A Roman Man’s Brain Turned To Glass After The Vesuvius Eruption Cooked It
During the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., thousands of people were killed in the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. One young man died lying in his bed, and he is the only example of someone’s brain turning to glass.
A team of researchers first unearthed the man’s remains in 1960. He was estimated to be in his 20s at the time of death. The black glass in his skull was discovered in 2020.
After analyzing the glass, the researchers realized his brain had been cooked into a glass fossil due to quick changes in temperature as the volcano erupted.
Archaeological evidence of brain tissue is already relatively rare—this latest discovery is totally one of a kind.
The man appeared to have died while lying in a bed at the Collegium Augustalium, a building dedicated to Emperor Augustus in Herculaneum.
He may have been a guardian at the Collegium. Since Herculaneum was closer to Mount Vesuvius than Pompeii, it experienced the wrath of the volcano first.
In 2020, the researchers found that the glass in the man’s skull contained elements from the human brain and spinal cord.
But they didn’t know how parts of his brain turned to glass. Now, they have come up with a theory for how this could’ve happened in a new study.
In order for the brain to become glass, it must have experienced extremely hot temperatures followed by a quick cooling period.
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The study suggests that a super hot, short-lived ash cloud from the volcano hit the area where the man was sleeping.
The team estimated that the ash cloud was more than 950 degrees Fahrenheit. Its extreme heat would have killed him. Almost immediately afterward, the temperatures returned to normal, causing his brain to cool down quickly.
He was then hit with pyroclastic flows, which were still hot at around 869 degrees Fahrenheit, but was still cooler than the ash cloud.
Glass hardly ever forms in nature because it requires liquid material to cool down fast enough so that it doesn’t develop a crystalline structure.
“A cerebral and spinal material like this, vitrified, not only has never been found in any other of the hundreds of skeletons of victims of the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., but it is the only example of its kind known in the world,” said Pierpaolo Petrone, an archaeologist from the University of Naples Federico II.
“It is likely that the particular conditions that occurred at the beginning of the eruption at the place of discovery, as well as the protection of the skull bones and the spinal column of the individual, created the conditions for the brain and bone marrow to survive the thermal impact, subsequently allowing this unique, organic glass to form.”
The study was published in Scientific Reports.
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