Archaeologists Uncover 8,000-Year-Old Skull with Preserved Brain Matter

Archaeologists said that they have discovered what might have been an 8,000-year-old human skull from the Stone Age in Norway. Though researchers are still uncertain at this time if the remains are human, the skeleton also appears to have attached brain matter.

They came upon the skeleton in Stokke, an area just southwest of Oslo, according to lead excavator Gaute Reitan.

"It's seldom enough that we get to dig in a camp from a portion of the Stone Age that we really don't know much about," Reitan said, via the Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).

If the "grey and clack-like" material found inside the skull is preserved brain tissue, it could indeed be some of the oldest examples of a Stone Age man, who would have lived some 3.4 million years ago.

"For example, brain tissue has been found in the preserved body of an Incan child sacrificed 500 years ago. Her body was found at the top of an Andean mountain where the body swiftly froze, preserving the brain. An older example comes from a 4,000-year-old brain in Turkey, which had been preserved following an earthquake which buried the individual, followed by a fire that consumed any oxygen in the rubble and boiled the brain in its own fluids," the researchers said.

If confirmed, "it can help us learn more about what it was like to live in the Stone Age in Norway," Reitan concluded. 

Other bones found at the site were sent for analysis and suspected to be around 5,900 BC.