Trepanning
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Trepanning, also known as trepanation, trephination, trephining or making a burr hole, is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull. The intentional perforation of the cranium exposes the dura mater to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases or release pressured blood buildup from an injury. It may also refer to any "burr" hole created through other body surfaces, including nail beds. A trephine is an instrument used for cutting out a round piece of skull bone to relieve pressure beneath a surface.
Detail from The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c. 1488–1516)
The perimeter of the hole in this trepanated Neolithic skull is rounded off by ingrowth of new bony tissue, indicating that the patient survived the operation.
Skulls from the Bronze Age exhibited at the Musée archéologique de Saint-Raphaël (Archeological Museum of Saint-Raphaël), found in Comps-sur-Artuby (France). The subjects survived operations.
Dr. John Clarke trepanning a skull, c. 1664, in one of the earliest American portraits. Clarke is alleged to have been the first physician to have performed the operation in the New England Colonies.
Inca Empire
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The Inca Empire, called Tawantinsuyu by its subjects, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization rose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century. The Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 and by 1572, the last Inca state was fully conquered.
An Inca prince accompanied by nobles, priests and warriors
The first image of the Inca in Europe, Pedro Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, 1553
Sapa inkakuna, a 17th-century Cusco painting with the Inca lineages mentioned by colonial chronicles and their relationship with the royal queens of Cusco, which hide behind a complex representation of the Inca social organization.