Count d’Alviella says in his Hibbert Lectures for 1891, “Numbers of savage peoples suppose that the soul continues to inhabit the body after death, though from time to time it makes excursions into the world of the living. It therefore requires a hole if it is to escape from the enclosure. For this reason it is that, at the death of a relative, the Hottentots, the Samoyeds, the Siamese, the Fijians, and the Redskins, make a hole in the hut to allow the passage of the deceased, but close it again immediately afterwards to prevent its coming back. The Iroquois make a small hole in every tomb, and expressly declare that it is to enable the soul to go out and come in at its pleasure.”
There was another usage of the men of the megalithic monuments which had, apparently, the same idea or conception of spirit as that which induced them to make holes in their dolmens.
In 1873, when the French Association for the Advancement of Science met in Congress at Lyons, Dr. Prunières produced an elliptical disc of skull which had been found by him inside a human skull that had been trepanned, and which came from a dolmen in Lozère. The disc had been cut out of a human skull by some sharp instrument at an incline. At first sight it appeared probable that this piece came from the skull in which it was discovered, but on close examination it was found that it would not fit the hole trepanned in the skull.
In the same dolmen Dr. Prunières found a second skull that had been trepanned more than once. Attention was now drawn to this remarkable phenomenon—and instances multiplied to prove that the men of the polished stone age, the men who erected Stonehenge and Carnac, were wont to cut holes in their heads.
Fig. 50.—SKULL THAT HAD BEEN TWICE TREPANNED FROM A CAVE IN THE PETIT-MORIN.
Dr. Prunières especially took the matter up. He discovered in the dolmens portions of skulls, circular or elliptical, that had been pierced with holes for suspension, and had been polished by long continued wear. In the Cave de l’Homme-Mort, in Lozère, he exhumed a skull that had a surgical trepanned hole on the sagittal suture. Finally, in the great ossuary of Beaumes Chaudes he discovered as many as sixty cranial discs. Skulls began to turn up elsewhere that had been trepanned, and all of the same epoch. They came from Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Algeria. It was found also that trepanning skulls had been in practice among the aborigines of America. In the Peabody Museum is a skull that has had a hole cut out of it. A mound on the Devil’s River yielded another. Other trepanned skulls were taken out of mounds near Lake Huron and Grape Mound. A skull found in a barrow near the River Detroit had two perforations in it. A sepulchre near Lima yielded a skull that had also been surgically treated in the same fashion. Another came from the basin of the Amazon. There is, however, a marked difference between the American holed skulls and these of the neolithic men of Europe. The American skulls have all been operated on after death, and are found only in male skulls. They were, moreover, made by means of a stone drill which was turned rapidly round. Only one circular perforation in every respect similar to these found in Europe has been noticed in America. We may, therefore, put aside the pre-historic trepannings of America as not connected directly with the subject under consideration. In Europe the majority of the cases show by evident tokens that the operations were performed during life. Of these the greatest numbers of every age and sex have been found in the dolmens of France.
In the Casa da Moura, a dolmen in Portugal, was found a skull on which the operation had been begun, but never completed. It had clearly been worked with a flint scraper. The Baron de Baye found in one of the paleolithic caves of Marne a head that had been twice trepanned.
The great majority of cases of trepanned heads show that those operated upon had lived for many years after the operation. Indeed, it cannot be said that the practice of trepanning is as yet extinct. Dr. Boulongue, in his work on Montenegro, gives a long account of this usage of the natives of the Black Mountain; they have recourse to trepanning on the smallest provocation, simply because they have headaches. He quotes numerous instances of persons who have been trepanned seven and even eight times, without this materially injuring their health.
In the same manner the Kabyles of Algeria cut holes in their heads, usually as a cure for epilepsy.