The 4,000-year-old skull of a Bronze Age child buried in what's now Uzbekistan bears scars from a cranial surgery known as trepanation. It is the oldest documented evidence of surgery in Central Asia and one of the oldest examples of surgery in all of Asia, the researchers report.

The skeleton of the child, who died at about age 5, was unearthed in April. The body had been buried in a single grave alongside the body of a child who died at about 3 years old, researchers said in a translated statement.