Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old skull that suggests evidence of cannabis being used in brain surgery

Cannabis just might have been used in long-ago surgeries and rituals, reports suggest following the discovery of a 4,000-year-old skull.

Archaeologists found the skull of a warrior in the Transnistria region of Moldova at a former Stalinist shooting range. The well-preserved skull had two holes surgically drilled into the bone, perhaps indicating a brain surgery.

Archaeologists believe that brain surgeries such as these were carried out to ease headaches, treat brain injuries and potentially even treat epilepsy. This is not definitive, though, since skulls with these holes have rarely been found and experts haven’t ruled out the possibility that the operations were done for ritualistic reasons, including dispelling evil spirits.

That said, surgery could be the more likely explanation since archaeologists believe the warrior from the Ingul Catacomb culture, during the Middle Bronze Age, lived for years after the procedure.

Prehistoric warrior had TWO holes cut into his skull with a bronze blade as part of a barbaric trepanation procedure 4,000 years ago, archaeologists claim https://t.co/ychWLBUfBy — Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) July 10, 2019

Sergey Mikhailovich Slepchenko, PhD, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, who has written numerous peer-reviewed studies on the topic of analyzing ancient remains, previously theorized that the most likely anesthetic used in this type of surgery would be cannabis.

But “the consumption of fungi, together with other Shamanic practices, such as ecstatic dancing or the use of a drum” is seen as a likely method of “altering the conscious state of a patient and so reducing pain to the extent necessary to carry out surgery”

This discovery adds to existing research delving into how cannabis was used in ancient civilizations, particularly in operations as an anesthetic and pain reliever.

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