U.K. Archeologist Finds 2,000-Year-Old Brain

December 12, 2008 11:24 p.m. EST

London, UK (AHN) - A British archeologist has dug up a 2,000-year-old human skull with a well-preserved but shrunken brain in a muddy pit at the University of York in northern England.

Finder Rachel Cubitt of the York Archaeological Trust realized that the Iron Age brain was intact when she peered through the base of the skull she found and saw a yellow mass inside. A CT scan done on the skull later at the York Hospital confirmed that the organic matter is brain tissue.

Researchers were amazed at how the brain dating back before the Roman conquest of Britain did not decompose. University of Bradford archeologist Sonia O'Connor, who helped authenticate the discovery, said such find is rare.

The oldest preserved brains were found in a peat bog in a Florida farm in 1986. The brains were 8,000 years old.

Chris Gosden, a professor of archaeology at Oxford University, said Cubitt's find was the oldest brain found in Britain.