Peruvian Skull with Strange Metal Implant Baffles Experts: Is It Real or Fake?

A skull with a metal implant could be one of the first few pieces of evidence of ancient surgery. The elongated, cone-shaped remain was unearthed in Peru, but some groups question its authenticity.

The skull's shape is not unusual as many previous discoveries held the same feature. In addition, the ancient Peruvian culture has rituals such as squeezing the head of children with a band to develop a unique cone shape. The skull was donated to Oklahoma City's Museum of Osteology.

Peruvian Skull Embedded with Metallic Object Discovered

What baffles the experts the most is the metal implant of the skull, as it is a bit unusual relative to the timeline of the early surgical innovations. If authentic, the implant could be the most advanced and unique find collected from the ancient Andean.

Trepanation is the most suspected reason the skull had metal embedded in it. The method is a surgical intervention that includes creating a hole in an individual's head to treat a medical condition and head injuries. Trepanation is a common practice in many civilizations of the ancient world.

The Museum of Osteology published a set of images of the Peruvian skull. However, the metal implant authenticity was not yet verified by experts. According to a report by Science Alert, carbon dating was not carried out for the specimen, and no examination has been conducted by archaeologists until now.

Insights from other museums regarding the authenticity of the Peruvian skull were mixed. Some groups are skeptical and believe that the specimen was a product of forgery, while others deem the surgery genuine.

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Skull and Metal Surgery, Fabricated?

Tulane University anthropology expert John Verano said in a Live Science report that they are quite dubious about the authenticity of the subject. Verano suspects the metal surgery is a modern-day forgery, even if the skull was legit.

Fabrication may have been administered to the skull to raise its value, according to Verano. It is also possible that the implant was inserted into the skull decades before the ownership of the donor.

Verano investigated many Andean skulls that allegedly contained metal implants in 2010.

Verano's team explained in the paper that the skulls that held metal implants could be either forgery to simply an ancient method of grave offering.

University of California Santa Barbara anthropology expert Danielle Kurin said that they have never seen an ancient remnant like the subject in question before. The skull, which probably belonged to an older male, has fracture patterns on the right side that may have originated from massive blunt-force trauma, Kurin explained.

The concentric and radiating fracture lines of the skull show clues of healing and suggest that the person survived a week to a month-long recovery.

Kurin's team reported a case in a previous study where an ancient Peruvian individual, who lived about 800 years ago, was discovered with a tight-fitting skull cap with an additional metal cap stitched to it. The artifact was worn as a helmet to protect the area treated with trepanation.

SUNY Cortland anthropology professor Kent Johnson also suggests that the metal implant could be authentic, but several examinations must be done on the subject. However, regardless of whether the implant surgery was legitimate or not, the person who received the treatment survived a severe injury, Johnson added.

The study titled "Cranioplasty in Ancient Peru: A Critical Review of the Evidence, and a Unique Case from the Cuzco Area" was published in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.