The Oldest Brain Ever Discovered
The Journal of the Royal Society InterfaceWhen an archaeologist peered into the skull, she saw something “unlike anything I had seen before.”
In 2008, researchers found a decapitated skull dating back to the Iron Age near York, England. But then, they discovered something even more surprising inside of the skull. The man’s brain was still in there.
Archaeologist Rachel Cubitt recalls, “I peered through the hole at the base of the skull to investigate and to my surprise saw a quantity of bright yellow spongy material.”
Experts didn’t know it quite yet, but they had just discovered the world’s oldest brain, which dates back to about 2,600 years ago.
As Cubitt put it: “It was unlike anything I had seen before.”
The fatty tissues that make up the brain rarely survive for long after a person’s death. So how did this brain survive for over two millennia?
Researchers believe that the man’s head was buried almost instantly after he was killed. When clay-rich mud encased the head, it protected the brain from any new oxygen. Thus, the organ did not break down.
But whose brain did the researchers find? Experts don’t know exactly who the man was while he was alive. But they do know that he lived in Britain around 2,600 years ago, during the Iron Age. He was between 26 and 45 years old when he died. And his death was quite violent: He suffered a brutal neck wound right before someone cut off his head with a knife.
The man’s flesh eventually rotted. But the brain, protected by the skull, somehow escaped decay.