brain meme, 4,000 year old brain,
Memes

People On Twitter Are Meme-ing A Viral 4,000-Year-Old Brain (25 Tweets)

It’s wonderful when something totally disgusting teaches you something. Welcome to a lesson on “corpse wax.” I wouldn’t know what that was if it weren’t for a viral photo circulating on Twitter that looks like so many things besides what it is: a preserved human brain.

The image of the 4,000-year-old brain was posted by medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, who screen-capped the image and shared the News Scientist article about the rare tissue:


Before we get into what that brain looks like, I gotta say that the article was super interesting. Human brain tissue usually deteriorates pretty fast—when they’re dead, even though it seems like it’s already starting with a lot of us. That means there are few samples of ancient brains, obviously, because they’re only preserved under really specific conditions. There is an exampled of a 500-year-old Inca child’s brain that was preserved, but that’s because they were sacrificed on a mountain top where it was very cold and the body froze.

This brain was found in Seyitömer Höyük, a bronze-age Turkish settlement. The body containing the brain was found amongst charred beams and objects. The brain didn’t freeze; scientists think there was an earthquake, which leveled the house, and then a fire burned through and sucked the moisture out of the skull, basically, leaving the corpse wax.

That’s so cool! And that brain one hundred percent looks edible, which is pretty much the reaction across the board.

Either people see the brain as food or they think the brain looks like their brain feels.

I don’t want to see it as food, but then I have been getting hungrier and hungrier for a hamburger as I write this story.

See whether you feel like you are the brain or you must eat the brain or a little of both based on these tweets:

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Aimeé Lutkin