By Rory Sullivan and Sharon Braithwaite
A section of vitrified brain
tissue from the remains of a young man who died in AD 79 after Mount Vesuvius
erupted.
The brain cells of a young man who died almost
2,000 years ago in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been found intact by a
team of researchers in Italy.
The discovery was made when the
experts studied remains first uncovered in the 1960s in Herculaneum, a city
buried by ash during the volcanic eruption in AD 79.
The victim, who was found lying
face-down on a wooden bed in a building thought to have been devoted to the
worship of the Emperor Augustus, was around 25 years old at the time of his
death, according to the researchers.
Part of the college of the
Augustales, the building in Herculaneum where the young man's remains were
found in the 1960s.
Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic
anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II who led the research,
told CNN that the project started when he saw "some glassy material
shining from within the skull" while he was working near the skeleton in
2018.
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In a paper published earlier this
year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Petrone and his colleagues
revealed that this shiny appearance was caused by the vitrification of the
victim's brain due to intense heat followed by rapid cooling.
Speaking about this process,
Petrone said: "The brain exposed to the hot volcanic ash must first have
liquefied and then immediately turned into a glassy material by the rapid
cooling of the volcanic ash deposit."
After subsequent analysis
including the use of an electron microscope, the team found cells in the
vitrified brain, which were "incredibly well preserved with a resolution
that is impossible to find anywhere else," according to Petrone.
The researchers also found intact
nerve cells in the spinal cord, which, like the brain, had been vitrified.
The latest findings were
published in the American journal PLOS One.
Guido Giordano, a volcanologist
at Roma Tre University who worked on the study, told CNN that charred wood
found next to the skeleton allowed the researchers to conclude that the site
reached a temperature of more than 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit)
after the eruption.
Referring to the latest findings,
Giordano said the "perfectness of preservation" found in
vitrification was "totally unprecedented" and was a boon to
researchers.
"This opens up the room for
studies of these ancient people that have never been possible," he said.
The team of researchers --
archaeologists, biologists, forensic scientists, neurogeneticists and
mathematicians from Naples, Milan and Rome -- will continue studying the
remains.
They want to learn more about the
vitrification process -- including the exact temperatures victims were exposed
to, as well as the cooling rate of the volcanic ash -- and also hope to analyze
proteins from the remains and their related genes, according to Petrone.
The former task is "crucial
for the evaluation of the risk by the relevant authorities in the event of a
possible future eruption of Vesuvius, the most dangerous volcano in the world,
which looms over 3 million inhabitants of Naples and its surroundings,"
Petrone said.