ERCOLANO: THE EXTREMELY HOT VESUVIAN ASH CLOUD OF 79 A.D. TURNED THE HUMAN BRAIN INTO GLASS

It is a unique case of the vitrification of cerebral organic material, found in the skull of an ancient Herculaneum victim of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 a.C. To give an answer on how it could have happened an Italian-German team of researchers led by the vulcanologist
Guido Giordano of the Department of Science of the University Roma Tre.
The study has just been published in Scientific Reports under the title “Unique formation of organic glass from a human brain in the Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE” (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-88894-5).

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CNR-ISSMC
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