Mind-boggling discovery: Perfectly preserved brain of Iron Age man unearthed in York

ByDaily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:03 AM on 29th March 2011

• Carbon dating suggests it is around 2,500 years old
• Archaeologists baffled at how brain has survived
  

Archaeologistsbelieve they have discovered one of the world's oldest brains that oncebelonged to a man in Iron Age Britain who was sacrificed in a ritualkilling.

Scientists found the cranium in a muddy pit when theywere excavating a site before a new campus was to be built at theUniversity of York. When a researcher reached inside the skull, she wasstunned to discover the soft tissue of the 2,500-year-old brain stillpreserved.

Fractures and marks on the bones suggest the man,who was aged between 26 and 45, died most probably from hanging, afterwhich he was carefully decapitated and his head was then buried on itsown.

Grey matter: The 2,500-year-old preserved brainhas baffled scientists after it was found during an excavation at theUniversity of York

Scientists have been baffled by how the brain tissue - which usuallyrots after a couple at years - managed to remain intact for so long.

'The survival of brain remains where no other soft tissues arepreserved is extremely rare,' said Sonia O'Connor, research fellow inarchaeological sciences at the University of Bradford.

'This brain is particularly exciting because it is very wellpreserved, even though it is the oldest recorded find of this type inthe UK, and one of the earliest worldwide.'

Philip Duffey, aneurologist at York Hospital who scanned the skull, said: 'I'm amazedand excited that scanning has shown structures which appear to beunequivocally of brain origin.'

Baffled: Dr Sonia O Connor, from the University of Bradford, examines the remains of the brain

'I think that it will be very important to establish how thesestructures have survived, whether there are traces of biologicalmaterial within them and, if not, what is their composition.'

Expertsfrom York Archaeological Trust were commissioned by the university tocarry out the exploratory dig last year before building work on the £750million campusexpansion started.

They discovered the solitary skull face-down in the pit in dark brown organic rich, soft sandy clay.

The university put together a team of scientists,archaeologists, chemists, bio-archaeologists and neurologists, toestablish how the man’s brain, could have survived when all the othersoft tissue had decayed leaving only the bone.

Remains: Archaeologists sift through the muddy pit at the site near the University of York where the brain was found

Theteam is also investigating details of the man’s death and burial thatmay have contributed to the survival of what is normally highlyvulnerable soft tissue.

The research, which was funded by theUniversity of York and English Heritage, is published in the Journal ofArchaeological Science.

Since the discovery, the brain and skullhave been kept in strictly controlled conditions, but scientists haveexamined samples using a range of sophisticated equipment, including aCT scanner at York Hospital and mass spectrometers at the University ofYork.

Samples of brain material had a DNA sequence that matched sequencesfound only in a few individuals from Tuscany and the Near East. Carbondating suggests the remains date from between 673-482BC.

Fractureson the second neck vertebrae point to some kind of trauma before theman died and and a cluster of about nine horizontal fine cut-marks madeby a thin-bladed instrument, such as a knife, can be seen on the frontof the brain.

Preserved: Brain material shows as dark folded matter at the top of the head in this computer-generated view of the skull

Clean: Scientists said there was no trace on the brain of the usual preservation methods such as embalming or smoking

Scientistsare now investigating how lipids and proteins found in the brainpreserved the brain and what happened between the man dying and hisburial.

Dr O’Connor said: 'It is rare to be able to suggest thecause of death for skeletonised human remains of archaeological origin.The preservation of the brain in otherwise skeletonised remains is evenmore astonishing but not unique.

'This is the most thoroughinvestigation ever undertaken of a brain found in a buried skeleton andhas allowed us to begin to really understand why a brain can survivethousands of years after all the other soft tissues have decayed.'

Despitethe place that ‘trophy heads’ appear to have played in Iron Agesocieties and evidence for the preservation of human remains in theBronze Age, the researchers say there is no evidence for that in thiscase. They found no marks indicating deliberate preservation byembalming or smoking.

Dr O’Connor added: 'The hydrated state ofthe brain and the lack of evidence for putrefaction suggests thatburial, in the fine-grained, anoxic sediments of the pit, occurred veryrapidly after death. This is a distinctive and unusual sequence ofevents, and could be taken as an explanation for the exceptional brainpreservation.'