Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/627

Rh Études two skulls from Roknia, Algiers, with traces of this operation. Mr. Squier presented to the Society of Anthropology a skull from an ancient Peruvian grave, upon which are distinctly seen the eight extremities of these saw-cuts. The traces of inflammation around the bone prove that the operation was performed about a week before death. If the person had survived some years, the traces of incision would have been effaced, the four angles would have become rounded, and the result would have resembled those which we now find upon the skulls of Lozère.

M. Chil related, at the Congrès at Lille, that there had been found a perforated skull resembling those discovered by M. Prunières in the Canary Islands—a fact of great importance, if confirmed, for it would indicate that these islands were peopled by African negroes.

The Medical Times assures us that the medicine-men of the South-Sea Islands practise, with a bit of glass, trepanning for troubles of the head, such as vertigo, neuralgia, etc. The remedy consists in making a T-shaped incision in the scalp, and scraping the skull with a fragment of glass, until the dura mater is reached, and a hole made one inch in diameter. In the minds of these savages the healing art is mixed up with a multitude of singular religious ideas. In their eyes the maladies of the body are caused by demoniacal possession. Therefore, when one suffers in the head, we must open a passage to let the demon out. It was thus that Jupiter, suffering from headache, escaped the malady by causing Vulcan to strike him so violently that Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, sprang from the opening.

Hence it may be that, for medical reasons, the men of the Stone Age trepanned the skull. But this does not account for all the facts. Why trepan the dead? Why introduce into some skulls the round plates of bone? It is clear that the healing art had nothing to do with these post-mortem operations, and that here our forefathers were simply acting in obedience to some religious ideas which it is hard for us to imagine.

In the first place, we would observe that, in all probability, these people bad a religion. M. Joseph, of Baye, has communicated to the Société d'Anthropologie a discovery made at Baye (Marne) of artificial grottoes excavated in the chalk during the Neolithic Age. He saw upon the walls of these caverns rude and almost shapeless sketches representing divinities in human form; and in these same caverns he found skulls perforated similarly to those of M. Prunières. Upon these grounds we may safely argue the existence of a system of religion. It has been observed that all the operations of trepanning were performed either upon infants or upon youths. Why were not all ages subject to it? why only infants or youths? I hazard the conjecture that it was connected with some superstition, that it formed a part of the ceremony of initiation to some priestly order. This, it is true, presupposes the existence of a religious caste; but there is no doubt