Vesuvius eruption baked some people to death-and turned one brain to glass - 0 views
-
bluekoenig on 23 Jan 20A rather interesting and gross discovery recently occurred in the ancient city of Herculaneum, the lesser known of the two cities destroyed by Mount Vesuvius, archeologists found a glassy substance in the skull of a body thought to be a cooked brain. The "glass" contained fatty acids and oily secretions often found on the human scalp and in the brain and nervous system. It's hypothesized that the room the body was found in heated up enough to melt the brain tissue into a liquid, rather than burning it, and rapidly cooled somehow to produce glass.