This is first part of three-part series on Pompeii. Read second part here.
By Roquiyya Fatima
Pompeii, located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, is an archaeological site near the coast of the Bay of Naples. On 24 Aug 79 A.D, the morning started like an ordinary day. As it was, the ancient Roman city was well organized and had a network of major roads. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastated the whole town and left the city submerged under 4-6 m of ash. The blast brought pumice, ashes, other rocks, and hot volcanic gases that could be seen from hundreds of miles around. After that, the rain came, which sealed the entire surface with dust. The pyroclastic flows destroyed the whole town, lasting almost 18-24 hours.
The molten lava soared to a terribly high temperature around 800 degrees Celsius. The people were not prepared and had no left alternative except the choice of either hiding in their cellar or face the destruction. There were shrieks of women; children were crying, people reaching out for their family members. To worsen the matters further, the gases made the whole atmosphere gloomy consequently, detering everyone's vision. They were able to recognise each other through their voices only. Many of the babies never woke up. The whole city turned into a horrible scene that no one could have imagined even in their wildest dreams. In an unfortunate coincidence, all this happened the very next day after the festival of the Roman god of fire, VULCANALIA.
The writer Pliny, the Younger had watched the eruption from across the bay. It was his letter that gave the profound voice to the havock of that horrible day. He compared this “cloud of unusual size and appearance “to a pine tree that “rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches”, today, this type of volcano is known as a “Plinean eruption”. It was 100-1000 times stronger than the nuclear bomb dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Hence, the whole city was lost for more than a thousand years. It was only in the year 1748, that the excavation of the town took place, and people were shocked to see the town with a treasury and lying bodies beneath the ashes. Pompeii’s twin sister, Herculaneum also suffered to meet the same fate. The total death toll remains unknown even to this day.
How the people of Pompeii died?
Pliny, the Younger, who was the only eye-witness, survived with his mother writing letters to a historian named Tacitus in which he narrated the deadliest day in the history of Pompeii. He described the eruption to have started around noon.
Some earthquakes occurred before the massive destruction, as the excavation describes the repairmen of several buildings. The tremor was an indication, but the Romans did not pay heed to the alarming condition. According to Volcanology, the magma causes both volcanic eruptions as well as earthquakes. When the excavation started, the whole town was found covered with in blanket of pumice. The bodies were lying as if narrating a gory tale of the last moments before their death. It looked as if they were suffering from asphyxiation.
Thousands of bodies were exhumed and studied, the technologies having made it much easier for Archaeologists to find the age, sex, and causes behind the death of the bodies. There were pregnant women, corpses of children with their mother; some were lying on their bed, even the bodies of animals, and also the food materials that got preserved as egg shells, a loaf of bread, etc.
The 3-D MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) was done by Prof. Francesco Silvano Sasso, Radiologist, University of Naples. discovered that the bodies were exposed to dusty air as the left Maxillary sinus tube of the bodies had white particle materials.
Geological data shows it ejected around 10,000 tons of materials every second, that rocks were thrown up to 40 k.m in the sky and returned down to the city in the form of rain. The volcanic rocks were broken into small particles and dropped from the sky, and people even covered their heads with pillows to avoid injury.
Prof. Ernesto De Carolis, Archaeologist, said that the people were carrying the keys of their houses as well as various precious stones, amulets, jewellery, and rings on their fingers. This revealed that it was not the sudden movement from their houses. There was a degree of hesitation, as earlier, they had planned to stay in their homes, but the velocity of rocks that penetrated even the insides of their homes had compelled them to move out.
Volcanologist Claudio Scarpati and colleagues Giuseppe Luongo and Annamaria Perrotta of the University of Naples Federico 2, examined the house of Lullius Polybius, where 13 skeletons were found and sent for mitochondrial DNA testing, which revealed six individuals belonged to the same family, including a pregnant woman.
Molecular Biologist, Marilena Cipollaro, of the Second University of Naples studied the same 13 skeletons through the DNA testing.
Prof. Antanino Cascino of the Second University of Naples said that a few bodies have their mouths wide open due to the lack of oxygen.
But the question arises as to what was the cause of this mass death?
Neel V.Patel of Popular Science explains,
“The cause of death may have been something else entirely, and the observed high temperature effects on the blood and tissue may have been produced by post-mortem pyroclastic flows.”
They travel faster than lava.
Gizmodo’s Dvorsky reports that many of the ash-corpses in Pompeii are curled into what archaeologists call the “pugilist” position, because the heat caused their muscle fibres to contract.
Volcanologist Giuseppe Mastro Lorenzo, Rome, said that the temperature was enough to kill 100 people at a time
The temperature was so high that it even killed the bacteria of the soils around the lying corpses, only it found in the cavities of bones of the bodies.
The first pyroclastic surge devastated the roof top and it was the fourth surge that actually buried the town.
The heat was so intense that it led to the Cadaveric spasm, which eventually resulted in the vaporization of the body fluids, which caused the sudden death of the masses without suffocation. In this way, about 62% of the population suffered postmortem spasm due to the pyroclastic surge.
This caused the sudden death, which clearly described their emotions before their last breath.
Some people died due to suffocation and by ash falls, but the majority had escaped and met with the most deadly attack.
The archaeological excavation found certain diseases, like congenital syphilis, in the twins.
The excavation shows the different ancestries, such as that of Africans, as the Roman era was at the peak of slavery.
There was the identification of soldiers through the marks on the skull.
Conclusion
The Roman town, which was once so lavish, had perished and lost even its existence on the map for about two thousand years. It was the the development of modern technologies that had revealed its existence.
Roquiyya Fatima is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
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