WEBVTT - How Trepanation Worked 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.800 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:17.319 There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's even here, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.520 which means this is a bona fide bonafid they shut 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.720 your mouth episode of Stuff you should Know, right until 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:28.560 Jerry's like, who go to Google? You know, I wasn't 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.640 gonna outer like that, but you did, so She'll probably 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.239 end up being sore at me about it, though. We're 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:40.280 all busy these days. Seriously, life man, lifetime's a hundred, right, Yeah, 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.279 I mean thirteen years in and we're still working out 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:47.480 technical difficulties. I know, I know, but we're working it out. 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.159 We're working it out. Chuck like a brilliant scientists, one 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.000 of my all time favorites and a frequent guest star 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.160 of the show in the early years. Paul Baroka, Yeah, 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.240 it's been a while. Huh Yeah, Like he worked out 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.080 a little puzzle that he had handed to him almost 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:07.080 literally in the eighteen seventies. That's right. This is one 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:10.320 of those where I was positive we had covered it before. 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.759 Oh really, no, I knew, I knew four a fact 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.679 we had and I'll explain why in a minute. I'll explain. 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.479 Did it had to be on an Internet roundup or something? 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.120 I don't think so. I know we talked about the 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.400 movie Pie when he drilled a hole in his head. 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.640 I forgot about that. Uh. I just can't remember what 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.720 episode or what it what format it was? Maybe or right, 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.000 maybe it was an Internet round up, because I could 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.160 see us talking about that Internet group doing that kind 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.720 of stuff, the International Trepid Nation Advocacy Group. I'll bet 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:46.800 I even went to our Wikipedia page because they have 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:51.320 a place where they list things that we've redone. Oh yeah, 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.240 I didn't see that. Yeah. And by the way, I 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:56.040 wanted to put out a call if you are a 0:01:56.040 --> 0:02:01.280 Wikipedia editor, our pages years and years years out of date. 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.320 It says that we're writers for how stuff works. We 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.880 haven't written for them in what like eight years. It's 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:10.160 been a little while. Yeah, so if anyone wants updated, 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.520 it's got I mean, God bless her, I miss Rebecca, 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:14.960 but it said that Rebecca is our web publisher right 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.880 a long time ago. Yeah, it has been a little while. 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.600 So anyway, if anyone feels like blowing the dust off 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.519 of that thing, well free Okay, so well, that was 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:26.560 a great call out, Chuck. But let's get back to 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:30.399 trepid nation. Okay. And like you said before we started recording, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:34.840 no No, Chuck said he has no trepidation about trepid nation. 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:37.400 That was for year years. That was great though it 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.760 is definitely worth sharing terrible. But so maybe I mentioned 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.880 it before then because I always associate trepid nation with 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:48.880 this little second one second long snippet from those time 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:54.040 life Mysteries of the Unknown book ads from the and 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.680 there's like one moment where they like show somebody like 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.320 doing a trepid nation surgery on somebody else's head in 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:05.000 like a cave by torchlight. I think I remember that. Yeah, 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:07.079 And I was like, wait, what is that? I want 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.120 to know more about that. So this has been sitting 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:10.840 in our back pocket all this time, and I guess 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.399 we busted it out at least once before. It had 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.440 to have been Internet round up. It definitely wasn't an episode. Yeah, 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:19.720 I think you're probably right. Unless we talked about it 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.000 during lobotomy is I don't know, it could have been. 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.959 It could have been Chuck, because a lot of people say, well, yeah, 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:32.120 the lobotomy was the natural progression to um trepid trepid 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.520 nation and not really no, no, it's actually that's incredibly false. 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.280 It turns out trepid nation is maybe one of the 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:45.000 oldest medical techniques, if not the oldest medical technique we have, 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.040 aside from like slapping someone on the back when they're choking, 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.920 that might be older, but we don't have any evidence 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:54.960 to back that up. We actually have the evidence from 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:58.800 trepid nation. And to get back to Monsieur Broca um 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.080 famous for the Broker area, which is the first region 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:07.400 of the brain that demonstrated localized UM function like the 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:12.080 speech center is um. It produces speech, and it's the 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:13.760 first time we could ever say this part of the 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.560 brain is responsible for this function. And Broca was the 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.880 guy who did that. He had a skull handed to 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:22.000 him in the eighteen seventies and it turned out to 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.719 be an inc in skull. I couldn't find out anywhere 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:27.160 how old it was, but we can guess that by 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.720 the time Broca got his hands on it, it was 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:31.599 at least a couple of hundred years old, if not 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.880 more than a thousand years old. Yeah, can you imagine 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.800 the feather in your cap of you're just sitting around 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.839 with your other cohorts. You're like, I have a part 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:43.560 of the brain named after me, by the way, So 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:45.040 I don't know what you guys have done, but I 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:50.279 know they're like Paul, you in every argument with that Hi, Um, 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.560 Paul broke broke his area. It says it on his 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:58.280 card to Paul broke a comma broke his area. Uh yeah, 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.320 So yeah, he was obviously like, well, this is an 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.640 interesting thing because what he was looking at was a 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.520 piece of skull, what was his human skull where a 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:12.640 piece of it had been purposefully cut away and removed 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:18.640 remarkably well, and it actually actually started to grow back, 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:22.480 which indicates that whoever had this performed on them. That 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.800 means they survived and was trying to heal. Yeah, at 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:27.640 least for a little while. Yeah, Like it takes a 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:29.800 little time for the bone to heal around like a 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.640 skull cut away. So yeah, they had to have lived. 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.599 I think in some cases I've seen, um, when the 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.279 skull starts going back, it indicates at least a year 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:43.440 of survival. I was gonna ask that. So I only 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.279 saw that one or two places. I didn't see exactly, Like, 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.560 I don't know a d percent, but it seems like 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.440 it's it's a little while right, It's not like a 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.159 right yea. So the thing is is like Broca's sitting 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.279 here saying like, Okay, this is this is evidence of 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.599 like this is a purposeful medical procedure. I believe that 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.720 this person had what had their brain cut into to 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:09.160 treat some form of malady or something like that. It's 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:13.119 a proto brain surgery basically. And it was called trepi nation. 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.760 And Paul Broca went to the French Anthropological Society I think, 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.719 which he founded. Yeah, that was another thing he did, 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.080 was the first pay of the Anthropological Society. Yeah, and 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.280 they still were like, no, you got this one wrong, 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.600 Paul um. But he went to them and said as much, 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.119 and they're like, no, that's just not possible. And here's 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.120 the thing that stuck out to me, Chuck. It wasn't 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.920 that they were saying it's not possible that somebody could 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.960 cut into someone else's head. Because these these people, these 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.520 members of the Anthropological Society or just people in general 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:50.400 in France in the eighteen seventies were well aware of 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.640 that procedure. It had a name trepid Nation, and you 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.640 could go to the hospital and get trepanned, depending on 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.000 what kind of problem you had with your head. So 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.200 it's not like they were just totally unfamiliar with this. 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:05.320 They were super familiar with it. What they refused to 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:09.600 believe is that some other society, and non European society, 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:13.240 especially when removed in time, was capable of performing the 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:16.480 surgery and in performing it in a good enough way 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.440 that the person could possibly survive it. Yeah, I mean 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:21.960 they were like, I just I just don't know. That 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:26.160 sounds like they certainly weren't performing medical procedures. The Incas 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:28.640 weren't doing that. And he was like, I don't know, 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.640 look at that whole Yeah, it's pretty purposeful to me. Yeah, 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.520 And so what Broca figured out was he was the 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.720 first one to really stumble upon this evidence that this 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.560 medical procedure that they were carrying out in the hospitals 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:47.880 trepa nation was part of like a really ancient medical procedure, 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.080 virtually unchanged in a lot of ways, Like, yeah, the 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:53.840 tools that they used were kind of changed and kind 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.960 of updated, but basically the procedure they were carrying out 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.040 in the hospitals of France in the eighteen seventies and 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.560 elsewhere in Europe and America. It was basically the same 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.800 thing that people were doing thousands of years ago and 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.200 had been doing for thousands of years as well. Yeah, 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.360 I mean they were doing it so much. In Europe 0:08:11.360 --> 0:08:14.880 in the eighteenth century it was known as the is 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.200 it tree pin or trip In I say trapin trip 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:22.080 in the Trepin century, or because it's us, we'll call 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.960 it the golden age of Trepa nation. Now I'm doubting myself, 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:27.880 and it seems like the Golden Age might have been 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:30.400 you know, a thousand years ago. Yeah, I think you 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:34.000 might be right about that too. But it's started out 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.560 as a veterinary practice. And we'll get a little bit too, 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.320 a little bit, you know, they were we'll get to 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:42.880 the famous cow later on, right, antient cow. But in 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.600 the eighteenth century they think that it started out as 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:48.640 a veterinary practice, correct, and then we'll get to the 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.680 ancient cow a bit later. But it extended humans after 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:56.840 the veterinary procedures, and you know, doctors at the time 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.679 we're like, you know, we think it's useful, we think 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.600 it hell us out with certain things that we'll get 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.720 to as well. But they said, it's also killing a 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.120 lot of people, and it's got a survival rate of 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:13.840 about ten. And here's the little like a whopper of 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:18.160 a detail here. The survival rate in ancient times was 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:23.640 really really high, Like it made the modern survival rate 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:27.880 just look embarrassingly low. It was flip whopped, really, wasn't it? Yes? 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.440 And the Golden Age, like you were mentioning, it seems 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.920 like the golden age of trepid nation occurred thousands of 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:38.199 years before modern medicine ever came around, and that when 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:40.520 modern medicine came around and kind of took over, trepid 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:45.240 nation really dropped the ball kind of well yeah, and 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.520 then you know, of course, once he finds that one skull, 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:54.480 other skulls start coming forward. They start walking forward and saying, hey, 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.240 check me out. I'm out here as evidence as well, 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.760 which was pretty remarkable. That's like compariously, that Mystery Science 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:06.000 Theater three thousand episode on the Screaming Skull. It's like 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.480 the villain in the in the movie is like a 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:11.000 skull that can move around and fly at people, kind 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.880 of like the money from uh Monty Python and the 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:19.040 Holy Grail, but it's a skull version of that, uh 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.400 they found or we now know that the oldest trepon 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.120 skull comes all the way back from about eight thousand 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:30.520 years ago in the Stone Age during the Meso Philic Mesolithic. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:37.240 Sorry and my first and that was eight thousand years ago, 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:42.240 and like this is the beginnings of sort of uh, 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:47.160 planting things and eating vegetables and like building cities, like 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:51.200 the very beginnings of civilization basically, yeah, and we're like 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:55.240 cutting holes into one another's heads, and that we found 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:57.480 evidence of this stuff like all over the world. This 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.280 wasn't just like one one weird old city do doing this, 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.440 Like this was everywhere in places that were really removed 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.880 from one another. Like there's evidence of ancient trepid nation 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:12.840 among indigenous peoples in Canada and North America. There's the 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:18.800 same thing in Ukraine, North Africa, Portugal, everywhere that the Scandinavia, 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:24.040 the iraq Um, all over the place there there's evidence 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.280 of trapan skulls that turn up. South America is another one. 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:29.520 And so it just kind of goes to show you 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:33.480 either it was something that evolved independently in all these places, 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:38.240 or it's so ancient that it it originated somewhere and 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.959 then managed to spread out as people spread across the globe, 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.440 which is pretty interesting either way. Yeah, and it was 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:47.680 it like it got like really popular. This set really 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.040 got me. During the copper Age, which was just after 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:55.000 Stone Age, they found that about five to ten of 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.719 all skulls that they found from the Neolithic area where 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:02.720 Trapan's yeah not just yeah, like like up to ten 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.080 percent of all the skulls that have ever turned up 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.640 had holes cut into their skull. And the thing is 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:10.760 is like we were saying, like, if if that had 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:12.760 just been in, if that were the sum total of it, 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.360 that you know, wow, that's really interesting. People used to 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.199 cut holes in in their skulls and that was it. Um, 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:21.920 it would still be worth remarking remarking on, you know, 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.720 or talking about probably would have just stayed at the 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:27.679 Internet round up. But the reason that it's worth a 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.000 whole episode is because of that survival rate. That not 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.720 only do they cut skulls in each other's heads with 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:40.679 with rocks, actual rocks, Um, the people survived these operations 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.320 and may have actually been improved as a result of 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.280 these operations, and that it had been going on for 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.360 thousands of years and still kind of continues today. That's 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.360 what really makes the whole thing noteworthy. And when you 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:55.960 look back at trepid nation in like the Mesolithic and 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:00.280 Neolithic era, um, like that's part of medical history. It's 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.320 not just some weird thing that people used to do 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:04.560 in other cultures. Like that was the beginning of a 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:07.840 surgery that we still carry out today. I don't think 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.839 we can get that across enough. Yeah, there's a neuroscientist 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:16.240 named Charles G. Gross that put the estimate of survival 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:22.120 sometimes up to fifty And then a survey of skulls 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:27.920 from the Iberian Peninsula showed evidence that they had healed 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.320 or at least we're healing at that site, which means 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.240 they lived for a while. Um. Like you said, skull 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:35.800 just doesn't grow overnight. It takes a little while. And 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.760 as long as that blood flowing, I guess it's healing. Uh. 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.719 And then that actually dropped, so, like I said, that's 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.800 flip flopped from success rates, you know, thousands and thousands 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.280 of years later in Europe. Uh. And then when the 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.840 Holy Roman Empire was doing this in medieval Europe, they 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.240 weren't doing it as good. They had a higher mortality rate, 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.760 and the thinking is is because they used um knives 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:00.680 and then like wiped them off and then lives got 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.240 really dirty. Waras in the olden days they would fashion 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:05.679 like brand new tools out of bone and rock and stuff, 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.360 and you know they were I guess comparatively pretty sanitary. Yeah, 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.319 because if you if you nap um, you know, cut 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.160 off the face of a rock to create a new 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:20.440 stone tool to to perform a trepidation, that rock hasn't 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.720 been exposed to anything. It's basically sterile now because you 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.800 just cut off the face and now you're using it. 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.720 Whereas if you're performing surgery using the same tools and 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.240 all you're doing is washing it off, like that's just 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:35.640 bacterious city and it's not that hard to get a 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:40.200 brain infection when you cut into a skull using reusing 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.720 tools that have just been kind of washed off with 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.440 water a little bit. So yeah, that was probably a 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:49.360 really good reason why the survival rate went down. But 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:51.520 one of the reasons why it was so high also 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.640 earlier is because people like even back in the Mesolithic 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.200 and Neil, they seem to have understood a couple of things, 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.960 and one was you stay away from the dura mater, 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.880 which is that really hard tough, not hard, but really 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.240 tough membrane that encases the brain and the spinal cord 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.200 and protects it from the outside. Even if your skull 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:15.840 cracks open, as long as you stay away from that 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.960 and don't cut into that, your your chances of survival 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.120 are pretty high. And ancient people seem to have really 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:24.240 understood this. They also knew to stay away from sutures, 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:26.520 which is where your skull the pieces of your skull 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.760 which are not set, which are not um fused together 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:32.800 when you're born. They fuse as you grow older. The 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.760 places the lines where your skull plates formed together. Those 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.000 are called sutures, and they also need to stay away 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:42.080 from those as well. So apparently, if you just do 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:44.800 those few things and create a new stone tool every 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.520 time you perform the surgery, your your survival rates going 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.280 to go through the roof. Yeah, and you know, before 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.320 we get called out, maybe we shouldn't refer to those 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.200 stone tools as sterile. Maybe we should just say like 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.080 pretty clean for the time, clean enough, How about that 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:02.680 clean enough for rock and roles? All right, I guess 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.080 we should take a break, right set up? Yeah, I 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.360 thought so too, man, And uh, we'll come back and 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.600 try and answer the big question after this, which is 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:43.120 why the heck were they doing this? All Right, so 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.680 they know this was happening, they know it was working 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:49.400 pretty well, and that people were surviving at remarkable rates. 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.320 But the big sort of question that they had then 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:56.440 and that we're still trying to kind of figure out 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:58.400 and we don't know for sure, is like, why would 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.560 they do this to begin with? Why a day dig 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:04.680 into a person's head and cut out a piece of 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.720 their skull eight thousand years ago? Uh? And you know, 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:13.120 we've got some decent ideas that all makes sense to me. Yeah, um. 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.000 And the whole problem is is kind of like like 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.159 put you have to put yourself in the mentality in 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:22.560 the shoes in the world view of somebody who was 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:27.160 no shoes right right exactly. There's a huge different people 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.040 who are still humans. They were modern humans in every 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:32.679 sense of the word, aside from not living in the 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.200 modern era. Um. But they didn't have the benefit of, 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.399 you know, a general knowledge of medicine that that just 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.760 about every human alive has today just from living in 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.960 the twenty one century UM, or just kind of under 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.600 having read about something on the internet, you know, like 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.520 there's just so many pieces of the way we see 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:53.600 the world that we take for granted because it's just 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.159 there's just so many ways that we absorb information, and 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.480 there's so much information available to us that wasn't before that. 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:02.480 To to kind of remove yourself from that and put 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.480 yourself in the position of somebody six thousand years ago 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.320 and and to understand what they were thinking when they 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.040 were cutting into someone's head that drove that purpose, it's 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.359 really tough to do. But yeah, like you were saying, 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:18.320 there's some some researchers have come up with some pretty 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:22.480 good ideas, general ideas, um, broad categories that you could 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.920 probably put just about anything into. And there's actually three 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.800 researchers that are worth shouting out. There was um Lopez, 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.199 Carro and Pardin, Yes, three Spanish researchers who wrote a 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.560 two thousand eleven paper that, um it was a pretty 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.719 one of the better recent comprehensive looks at at trepid 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.760 nation ancient trepid nation. Yeah, so one of the reasons 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:46.919 and like you said, you, I mean, I don't think 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:48.919 it's lazy, but you could kind of slap these reasons 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.080 on anything that happened back then. Uh, one of them 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.879 was magic a religious UM like, you know, free the 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.959 demons from someone's head. I kind of read that as, uh, 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:03.240 possibly to help cure mental illness, which they were definitely 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.080 doing in Europe thousands of years later, So I don't 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:09.480 see why they wouldn't have maybe done the same thing. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.400 But I mean, it's it's remarkable though, to think that 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.640 eight thousand years ago that they they knew enough or 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.560 we're guessing enough to know that there is even a 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:26.240 brain in there that was really important to the human body, 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.040 you know, calling the shots. Yeah, yeah, I mean how 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.919 they even know that, I don't know. And similarly, that 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.040 whole idea that like the third eye, that that part 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.119 that kind of connects you to the to the metaphysical 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:42.760 world UM was located somewhere, you know, in the front 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:44.960 of your head, which I think is actually right where 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.640 the pineal gland was, which was later associated with that too. UM. 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.040 That kind of falls into that same tranche as well. 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.159 The magic religious which is UM to kind of open 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:59.320 yourself to a greater plane of spirituality, like they think 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:03.760 that in some in some dimensions or in some cultures 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:09.720 UM like shaman or medicine people or UM. The high 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.439 priests whoever we were kind of responsible for that would 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.919 would possibly be trepanned to kind of connect to that 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:22.240 that different level, that other way of thinking. Yeah. Another one, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:24.800 and this is definitely one that you could probably say 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.080 explains away a lot of things. Is some sort of initiation, right, uh, 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.600 child passing into adulthood at you know, the age of seven, 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.240 or uh, if you want to turn someone to into 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:40.439 a great warrior, maybe before some big battle, hopefully a 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.080 little bit before that big battle, you know, just to 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:45.840 give a chance to heal up. But that you know, 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:47.760 that makes sense. They did all kinds of things back 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.520 then for writes of passage, so why not this? Um. 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.080 There's also those two me are the ones that are 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:56.720 the hardest to to grasp, I think even harder than 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.840 magic religious the ones for initiations not grasp I mean 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:03.960 to to pin down definitively, to say, yes, that's exactly 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:06.440 what was going on here, you know what I mean? Yeah, 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:11.160 and then follow like real legit medical purposes like if 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:16.959 someone if tooktok had epilepsy or something, or chronic migraine headaches, uh, 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.480 any weird changes in behavior or convulsions or anything like that, 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:24.879 they maybe tumors um as a literal way to maybe 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.440 relieve like brain swelling or pressure on the brain, which 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:31.840 is I mean, if that's real, then that's that's remarkable 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:34.720 because that is very much a medical procedure that they 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.520 still do today. Craniotomy's right, and then kind of tied 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:43.240 into that is a treatment of trauma, UH, specifically head wounds. 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:46.960 And there's an anthropologist who specializes in I think UM 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.119 maybe the INCA. His name is John Rizzo, and he 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:53.320 thinks that the ink with the inc at least um 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.040 and the INCA went on to become prolific trepans. I 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.199 think maybe half of all of the Trapan skulls that 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:03.320 have been discovered came from the inca. They were big 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:07.200 time into trepainning um. But he thinks that there their 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.119 trepi nation may have started when somebody was picking bone 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:13.359 out of a head wound to like clean it or 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.800 treat it, and that that person went on to survive 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:19.919 and they thought, Okay, maybe this is a thing. Maybe 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:22.320 like you want a hole in your head or um, 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:24.199 if you have a hole in your head, it's supposed 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:26.479 to be a little more cleaner than you know, just 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:29.480 bone sticking out and that you know you can it's 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.440 not hard to make the leap to Okay, we're actually 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.320 going to carve a hole in your head to maybe 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:39.320 treat something else that is associated with the head. To 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.320 us um that that that's not really a big stretch 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:45.600 to tell you the truth. And I definitely bought into it. Yeah, 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:48.840 the one that didn't see, which um, I think is 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:54.280 is sort of plausible. Is just like ancient curiosity, Sure, 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:56.320 what happens when I carve a hole in my friends? 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:58.840 Or what's in that thing? What is in this round 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:02.760 thing that had this very hard protective covering, Like maybe 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:04.639 something important is in there that we should take a 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:07.600 peek at. I wonder because I know that there's like 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:12.679