Balboa Park

So I though I was coming to California for the sunshine but for the past two weeks all it has done is rain !!!! Ok so it rains on and off but still! How am I suppose to go to the beach or soak in the rays with all these clouds in the way! This blog features pics I took on a rainy day trip to Balboa Park- which makes up a huge area of land in San Diego and features the San Diego Zoo (I have not visited yet but I am waiting for the sun) Anyway there are tons of museums and gardens here in addition to theaters and restaurants.
I visited the Museum of Man- an anthropology museum the first picture is taken of the court yard in front of the museum. And the second is of the front of the building.


This is the main floor of the Museum of Man featuring huge stelae. Though these are just casts made from the originals in 1914, Stelae were stone slabs carved and erected as monuments. These are from the Mayan civilization in the City of Quirigua, Guatemala and were pretty cool to check out.


This is me- in the rain:)

This is a skull from the "Skull Stories" exhibit. This skull features a hole that was actually made through surgical intervention called trephenation. These skulls were from many different civilizations from many different time periods. The practice of opening the skull seems to have been in practice much longer than modern medicine.

On each skull you could guess whether or not the person had lived through the surgery by looking at the amount of new bone. You could also guess why the person had the surgery- many had skull fractures likely from head injury. You could also tell if the skull had been exposed to infection. I found this exhibit very interesting and was surprised to see how many people had actually survived ancient surgery without modern medicine or modern pain medications!

This skull features multiple trephinations- 3 performed by cutting squares of bone out. The skull shows some signs of healing but mostly of infection. The person did not survive this surgery.