A 5,300-year-old skull just revealed the world’s oldest ear surgery

For more than 5,300 years, it lay undisturbed beneath a Stone Age tomb in northern Spain, hidden among the remains of nearly 100 people. When archaeologists finally uncovered the ancient skull, they expected another glimpse into prehistoric life. Instead, they found evidence of something far more extraordinary.

The skull was unearthed in 2018 from the Dolmen of El Pendón, a large Neolithic burial monument near Reinoso in Spain’s Burgos province. The tomb, dating between 3800 BCE and 3000 BCE, served as a collective burial site for around 100 individuals. Among them was the skull of an elderly woman, believed to have been around 65 years old.

Researchers found two carefully made openings behind the woman’s ears, indicating two separate surgical procedures, possibly performed months or even years apart. According to the study published in Scientific Reports, she most likely suffered from mastoiditis, a dangerous bacterial infection affecting the mastoid bone behind the ear, which can spread to the brain if left untreated.

The most convincing evidence that the procedures worked came from the skull itself: new bone had formed around both surgical openings, proving the woman survived for at least several weeks after each operation, possibly much longer. Before this discovery, the earliest physical evidence of mastoid surgery dated to the Proto-Byzantine period, between the fourth and ninth centuries CE, meaning this skull pushes that history back by more than 4,000 years.

Image: Wikimedia Commons