In 2018, I went to Pompeii. I did not particularly want to go to Pompeii, but we were on vacation in Italy, and my partner wanted to go, and so I obliged. We could eat in Naples, I reasoned. Then even if I did not have fun in the hot sun amongst the rocks and ruins of an ancient town, I would still be happy. But I was wrong; I enjoyed it. How do you not fawn over a perfectly preserved mosaic floor laid carefully in the entryway to a opulent home almost two thousand years ago? How can you not need to catch your breath at a still-standing arch that has been excavated from thousands of tons of debris that buried it after a volcano exploded?
The only thing I did not like about Pompeii—besides the heat—was that I was denied full access. There was a whole-ass vineyard behind some very high walls that I was not allowed to touch, and worse, whole sections of the city were still roped off because archeologists were still painstakingly uncovering them. I respect science, and understand that they need excavations to abide by certain rules to make sure that everything stays as unbroken as possible. But also I went to the wrong entrance of Pompeii and wandered around without a map, and saw the sections I was not allowed to enter and it pained me. I wanted to go back there! I felt the pull of curiosity. And now I know why: There was a glass brain.
You may be imagining a beautiful Roman glass sculpture that is made to look like a human brain. You silly, silly guy. You absolute dummy. You are completely wrong! No no no. It is a human brain that has been turned to glass!
The haters and loser said that the researchers who found the glass brain were wrong. They claimed that while it was indeed glass, it could not be brain, because they didn't understand how a brain could turn to glass. They didn't know anything!!! It is a brain, after all! We know now that it is a brain because scientists have used their fancy machines and determined that the glass contains cerebral tissue! The glass is the brain.
It is perhaps the only human brain to have ever been turned to glass, or at least the only one we know about. Natural glasses, I have learned from reading the new paper about how the glass brain was formed, happen sometimes on Earth, but it requires an improbably quick rise in temperature followed by an equally instantaneous cooling. The researchers posit that the glass brain was created by the very hot wave of ash released by eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE (estimated at 520 degrees Celsius) followed by a swift drop back to the ambient temperature. So now we think we know how the brain turned to glass, and also what part of the eruption of Vesuvius actually killed so many people. Two mysteries solved!
The glass brain was not technically in Pompeii. It was found in the nearby city of Herculaneum. When Mt. Vesuvius erupted, Herculaneum was hit with gases and heat that were even stronger than in Pompeii and so people died instantly. And one of them had his brain turned to glass inside his skull. But Herculaneum is even closer to Naples than Pompeii is! And the glass brain was found in 2018, the same year I was there! It could have been me who found it. It should have been!
The glass brain is black. It is shiny like obsidian. It is beautifully shaped like a cloud, amorphous, and strange, as if frozen in an eternal moment of motion. It looks so spiky. I want to hold it. I should have been the first to hold it!!
I would not have hit it with a hammer even though it certainly would shatter satisfyingly into a million beautiful pieces. No, I would have considered that, and set it aside in favor of adoration. The glass brain belonged to a young man, they think, probably 20 years old, who is believed to have been guarding the Collegium Augustalium, which was a big building for worshiping the deified emperors. I think he would have wanted me to find it.
I even have a theory for why his brain is glass and no other brains at Pompeii or Herculaneum are glass: I bet he was wearing a really special hat that no one else had.
Since I was not allowed to discover the glass brain and was in fact forbidden from doing so by archeologists who value "research" and "history," I should at least be allowed to touch it. But no one has called me yet.
