Perhaps brain surgery is the oldest of the practiced medical skill. Why? Even for the practice of other practiced medical skills such as pharmacology, there's no real evidence suggesting when did they begin. Yet, as I have said at the very beginning, it is evidenced that back to the Neolithic period, people had already worked on brain surgery by trepanning the skulls.

Pre-historic evidence for brain surgery wasn't only limited in Europe. Early in the 2,000 B.C., pre-Incan civilization had already used brain surgery as a general practice. Archaeological evidence in Peru, a desert strip south of Lima, specifies that brain surgery was used widely. An inordinate success rate was noted as patients were recovered. Treatment was used for epilepsy, headaches, organic diseases, mental illness, and also head injuries.

The father of medicine, Hippocrates, had left many texts on brain surgery. He was quite familiar with the clinical signs of head injuries. Many ideas found in his texts were still in good condition 2,000 years after his death, in 360 B.C.

In the first century A.D., ancient Rome appeared a brain surgeon star called Aulus Comelius Celsus. Hippocrates didn't operate on depressed skull cracks, yet Celsus often did. He also explained the symptoms of brain injuries in detail.

Asia also has many talented brain surgeons, such as Galenus of Peramon, who was born in Turkey and physicians of Byzance like Oribasius and Paul of Aegina. From 800 to 1,200 A.D., there was an Islamic school of brain surgery flourished. Perhaps Abu Bekr Muhammad el Razi, who lived from 852 to 932 A.D. in the Common Era, was the greatest Islamic brain surgeon. Abu l'Qluasim Khalaf, the second greatest Islamic brain surgeon, lived and practiced in Cordoba, Spain and he was also one of the great influences on western brain surgery.