Archaeologists in Poland have found a uncommon iron instrument that the Celts used to carry out cranial surgical procedure 2,300 years in the past.
The hand-held artifact was discovered at Łysa Góra, a Celtic web site within the Mazovia area of central-eastern Poland.
“The method and precision of the iron object’s manufacture point out Celtic metallurgy,” Bartłomiej Kaczyński, an archaeologist on the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw, advised Dwell Science in an electronic mail, and it was possible used to trepan a human cranium.
From the Greek phrase which means “to bore,” trepanation is a type of cranial surgical procedure that was practiced in lots of cultures around the globe — together with in what at the moment are Spain, Israel and Bolivia — for no less than 5,000 years, till the start of the nineteenth century.
There are a couple of trepanation strategies, however most Celts seem to have used the “conventional scraping strategy of trepanation,” and solely a minority of Celtic settlements practiced “drill trepanations,” in line with a 2007 examine within the journal Neurosurgical Focus.
“The Celts practiced trepanation, as indicated by particular person instruments found in graves,” Kaczyński mentioned. “It appears that evidently these operations had not solely a magical but additionally a medical function.”
However to date, they’ve discovered no skeletons of people that underwent the process at Łysa Góra.
The presence of Celts — fierce warriors who had been native to the European mainland and sacked Rome — was considerably shocking, the workforce mentioned, since Łysa Góra is essentially the most northeastern Celtic web site ever present in Europe.
Kaczyński and his workforce have been conducting new archaeological digs at Łysa Góra, which was first excavated within the Nineteen Seventies, for 2 years.
In 2024, the archaeologists discovered lots of of artifacts, together with a uncommon Celtic helmet product of skinny bronze sheet metallic. And within the 2025 excavation, the workforce discovered Celtic brooches, a spearhead and an iron ax, in addition to quite a few metallic objects associated to horseback using.
The trepanation instrument, found this spring in the identical a part of the location because the helmet, is even rarer than the helmet, in line with Kaczyński, as a result of only some of those surgical instruments have been discovered at Celtic websites. This specific implement, which encompasses a blade that transitions to a spike and was most likely initially fixed to a wood deal with, is a sort of historical scalpel.
Kaczyński advised Science in Poland that the presence of an iron trepanation scalpel implies that the Celts who settled within the area possible included somebody with specialised medical or ritual data, in addition to a blacksmith who may create the instruments discovered at Łysa Góra.
The excavations at Łysa Góra have to this point revealed that it was a fortified settlement even earlier than the Celts arrived within the fourth century. However as soon as the Celts arrived, “traces of bronze and iron metallurgy, distinctive imports, fragmented bronze and amber objects all point out that the settlement was a key middle of commerce,” Kaczyński mentioned.
Amber was a prized materials within the Mediterranean world presently, Kaczyński advised Dwell Science in 2024, and the Celts might have fortified Łysa Góra to guard their place on the “amber path.”
