years ago, the first horticulturists in the Atacama Desert settled their donnybrooks the old-timey gentlemanly way: with fatal cranial trauma.
Researchers found these massively maimed specimens in Chile’s Azapa Valley, where they uncovered 194 bodies dating from the proliferation of Atacaman agriculture, around 1000 BC. More than 20% of the dead displayed disturbing disfigurements, such as “massive destruction of the face,” or an “outflow of brain mass.”
Overall, there’s an impressive variety of wounds, caused by knives, maces, sticks, spears, slings, arrows, fists, and hunting weapons. And there was no honor here, people were getting stabbed in the spine, lungs, and groin. Sadism also ran wild: A man’s toes were apparently intentionally severed, while one woman’s mouth had been pulled up across her face:
5 Spooky Skeletal Discoveries That Reveal The Terrifying Past
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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