The eruption of Vesubio turned a man’s brain

In the year 79 of the Christian era, the eruption of Vesubio wrapped the ancient cities of Pompeya and Herculano under a thick layer of burning rocks, gases and ashes, in what is known as a pyroclastic flow or burning cloud.

The body of one of the victims, that of a young man of about 20 years discovered calcined on a wooden bed in Herculano, had something different, explained the Italian anthropologist Pier Paolo Petrone.

When the scientist examined it, “something brilliant in the broken skull,” the study co -author published in Scientific Reports told AFP, and He discovered that the remains of his brain had been transformed into black glass fragments.

According to the Volcanologist Guido Giordano, co -author of the study, These are fragments of up to a centimeter wide and found that complex neurons networks are clearly visible in glass“Something surprising and really unexpected.”

The discovery intrigues scientists because The glass rarely appears naturally in nature and to create needs a very high temperature followed by a very fast cooling.

Therefore, the brain of the young Roman is “the only example in the earth” of an animal tissue transformed into glass, according to the study.

The main hypothesis is that He had to be exposed to a temperature of more than 510 C º and then cool quickly.

The “only possible scenario” is that Vesubio expel a first cloud of burning ashes, which would have dissipated rapidly. A theory corroborated by the presence of a thin layer of ashes that covered the city before being buried by the pyroclastic flow.