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of cocaine to resolve the first crime in history

Del body nothing more was heard. Skull itself, certainly the most important part of this macabre ceremony. After being separated from the body, a gesture with great meaning, is buried in a different place, face down and in a dark clay, sandy and soft and, above all, very rich in organic matter. A wise decision for thousands of years later a group of scientists happy.

Like a group de investigadores de la Policía se tratase, científicos de la Universidad de York (Reino Unido) han reconstruido paso a paso este macabro crimen ritual hasta afinar al máximo el cuándo (entre el 673 a.C. y el 482 a.C., en la Edad de Hierro) y el cómo se produjo la muerte, algo “realmente infrecuente con unos restos humanos hallados en yacimientos arqueológicos”, asegura la coordinadora del estudio, Sonia O'Connor, miembr o de la Universidad de Bradford e investigadora visitante honoraria en York.

Con todo, lo que ha dejado con la boca abierta a los científicos es el hecho de haberse encountered remnants of the brain, considered the oldest in the United Kingdom's on record and one of the soft tissue samples oldest found in the world. How could he stay so long? What has preserved for 2,500 years despite being a material so vulnerable? The skull base That's the first question asked by the researcher at the University of York Rachel Cubitt when I was cleaning the skull and saw something moving inside.

After fixing his gaze at the base of the skull found an unusual yellow substance. "At that moment I remembered a lecture by Professor Sonia O'Connor on cases of strange permanence of ancient brain tissue. why we decided to compare our findings with the remains that O'Connor had recovered from medieval skeletons found at Hull Magistrates Court, "says Cubitt . The research, published in Journal of Archaeological Science have participated bioarchaeologists, neurologists and chemicals, which have used the latest available techniques such as mass spectrometers and a CT scanner computerizada (CAT) para examinar muestras del cerebro.

Estas muestras contenían una secuencia de ADN (ácido desoxirribonucleico) que se correspondía con otras secuencias halladas únicamente en algunos sujetos de la Toscana (Italia) y del Oriente Próximo. Según la datación por radiocarbono, los restos serían de entre el año 673 a.C. y el 482 a.C. Conservación del cerebro «Esta es la investigación más exhaustiva que se ha realizado sobre un cerebro hallado en un esqueleto enterrado. Nos ha permitido empezar a comprender el mecanismo por el que un cerebro ha podido kept for thousands of years although the remaining soft tissues have decomposed, "says O'Connor. The hydrated state of the brain and the lack of evidence of putrefaction suggest that the burial-in fine-grained anoxic sediments of the pit, there was very little after the death .

is an unusual sequence of events that could be the reason for the exceptional condition of the brain ", reports the European agency scientific Cordis. marks and fractures in the bones do suggest that the man probably died hanged and then his head was carefully pulled the body to be buried elsewhere. There is no evidence, however, embalming and preservation techniques suggest that there was an intention to preserve the brain. Only the happy coincidence of choosing the most appropriate.

not only by the material surrounding the bones, because sio "treasure" was nothing more and nothing less than the campus of the University. The remains were found in 2008 during the redevelopment of the campus of the University, which have invested 500 million pounds. And not only that. Earlier this year they found the bones of one of the earliest victims of tuberculosis for which the record, those of a man shot in the late Roman Empire. Quite a paradox in the case of the Faculty of Archaeology.