ARMENIA: ARCHEOLOGISTS SAY THEY’VE FOUND REMAINS OF WORLD’S OLDEST HUMAN BRAIN
Gayane Abrahamyan
insightb/articles/eav093009b.shtml
9/30/09
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 team also says it has found evidence of
what may be history’s oldest winemaking operation. The discoveries
were 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."
The Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory,
like other research laboratories examining the Areni finds declined
to comment to EurasiaNet about its test results.
In late 2008, researchers in the United Kingdom found a roughly
2,000-year-old human brain — at the time believed to rank as among
the world’s oldest.
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.
Additional finds are expected, excavation leaders say: the project team
so far has examined only about 10 percent of the 500-square-meter site.
"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.
Excavation co-leader Ron Pinhasi, a biological anthropologist from
Ireland’s University College Cork, called the remains "a mystery we
have to understand."
"These are obviously ritualistic secondary burials, which means the
three bodies were beheaded after being buried, and then re-buried in
these vessels," said Pinhasi.
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.
The excavation has also unearthed another potential record-setter —
vessels, pots, grape seeds and grape vine shoots, which, according to
Gasparian and Pinhasi, could classify the site as one of the world’s
oldest wineries.
"If the analysis confirms the place has been a winery, for the first
time ever we will be able to say wine has been produced as early as
about 6,000 years ago," Gasparian said.
Winemaking with wild grapes is believed to have gotten its start in
Georgia, Armenia’s neighbor to the north, and in Iran, not far from
the Areni-1 site, between 6,000 BC and 5,000 BC.
Areni is distinct because the number and volume of the vessels found
suggests that wine was produced here in commercial qualities and from
domesticated grapes, according to Gasparian.
Near the spot where the three skulls were buried, the excavation
team found more then 30 vessels ranging in size from 50 liters to
one with a diameter of 1.5 meters. The one vessel’s volume has yet
to be quantified.
Grape seeds and a grape branch sent to Oxford University’s Radiocarbon
Accelerator Unit for Carbon-14 analysis have been dated to the late
5th millennium BC or the early 4th millennium BC, he said.
Researchers are now waiting for the results of a chemical analysis
to confirm whether the vessels contained wine or vinegar or some
other substance. "If the analyses prove our hypothesis, Areni can
be called the Armenian equivalent of French Provence and Champagne"
in terms of the volume of wine produced, Gasparian added.
Editor’s Note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.com
in Yerevan.