The oldest brain to have been discovered was in Armenia in the Areni-1 cave complex.

The brain,
estimated to be over 5,000 years old, was found in the skull of a 12 to 14-year-old girl. Although the
brains were shriveled, they were well preserved due to the climate found inside the cave. [131]
Early philosophers were divided as to whether the seat of the soul lies in the brain or
heart. Aristotle favored the heart, and thought that the function of the brain was merely to cool the
blood. Democritus, the inventor of the atomic theory of matter, argued for a three-part soul, with intellect
in the head, emotion in the heart, and lust near the liver.[132] The unknown author of On the Sacred
Disease, a medical treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, came down unequivocally in favor of the brain,
writing:
Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and
sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. ... And by the same organ we
become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by
day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable, and ignorance
of present circumstances, desuetude, and unskillfulness. All these things we endure from
the brain, when it is not healthy...
— On the Sacred Disease, attributed to Hippocrates[133]