Oldest Known Preserved Dissected Human

The Dark Ages weren’t really so dark after all. Historians have long thought that science stagnated in Europe during the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and some indistinct time before the beginning of the Renaissance. Those views are changing at last. Here’s one example of a "Dark Ages" scientific surprise.

Researchers studying a preserved human dissection originally believed that it dated from the 15^th or 16^th century, putting it firmly into the Renaissance period. In fact, radiocarbon dating revealed that it actually dates from 1200 to 1280 A.D.
The specimen consists of the head and shoulders of a man. The skullcap and brain had been so skillfully removed that it is obvious that the man who conducted the dissection was quite skilled, which means he had obviously done the procedure before and knew how to preserve his specimen by filling the arteries with a red compound composed of beeswax, lime, and cinnabar mercury.

Researchers and historians are beginning to see that the people of the "Dark Ages" weren’t as ignorant and backward as earlier believed.

The identity of the man whose body was dissected will never be known. Why was it preserved? It may have been saved as a training tool for physicians. Or perhaps the dissector wanted to preserve it for further study.

Even the great Greco-Roman physician Galen was not permitted to conduct human autopsies in the 2^nd century AD. His research was limited to dissecting animals and studying the wounds of gladiators. For centuries, his texts were relied upon by European and Near Eastern doctors until the Renaissance despite the fact that there is evidence that both Catholic and secular dissections were being performed, leading to new information about the human body and how it worked. For example, records show that an Italian physician conducted autopsies in 1286 in an attempt to determine the origin of a deadly epidemic.

The artifact is now in private hands, but will soon be on display at the Parisian Museum of the History of Medicine.
There’s a photo of the macabre artifact, along with information about the myths about the Catholic Church’s supposed repression of scientific advancement here