Skull shows man survived surgery to ease brain pressure 2700 years ago

A man who lived in what is now China 2700 years ago had a hole cut in his skull to treat a head injury and survived. This suggests that shamanic doctors in that era could do advanced brain surgery.

The Yanghai cemetery in Xinjiang, China, is a large, ancient burial ground containing the graves of a clan that practised shamanism, generally defined as a belief system using trance to communicate with the …