How Mount Vesuvius locked the brain of this Roman in time

Nearly 2000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius erupted, absorbing the nearby Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii in an overheated cloud of ash, dust and volcanic material. The environment was so hot that a team of researchers claimed to have turned at least one brain per inhabitant into glass.

Not only is the former, rose-white organ of the individual in a hard, sparkling black material, but the glass remains contain preservation to the microscopic level-that is, the axons and neurons of the Romans are preserved by the extreme conditions of the volcanic eruption. The team analysis was published today at Scientific reportsS

“Our overall chemical and physical characteristics of the material taken from the sample of the skull of a human body buried in herculane, by the eruption of 79 years of the Mount Vessui, shows convincing evidence that these are a human brain composed of organic glass, a different tissue. located for the tissue of humans or animals.

The remains of the individual were found in a bed in the Augustali colleague in Herculaneum. The individual was a young man – 20 years old – and researchers say he is thought to be a guardian of the colleague dedicated to the worship of Emperor August, who died 65 years before the eruption.

Although the preservation of the human brain is rare in the archaeological record, it is documented. By dehydration of landing (essentially preservation through soap), tan and freezing, our most important organ is preserved in different cases in time. But the vitreation – the inclusion of material in the glass substance – the human brain is not documented due to the very specific high temperatures and rapid cooling that must occur.

The individual’s brain and remarkable preservation were first described In 2020, but at that time the researchers could not understand how the windows happened. Now they understand the extreme and unique states that produce the glass brain.

The researchers note in the document that the temperatures of the pyroclastic flows that have buried Pompey and Herculane are several hundred degrees – a heating that would usually destroy the soft tissue.

The glass remains of the individual are “formed by a unique process of vitricting of his brain at very high temperature and are the only such phenomenon on Earth,” the researchers write. “Calorimetric analyzes show that the temperature at which the brain is transformed into glass is well over 510 ° C (950 degrees Fahrenheit), suggesting that the body is exposed to the passage and disappear of short, diluted and very hot pyroclastic flow, explaining its early rapid heating and the following very rapid cooling.”

The team added that the unique process caused the brain and its microstructures to maintain perfect preservation. In fact, the analysis of the glass using a scanning electron microscope revealed neurons, axons and other neural structures. This is strikingly similar to the processes by which researchers are writing On the scrolls carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius – is also located in Villa Herculaneum.

Researchers also claim that the brain was specifically in a unique position that must be preserved – such as the individual’s skull and rotation protects the organ from the weight of the intense pyroclastic flow. Although extremely hot and obviously fatal, the first wave of heat from the eruption of Vesuvius was not the species of a messy flow of lava for which volcanic eruptions are known.

If you really want to break yourself in someone, it may be time to give up your ass is grass. Instead, try “your brain is glass”.