Ancient Vesuvius eruption turned victim's brain to a glassy rock in rare, poorly understood process [View all]

AFP-JIJI


JAN 24, 2020

ROME – It looks like a piece of rock, black and shiny. But Italian anthropologists say the fragment is actually part of an exploded brain from a victim of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79.

The discovery — published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine — is a rarity in archaeology, and researchers called it “sensational.”

Scholars who for years have studied the grisly remains of those trapped by ash, lava and toxic gases when the volcano erupted in southern Italy were intrigued by a curious glassy material found inside one victim’s skull in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Pompeii.

“In October 2018, I was able to look at these remnants, and I saw that something was shimmery in the shattered skull,” said Pier Paolo Petrone, one of the researchers.

Petrone, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Naples Federico II, said he was “pretty sure this material was human brain.”

More:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/24/world/offbeat-world/ancient-vesuvius-eruption-turned-victims-brain-glassy-rock-rare-poorly-understood-process/#.Xi15MmhKjDc