Archaeologists in France have made a discovery of 5 human hearts that were embalmed and are all at least 400 years old. The discovery was made in the French city of Rennes at a Christian convent that dates back to the European Medieval Period. The embalmed hearts were found in 5 separate urns that were created to resemble hearts themselves.

As the scientists returned to their laboratories to make a complete examination of their find, they discovered that 3 of the 400 year old embalmed hearts have shown distinct traces and evidence of heart disease, according to Reuters. The 5 embalmed hearts were discovered and examined by archaeologists at the French National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research.

Scientists at the institute declared that all of the hearts were different from one another and they showed signs of certain heart diseases and afflictions that humans continue to suffer from even today. The scientists exclaimed that there was heightened excitement at the recent find because, they said, it is rather rare to be able to actually work with such well preserved organic material.

The researchers couldn’t work with one of the embalmed hearts because it was not well enough preserved by they did manage to fully examine the remaining 4 hearts. One of the hearts, researchers found, was not only well preserved but it was still extremely healthy. The remaining 3 hearts showed signs of serious heart disease including atherosclerosis. The scientists discovered that these particular diseased hearts contain vast amounts of plaque in the coronary arteries.

One of the urns noted the name of the person whose heart was contained therein and it was dated 1649. Other urns were dated 1655, the earliest of them, to the oldest of the urns which was dated 1584. One of the hearts belonged to a French aristocrat whose wife lay in a coffin next to the urn. Her body was extremely well preserved as were her clothes.

The researchers had cleaned the hearts and removed all of the materials that had been used to embalm them. They then subjected the hearts to CAT scans and MRI imaging technology to study them in detail.