Archaeologists found a surprise inside the severed skull of a man who lived in Britain before the Romans came. As PhysOrg reports, it had Britain’s oldest pickled brain inside:
The old brain is unlikely to yield new neurological insights because human brains aren’t thought to have changed much over the past 2,000 years, according to Chris Gosden, a professor of archaeology at Oxford University unconnected with the find.
He confirmed it was the oldest brain found in Britain. He noted that far older preserved brains, thought to be approximately 8,000 years old, were found in 1986 when dozens of intact human skulls were uncovered buried in a peat bog in Windover Farms in Florida.
“It’s a real freak of preservation to have a brain and nothing else,” Gosden said. “The fact that there’s any brain there at all is quite amazing.”
They only realized the brain was in there when the person cleaning the skull felt something thump inside. They think the guy might have been decapitated and ritually buried as a human sacrifice.