The Heslington Brain - Victim of Ghatanothoa or Mi-Go Experiment?

Brain material shows as dark folded matter at the top of the head in this computer-generated view into the skull. The lighter colours in the skull represent soil. Credit to the York Archaeological Trust (source)


Exhibit MUV001: The Heslington Brain

In 2008 (press release), archaeologists working at Heslington, in Yorkshire, England, discovered something extraordinary: a preserved Iron Age human brain. Dating to the 7th or 6th century B.C.E. (673 and 482 B.C.E.), more or less, the brain was the only soft tissue to survive of the decapitated skull. Yes, the head of this individual, a young to middle-aged man, had been severed after he had been hanged, and then deposited in a pit at a residential and farming settlement.

Now, this case is being published and examined more fully, as described in this press summary. The most likely explanation for the preserved brain, which has shrunk a bit from its original size, is rapid deposition in an anoxic wet environment. This principle is also involved in the preservation of soft tissues in "bog bodies." However, other causes have not been ruled as to why the brain alone would be transformed and preserved.

Less orthodox suggestions come to mind. The Mi-go interest in human brains is obvious. But the Heslington Brain was found inside its skull, leaving this hypothesis problematic. Instead, the case of T'yog is perhaps the key. A priest and scholar of ancient Mu, T'yog's body was recovered from the floor of the South Pacific when a freak seismic event in 1878 caused a temporary geological uplifting. This discovery was correlated by certain mystics, with the story of T'yog in von Juntz's Unausprechenlichen Kulten, suggesting that the recovered artifacts and body were the ancient scholar who had met his grisly fate nearly 180,000 years ago (when mainstream science points to the emergence of modern humans in Africa). Tyog tried to defeat the horrifying entity known as Ghatanothoa, but through trickery was defeated, and his brain preserved (albeit in a better condition than that of the Heslington individual). An account of this discovery can be read as the short story "Out of the Aeons," by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald.

This of course begs the question: how would Ghatanothoa manage to effect humans in Iron Age England, across the globe from where it is trapped?

And why, as per the article linked above, did it happen again in the medieval era? Is it a cyclical phenomenon?

Houdini, Lovecraft, and Cthulhu

I've written a bit on the Houdini-Lovecraft-Cthulhu connection for this week's Cthulhu Cthursday over at Ectoplasmosis.

Head on over there for thrills, chills, killer robots, monstrous beasts, bizarre prophecies, lovely showgirls, and all the madness you can possibly want.

I will try to update some more *ahem* scholarly exhibits in the Museum. But for now, check out the playbill over at Ectomo.

Antiques Roadshow goes to Arkham

If you're wondering how Miskatonic acquires some of its more unusual pieces, this rare video from the Arkham episode of Antiques Roadshow (made available by member station Forbidden Donut Productions) may provide some answers.

Beowulf, New Wave Style

Not a Lovecraft post, but probably of interest to some readers, and keeping in the spirit of the Museum. The History Teachers have dozens of pop songs rewritten to teach history. "Revolution in France" (to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance) appears to have become a minor Youtube hit, and it's pretty well done. But the above video pushes all the right buttons for me.

Lake Vostok Drilling Attempt Stops

NASA image (Wikicommons)

If you've been following recent reports, you may know that Russian scientists felt they were in a good position to finally break through into Lake Vostok under the Antarctic ice. Students of history familiar with Miskatonic's Antarctic expedition know full well the dangers of such an attempt.

But now comes word that the project has stalled for at least a year, and an intriguing footnote: they poured kerosene into the borehole to keep it from freezing over. Environmentalists and other observers question the wisdom of dumping a potentially toxic chemical over a pristine uncharted lake.

But if we read between the lines, a more horrible possibility emerges. I estimate that if the borehole was about a foot or so across, they pumped in about 500 liters of kerosene. Not enough to kill any particular eldritch monstrosity, especially spread over that distance.

But enough to free one? Is some monstrous plot afoot? What horrors are about to be unleashed in the name of science, or under the guise of science.

As HPL put it

"I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic—with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps."

and of course

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Physics from Hell - Gallileo and Dante's Inferno

The mix of science, history, and creepy horrifying literature in this analysis rings true with what we're trying to do here at the Miskatonic Museum with Lovecraft.

More information at the Boston Globe.

Richard Upton Pickman's Studio Found in Boston?

"Mystery Skulls" discovered in Boston basement. It's not the North End where Pickman's secret studio apartment is supposed to be, but Thurber said he couldn't find the place again if he tried.