What?!   “Human brains preserved in diverse environments for at least 12 000 years”

It has been said that the most complex thing that we know about in the universe is the human brain.  The common scientific consensus has been that these are not preserved for long and that ancient examples are really rare.   It seems that this is not actually the case.  This 2024 paper by Morton-Hayward and others shows that many examples of ancient brains have been found. (Morton-Hayward et al. 2024)  Maybe the miracle of the human brain extends even farther.

Young Earth Creationists (YEC) often claim that soft tissue from dinosaurs and other animals from millions of years ago cannot really be that old.  Afterall, soft tissue cannot be preserved for many thousands of years, let alone millions of years.  This article shows that the soft tissue of human brains can be preserved for more than 12,000 years.  I expect that YEC will say that these must actually be less than 4000 years old, given that they interpret they say a global flood occurred about 4350 years ago.   I doubt many would claim that any of these brains were preserved from the flood itself. 

Here are some pertinent comments:

• They don’t claim that human brain tissue is normally preserved. Under normal conditions, the brain tissue decays quickly.
• They don’t claim that they can demonstrate all of the mechanisms by which the brains were preserved.
  • Some processes are understood, such as dehydration, freezing and tanning.
  • Some brain matter was preserved by some other method. They don’t claim to have experimentally demonstrated how this occurred.
  • However they do show that there are hypotheses with support that could explain the preservation.

Morton-Hayward, et al. report that the oldest set of brains include:

 “A resilient, hydrophobic mass; largely the only soft tissue preserved amongst skeletonized remains.

 

This mode of preservation, seemingly unique to the central nervous system, remains obscure.

 

Possible mechanisms include molecular crosslinking of neuronal lipids with sulphur-bearing amino acids, and metallo-molecular complexation with or without subsequent mineral nucleation. Integrated molecular and mineralogical analyses might be employed to test these hypothetical pathways of brain preservation.”

Yes, there is further work to be done.  They suggest that the some of the same mechanisms that are associated with preserving dinosaur bones and other ancient soft tissue may be working here. They do note that it seems that there is “some intrinsic quality associated with nervous tissue itself that permits long-term preservation.”   More brain teasers…mysteries to be studied. 

They report that “molecular crosslinking is a viable possibility for the unknown preservation mechanism. During fossilization of soft tissues, proteins, lipids and sugars converge in composition through lipidation and glycation to form chemically stable, polymerized macromolecules”.  This is similar to what happened in dinosaur bones.  Philip Senter’s article on preservation in dinosaur bones is required reading for this process, particularly for those evaluating Young Earth claims. (Senter 2022)

Morton-Hayward, Alexandra L., Ross P. Anderson, Erin E. Saupe, Greger Larson, and Julie G. Cosmidis. 2024. “Human Brains Preserve in Diverse Environments for at Least 12 000 Years.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291 (2019): 20232606. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2606.

Senter, Philip J. 2022. “Soft Tissues in Fossil Bone.” 2022. https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2022/3739-soft-tissues-in-fossil-bone.