Ancient Vesuvius eruption turned victim's brain to a glassy rock in rare, poorly understood process

[Judi Lynn]

AFP-JIJI


JAN 24, 2020

ROME – It looks like a piece of rock, black and shiny. But Italian anthropologists say the fragment is actually part of an exploded brain from a victim of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79.

The discovery — published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine — is a rarity in archaeology, and researchers called it “sensational.”

Scholars who for years have studied the grisly remains of those trapped by ash, lava and toxic gases when the volcano erupted in southern Italy were intrigued by a curious glassy material found inside one victim’s skull in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Pompeii.

“In October 2018, I was able to look at these remnants, and I saw that something was shimmery in the shattered skull,” said Pier Paolo Petrone, one of the researchers.

Petrone, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Naples Federico II, said he was “pretty sure this material was human brain.”

More:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/24/world/offbeat-world/ancient-vesuvius-eruption-turned-victims-brain-glassy-rock-rare-poorly-understood-process/#.Xi15MmhKjDc

[Judi Lynn]

1. Victims of Ancient Vesuvius Eruption Were Baked, Not Vaporised, According to New Research

By George Dvorsky on 23 Jan 2020 at 10:30AM

A novel analysis of the skeletal remains of Vesuvius victims who sought shelter during the catastrophic eruption 2,000 years ago suggests they endured a slower death than is typically appreciated.

Like the nearby settlements of Pompeii, Stabiae, and Oplontis, the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum was devastated when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. The ash and pumice that settled onto the city resulted in its remarkable preservation, making it an important site for archaeologists.

In the early 1980s, archaeologists stumbled upon a gruesome scene while excavating the city’s beach and nearby boat chambers, known as fornici. During the eruption, hundreds of people fled to the beach in a desperate attempt to escape the volcano’s wrath, some of whom managed to cram inside the vaulted stone fornici. Over the years, archaeologists have uncovered the charred skeletal remains of 340 individuals, all of whom perished on the beach or inside one of the dozen boat chambers.

A conventional theory said that the residents who sought shelter in the boat chambers died an instant death. The tremendous heat generated by the volcano’s pyroclastic flow – a fast-moving wave of hot gas and volcanic materials – caused the soft tissue in their bodies to instantly vaporise, according to a theory promulgated by Pierpaolo Petrone from the University Federico II in Naples, Italy. In 2018, Petrone co-authored a PLOS One paper, in which he argued that intense heat from the eruption caused skulls to explode and skin to turn directly into ash. Petrone and his colleagues estimated that the heat inside the chambers got as high as 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit).

More:
https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/01/victims-of-ancient-vesuvius-eruption-were-baked-not-vaporised-according-to-new-research/

[MFM008]

2. The ones caught in the pyroclastic

Flow in Herculaneum were exposed to heat hot enough to explode the skull and boil the brain.
I just watched something on this Friday night.