A HUNK of dark-coloured glass found inside the skull of an individual who died during the Mount Vesuvius eruption may actually be a fossilised brain, researchers have revealed.
Glass rarely forms naturally, due to the very specific and extreme conditions it requires.
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But the extreme heat from the short-lived ash cloud that swept through the ancient town of Herculaneum in 79CE likely turned the individuals brain to glass, according to a new study.
Researchers Dr Guido Giordano and Dr Pier Paola Petrone analysed fragments of glass from inside the skull and spinal cord of the person.
The victim had been lying on their bed in the Collegium Augustalium when the cloud descended.
For the brain to become glass, it must have been heated to above 510°C before quickly cooling.
This is unlikely to have occurred when the pyroclastic flow plunged onto the town.
Pyroclastic flow is the plume of hot gas and lava fragments coughed out by the volcano after the initial burst of ash.
The temperatures of the pyroclastic current, while boiling, did not top 465°C and would have cooled down over a longer period of time, researchers wrote.
Instead, they believe that the pyroclastic flow was actually the second deadly event during Vesuvius’ eruption.
The first was the initial ash-cloud that turned everything black.
The cloud would have whipped through towns like Herculaneum and Pompeii, bringing everything in its path to at least 510°C, before passing and allowing scorched towns to cool again.
It’s this post-510°C heat, followed a rapid cooling, that is able to turn organic material to glass.
The incredibly rare process is called vitrification.
The only other piece of glass suspected to be of ‘organic origin’ was identified in Herculaneum in 2020.
A glassy, black material was also found inside the skull of a man who was found on a wooden bed, buried by volcanic ash.
Analysis of charred wood near the body revealed that the temperatures reached a maximum of 520°C – enough for the vitrification process to occur.
Dr Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II who also led the 2020 study, said the man was likely killed instantly by the eruption.
“The detection of glassy material from the victim’s head, of proteins expressed in human brain, and of fatty acids found in human hair indicates the thermally induced preservation of vitrified human brain tissue,” the study wrote at the time.
Though no other glassy materials have been found in other locations at the Herculaneum archaeological site.
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The destruction of Pompeii – what happened in 79 AD?
- Pompeii was an ancient Roman city near modern Naples, in the Campania region of Italy.
- It was destroyed, along with the Roman town of Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area, and buried under volcanic ash in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
- The violent explosion killed the city’s inhabitants, with the site lost for around 1,500 years until its initial redsicovery in 1599 and broader redesicovery almost 150 years after that.
- The thermal energy released from Vesuvius was said to be a hundred thousand times that of the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima-Nagasaki.
- The remains beneath the city have been preserved for more than a millenium due to the lack of air and moisture in the ground.
- During excavations, plaster was injected into the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies, allowing scientists to recreate their exact poses at the time of their deaths.
- Mount Vesuvius is arguably the most dangerous volcano on earth.
- It had been inactive for almost a century before roaring back into life and destroying Pompeii.
- Since then, it has exploded around three dozen more times – most recently in 1944 – and stands in close proximity to three million people.
- Although its current status is dormant, Vesuvius is an “extremely active” and unpredictable volcano, according to experts.
- To this day, scientists are finding cultural, architectural and human remains on the banks of Mount Vesuvius.
- Excavations at thermal baths in Pompeii’s ruins in February revealed the skeleton of a crouching child who perished in the 79 AD eruption.
