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Posted on 02/24/2026 8:18:29 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Around 2,500 years ago in Siberia, a young woman experienced a serious head injury, underwent surgery to reconstruct her jaw, and received a primitive prosthetic during the procedure, CT scans of the woman's mummified remains reveal...
In 1994, archaeologists with the Russian Academy of Sciences excavated a small cemetery consisting of five low mounds on the Ukok Plateau. One mound held the undisturbed burial of a woman who was around 25 to 30 years old when she died. She was lying on a wooden cot and was wearing a wig. But because her burial lacked significant artifacts and only a part of her head was mummified, her burial was not fully investigated at the time...
Although the woman's injury was not unusual, the unique treatment for the damage to her bones and ligaments surprised the researchers. They found thin canals drilled into the two bones that made up the woman's right TMJ, as well as horsehair or animal tendon in the canals holding the joint together...
Several aspects of the woman's skull revealed that she lived for several months — or even years — following the surgery. New bone tissue had grown around the canals in her right TMJ, and the teeth in the left side of her jaw were worn and chipped, suggesting she compensated for the right-sided injury by chewing exclusively on her left.
The Pazyryk people knew how to perform basic skull surgery in the days before anesthesia; evidence of trepanation in the form of holes in the skull has been found in several mummies. They also had a deep understanding of human anatomy and dissection, according to the statement, which was necessary for their tradition of mummifying bodies. But the woman's TMJ surgery is a rare example of their skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
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A view of the right side of the Pazyryk woman's skull.Image credit: NSU Press Service
Amazing.
Skull and jawbone surgery WITHOUT anesthesia!!!
Not even with codine Tylenol for post operative pain.
Where could they have learned? My guess: The surgeons learned rudimentary skull and jawbone surgery by operating on horses and cows. These were working animals needed to maintain their lifestyles and basic nutrition.
It would be like modern man learning to Gerry-Rig the family car. For every “successful” surgery, meaning a procedure where the patient survived for a minimum time period afterwards, there must have been scores of F-Ups, the surgeons would prefer to forget.
I’m reminded of the old dark humor saying, “a doctor can always bury his mistakes.”
Lol! In more ways than one!
As modern humans we are not smarter, not more moral, not braver, not better than our ancestors
What we DO have, and our main advantage (and its a big one) is the collected and maintained wisdom of a thousand years of collected Christian civilization.
I’d like to know why they assume there was no attempt at deadening the pain - worst case, I expect they knew someone who was dead-drunk didn’t feel pain, so I’d be surprised if an attempt wasn’t made to knock them out in some fashion.
Surgery or massive infection from bad wisdom tooth?
We also have a collected wisdom of thousands of years of Hippocratic oath medicine and natural remedies thru the early 1900's, trashed and forgotten by the likes of John D. Rockefeller, big Oil, big Pharm, and since further denigrated by big Sugar, big Processed foods, taking a huge backwards step in health. Big Pharma will never have a pill that cures - they are interested in Customers.
“Shirley fell off her horse, let’s try something, even if she doesn’t make it, we’ll have learned something.”
Orrrr, she was *really* getting a different procedure, and the doctor (such as he or she was) accidently broke her jaw putting her under with a quick punch. Twofer!
You cannot say for certain that she was not anesthetized in some way. They likely had some type of drug available. In fact, there were countless mystery cults around at that time and in that area which were based on various hallucinogenic and psychotropic drugs.
Depending on the climate would it be possible that opiate containing poppies might have been grown? Although alcohol is not an anesthetic, a whopping dose could have put her to sleep enough to do the procedure. She may have had pain in the jaw already, so manipulation of the jaw while drunk could have been a possibility. I guess the narrative has to change that cultures thousands of years ago were unsophisticated and primitive. I would guess that the only difference between them and us would be the materials and techniques we use to build our therapies and inventions.
Opium was used as a anesthetic and sedative by the ancients.
If they were skilled enough to do surgery and fashion prosthetics, it’s rash to assume they had no anesthesia. There are a variety of natural compounds that can be used to dull the senses in various degrees.
This is true
Alcohol and opium have been around for centuries. I’ll take a double tequila sunrise with a heavy hint of Ouzo if you got it.
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