People have long been fascinated by the haunting plaster statues of those who died at Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Archaeologists offer some sort of general story about who these people were and what their relationships were. But ancient DNA analysis has revealed that these favored stories may not be entirely accurate and may reflect certain cultural biases, one researcher says. new paper Published in the journal “Current Biology”. The results also support previous research suggesting that the people of ancient Pompeii were descendants of immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean.
As previously reported, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released approximately 100,000 times as much thermal energy as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, creating lava, pumice, and hot ash. gushed over Pompeii and the city of Pompeii. herculaneum especially. In the worst-hit cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum, most people died from suffocation in thick clouds of toxic gas and ash. But at least some of Vesuvia’s victims probably died instantly from the intense heat of the fast-moving lava flow, which was high enough to boil their brains and explode their skulls.
In the first stage, immediately after the eruption, long columns of ash and pumice covered the surrounding towns, especially Pompeii and Herculaneum. By late night or early morning, a pyroclastic flow (fast-moving hot ash, lava debris, and gas) swept in and wiped out what was left, leaving the bodies of the victims frozen, as if in cessation.
In the 19th century, an archaeologist named Giuseppe Fiorelli discovered a way to make molds of frozen bodies by pouring liquid plaster into the voids where soft tissue had been. Approximately 1,000 bodies were discovered at the ruins, and 104 plaster casts have been preserved. Restoration work on 86 of these castings began about 10 years ago, when researchers took CT scans and X-rays to determine if there was a complete skeleton inside. These images show that, depending on the aesthetics of the period in which they were cast, significant manipulations were made to the castings, such as changing some of the body shapes and adding metal rods to stabilize the castings. I made it clear that. Bone is often removed before casting.
