REMAINS OF WORLD’S OLDEST HUMAN BRAIN FOUND IN ARMENIA

Asian News International (ANI)
October 5, 2009 Monday

Washington, October 1 (ANI): An Armenian-American-Irish archeological
expedition claims to have found the remains of the world’s oldest
human brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old.

The discovery was made recently in a cave in southeastern Armenia.

An analysis performed by the Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass
Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine
confirmed that one of three human skulls found at the site contains
particles of a human brain dating to around the first quarter of the
4th millennium BC.

"The preliminary results of the laboratory analysis prove this is
the oldest of the human brains so far discovered in the world,"
said Dr. Boris Gasparian, one of the excavation’s leaders and an
archeologist from the National Academy of Science’s Institute of
Archaeology and Ethnology in Yerevan.

"Of course, the mummies of Pharaonic Egypt did contain brains, but this
one is older than the Egyptian ones by about 1,000 to 1,200 years,"
he added.

The team in Armenia, comprised of 26 specialists from Ireland, the
United States and Armenia, had been excavating the three-chamber cave
where the brain was found since 2007.

The site, overlooking the Arpa River near the town of Areni, is
believed to date mostly to the Late Chalcolithic Period or the Early
Bronze Age (around 6,000 to 5,000 years ago).

It also contains evidence of elaborate burial rituals and agricultural
practices.

The skull with the brain was found in a chamber that contained three
buried ceramic vessels containing the skulls of three women, about
11 to 16 years old.

The cave’s damp climate helped preserve red and white blood cells in
the brain remains.

"It is a unique first-hand source of information about the genetic
code of the people who inhabited this place, and we’re now studying
it," Gasparian said in reference to the nine-centimeter-long,
seven-centimeter-high brain fragment.

It is still being determined from what part of the brain the fragment
comes.

"Microscopic analysis revealed blood vessels and traces of a brain
hemorrhage, perhaps caused by a blow to the head," Gasparian said.

Next to one of the three skulls, the team also found four adult
femoral shafts – midsections of a thigh bone – that may have also
played a role in the ritual.

"Interestingly, some of them were not just burnt, but rather evenly
roasted from all sides, which directly points to a ceremonial
practice. This may have been a case of ceremonial cannibalism, but
it still needs to be proved," said Gasparian.