Academics and doctors have been describing their excitement at finding preserved brain matter within a skull found inside a pit at the University of York. © York Archaeological Trust
When excavation experts from York Archaeological Trust were commissioned to double the size of the University of York’s Heslington campus, they might have had cause for optimism.
The skeleton of a man believed to be one of Britain's earliest victims of tuberculosis was found in a shallow grave at the site earlier this year, and they expected to find pre-historic farming landscape on the six and a half acre plot. What they got was the oldest human brain in the country.
“We were digging out this complex of different archaeological features when we came across a small pit,” explains Dr Richard Hall, Director of Archaeology at the trust, in a pragmatic, unmistakably scientific tone.
Material on the inside of the brain uncovered has shrunk. © York Archaeological Trust
Finding human skulls on iron age sites is not uncommon for Hall and his team, but it was a memory jog by Finds Officer Rachel Cubitt which sent the pulses racing. “She realised that there was something moving, something loose inside the skull, and remembered a lecture that she’d been given at Bradford University a few years ago,” recalls Hall.
That lecture was by Dr Sonia O’Connor, who had been part of a team who looked at ancient brain material found at a site in Hull a decade ago, and had concerned the sort of yellow substance Cubitt could see in the skull. Immediately transferred to refrigeration, a phone call to O’Connor confirmed the likely resonance of their find.
“We couldn’t look through the eye sockets because they had earth in them,” says Hall, who used the foramen magnum, a hole at the base of the skull, to peek inside. “You could see this creamy yellow substance, and Sonia said yes, it looks like ancient brain.”
A cross-section from the scan of the brain which York Hospital provided. © York Archaeological Trust
An “amazed and excited” Consultant Neurologist at the local hospital, Phillip Duffey, used a state of the art CT scanner to take a closer look. The verdict was unequivocal, confirming a truly unprecedented find – the brain matter O’Connor’s team unearthed in Hull was between 400 and 600 years old, but the dig at York was looking at terrain from 2000 years ago, approaching Roman times in 300 BC.
How could a brain from that period survive? “You’ve got your finger on the $64,000 question there,” retorts Hall, with a steely determination to try every test available to find out the answer. “What we hope to do now is to undertake a battery of modern scientific tests on the brain material and on the skull itself.” A team of experts from universities across northern England have been lined up to assist.
“If you leave a brain, if someone dies, normally the brain would start to decay and liquefy very rapidly,” ponders Hall, planning an MRI scan. “We want to know whether it’s undergone some sort of chemical transformation, and if so why that would be.” He thinks the moist pit it was found in may have helped – the oldest human brain ever found was chanced upon in a swamp known as The Windover in Florida.
The general area where the brain pit was located (above). To the right and centre are Iron Age ditches which defined part of the farming landscape. The pit containing the skull was just to the left of these ditches, at centre left of the picture. © York Archaeological Trust
“We’ll be looking at the skull itself, we’ll have skeletal experts look at the skull and that will, we hope, tell us something about the person.” They’re hoping to suggest what sex the person was, and explore the gruesome possibilities for their demise.
“We have got two vertebrae as well, so we’ll be looking to see whether there are any cut marks,” says Hall, who expects the skull to have been severed and intends to find out precisely how.
He shoots off a barrage of terms like tissue fats, protein and organic components, and admits the analysis, which will take place early next year, is potentially limitless. “The object of the exercise is to get the fullest possible understanding of what this brain-like substance consists of today, and thus understand how it got to that condition.”
