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This article first appeared in The Checkup,MIT Technology Reviewsweekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. This week Ive been working on a story about a brain of glass. About five years ago, archaeologists found shiny black glass fragments inside the skull of a man who died in the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE. It seems they are pieces of brain, turned to glass. Scientists have found ancient brains beforesome are thought to be at least 10,000 years old. But this is the only time theyve seen a brain turn to glass. Theyve even been able to spot neurons inside it. The mans remains were found at Herculaneum, an ancient city that was buried under meters of volcanic ash following the eruption. We dont know if there are any other vitrified brains on the site. None have been found so far, but only about a quarter of the city has been excavated. Some archaeologists want to continue excavating the site. But others argue that we need to protect it. Further digging will expose it to the elements, putting the artifacts and remains at risk of damage. You can only excavate a site once, so perhaps its worth waiting until we have the technology to do so in the least destructive way. After all, there are some pretty recent horror stories of excavations involving angle grinders, and of ancient body parts ending up in garages. Future technologies might eventually make our current approaches look similarly barbaric. The inescapable fact of fields like archaeology or paleontology is this: When you study ancient remains, youll probably end up damaging them in some way. Take, for example, DNA analysis. Scientists have made a huge amount of progress in this field. Today, geneticists can crack the genetic code of extinct animals and analyze DNA in soil samples to piece together the history of an environment. But this kind of analysis essentially destroys the sample. To perform DNA analysis on human remains, scientists typically cut out a piece of bone and grind it up. They might use a tooth. But once it has been studied, that sample is gone for good. Archaeological excavations have been performed for hundreds of years, and as recently as the 1950s, it was common for archaeologists to completely excavate a site they discovered. But those digs cause damage too. Nowadays, when a site is discovered, archaeologists tend to focus on specific research questions they might want to answer, and excavate only enough to answer those questions, says Karl Harrison, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Exeter in the UK. We will cross our fingers, excavate the minimal amount, and hope that the next generation of archaeologists will have new, better tools and finer abilities to work on stuff like this, he says. In general, scientists have also become more careful with human remains. Matteo Borrini, a forensic anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, curates his universitys collection of skeletal remains, which he says includes around 1,000 skeletons of medieval and Victorian Britons. The skeletons are extremely valuable for research, says Borrini, who himself has investigated the remains of one person who died from exposure to phosphorus in a match factory and another who was murdered. When researchers ask to study the skeletons, Borrini will find out whether the research will somehow alter them. If there is destructive sampling, we need to guarantee that the destruction will be minimal, and that there will be enough material [left] for further study, he says. Otherwise we dont authorize the study. If only previous generations of archaeologists had taken a similar approach. Harrison told me the story of the discovery of St Bees man, a medieval man found in a lead coffin in Cumbria, UK, in 1981. The man, thought to have died in the 1300s, was found to be extraordinarily well preservedhis skin was intact, his organs were present, and he even still had his body hair. Normally, archaeologists would dig up such ancient specimens with care, using tools made of natural substances like stone or brick, says Harrison. Not so for St Bees man. His coffin was opened with an angle grinder, says Harrison. The mans body was removed and stuck in a truck, where he underwent a standard modern forensic postmortem, he adds. His thorax would have been opened up, his organs [removed and] weighed, [and] the top of his head would have been cut off, says Harrison. Samples of the mans organs were kept in [the pathologists] garage for 40 years. If St Bees man were discovered today, the story would be completely different. The coffin itself would be recognized as a precious ancient artifact that should be handled with care, and the mans remains would be scanned and imaged in the least destructive way possible, says Harrison. Even Lindow man, who was discovered a mere three years later in nearby Manchester, got better treatment. His remains were found in a peat bog, and he is thought to have died over 2,000 years ago. Unlike poor St Bees man, he underwent careful scientific investigation, and his remains took pride of place in the British Museum. Harrison remembers going to see the exhibit when he was 10 years old. Harrison says hes dreaming of minimally destructive DNA technologiestools that might help us understand the lives of long-dead people without damaging their remains. Im looking forward to covering those in the future. (In the meantime, Im personally dreaming of a trip torespectfully and carefullyvisit Herculaneum.) Now read the rest of The Checkup Read more from MIT Technology Review's archive Some believe an ancient-DNA revolution is underway, as scientists use modern technologies to learn about human, animal, and environmental remains from the past. My colleague Antonio Regalado has the details in his recent feature. The piece was published in the latest edition of our magazine, which focuses on relationships. Ancient DNA analysis made it to MIT Technology Reviews annual list of top 10 Breakthrough Technologies in 2023. You can read our thoughts on the breakthroughs of 2025 here. DNA that was frozen for 2 million years was sequenced in 2022. The ancient DNA fragments, which were recovered from Greenland, may offer insight into the environment of the polar desert at the time. Environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, can help scientists assemble a snapshot of all the organisms in a given place. Some are studying samples collected from Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which is believed to have been built in the 12th century. Others are hoping that ancient DNA can be used to de-extinct animals that once lived on Earth. Colossal Biosciences is hoping to resurrect the dodo and the woolly mammoth. From around the web Next-generation obesity drugs might be too effective. One trial participant lost 22% of her body weight in nine months. Another lost 30% of his weight in just eight months. (STAT) A US court upheld the conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the biotechnology company Theranos, who was sentenced to over 11 years for defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Her sentence has since been reduced by two years for good behavior. (The Guardian) An unvaccinated child died of measles in Texas. The death is the first reported as a result of the outbreak that is spreading in Texas and New Mexico, and the first measles death reported in the US in a decade. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be downplaying the outbreak. (NBC News) A mysterious disease with Ebola-like symptoms has emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of people have been infected in the last five weeks, and more than 50 people have died. (Wired) Towana Looney has been discharged from the hospital three months after receiving a gene-edited pig kidney. Im so grateful to be alive and thankful to have received this incredible gift, she said. (NYU Langone)
