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Vesuvius killed people of Pompeii in 15 minutes, study suggests

Cloud of ash and gas engulfed Roman city within minutes and suffocated inhabitants, research says

A giant cloud of ash and gases released by Vesuvius in 79 AD took about 15 minutes to kill the inhabitants of Pompeii, research suggests.

The estimated 2,000 people who died in the ancient Roman city when they could not escape were not overwhelmed by the lava, but rather asphyxiated by the gases and ashes and later covered in volcanic debris to leave a mark of their physical presence millennia later.

The study by researchers from the Department of Earth and Geo-environmental Sciences of the University of Bari, in collaboration with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, has revealed the duration of the so-called pyroclastic flow, a dense, fast-moving flow of solidified lava pieces, volcanic ash and hot gases that hit the ancient Roman city minutes after the volcano erupted.

The lethal cloud had “a temperature of over 100 degrees and was composed of CO2, chlorides, particles of incandescent ash and volcanic glass”, said Roberto Isaia, senior researcher of the Vesuvius Observatory of the INGV. “The aim of the work was to develop a model to try to understand and quantify the impact of pyroclastic flows on the inhabited area of Pompeii, about 10km [6 miles] from Vesuvius,” he added.

The study confirms that the inhabitants had no escape, and most of those who died suffocated in their homes and beds, or in the streets and squares of the city. Isaia’s model estimates the gases, ash and volcanic particles would have engulfed the city for between 10 and 20 minutes.

“It is probable that dozens of people died due to the rain of lapilli that fell on Pompeii after the eruption, but most of them died of asphyxiation,” Isaia said, adding the pyroclastic flow would have reached Pompeii a few minutes after the explosion.

“Those 15 minutes inside that infernal cloud must have been interminable. The inhabitants could not have imagined what was happening. The Pompeiians lived with earthquakes, but not with eruptions, so they were taken by surprise and swept away by that incandescent cloud of ash.”

The INGV research described pyroclastic flows as “the most devastating impact” of explosive eruptions. “Comparable to avalanches, they are generated by the collapse of the eruptive column. The resulting volcanic ashes run along the slopes of the volcano at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per hour, at high temperatures and with a high concentration of particles.”

Today, the ruins of Pompeii are Italy’s second-most visited archaeological site, after the Colosseum in Rome and, last year, attracted about a million tourists.

“It is very important to be able to reconstruct what happened during Vesuvius’s past eruptions, starting from the geological record, in order to trace the characteristics of the pyroclastic currents and the impact on population,” said Prof Pierfrancesco Dellino of the University of Bari.

“The adopted scientific approach in this study reveals information that is contained in the pyroclastic deposits and that clarifies new aspects of the eruption of Pompeii and provides valuable insights for interpreting the behaviour of Vesuvius, also in terms of civil protection.”

More on this story

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Archaeologists unearth ‘most shocking example of Roman slavery’ at Pompeii

Pompeii fresco find possibly depicts 2,000-year-old form of pizza

Pompeii dig finds skeletal remains dating back to Vesuvius earthquake

Contest launched to decipher Herculaneum scrolls using 3D X-ray software

Treasures from new digs reveal that Pompeii is far from ‘frozen in time’

Casa dei Vettii in Pompeii reopens after 20 years – in pictures

‘Astonishing’ Pompeii home of men freed from slavery reopens to public

Pompeii deploys flock of hungry sheep to keep grass short

Most viewed.

Vesuvius eruption baked some people to death—and turned one brain to glass

A pair of studies reveals more details about what happened to the victims of the infamous event in a.d. 79..

These fragments of glassy material were extracted from the cranial cavity of a victim of the Vesuvius volcano eruption in A.D. 79 that famously destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

When Mount Vesuvius unleashed its fury in A.D. 79, Herculaneum was just one of several towns smothered by ash and savaged by superheated volcanic avalanches. But three centuries after excavations began, experts are still unsure as to what precisely killed the victims of this once bustling metropolis.

Along with collapsing buildings, flying debris , and stampedes of fleeing residents, various studies have blamed the inhalation of ash and volcanic gases, a sudden heat shock, and even the vaporisation of people’s soft tissues.

Now, two studies add a couple twists to the tale.

One concludes that those taking cover in the town’s boathouses were not really burned or vaporised, but instead baked as if inside a stone oven. The second has found a victim in a different portion of the city whose brain appears to have melted before being frozen into glass, as if afflicted by sorcery.

Even if these two tales of biological transmogrification are verified by future research, it does not mean we finally know how these people died. All that can be said is that this may be what happened around the time of their death. 

With so much clear-cut evidence lost to time, “we'll probably never be able to know the ultimate truth” of how they died, says Elżbieta Jaskulska , an osteoarcheologist at the University of Warsaw, who was not involved with either study. But endeavouring to solve this puzzle is worthwhile, and not just because it fills in missing chapters of an iconic story.

“Volcanic disasters don’t just happen in the past,” says Janine Krippner of the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, who was not involved with the work.

Plenty of volcanoes worldwide are capable of producing similar outbursts, which means history will keep repeating itself. Understanding how those volcanic avalanches have harmed people in the past could allow first responders to better equip themselves to treat those who, although injured, manage to survive a volcano’s future wrath.

Mind-blowing … if true?

Back on that summer’s day in A.D. 79, volcanic avalanches of hot ash and gas, moving at around 50 miles an hour, were unquestionably Vesuvius’ most mortifying feature. These are often called pyroclastic flows , but the gassier versions that swamped Herculaneum are named pyroclastic surges.

Many of the victims swept up by the eruption were long thought to have died by asphyxiating on ashes and toxic gases. A series of studies in the last two decades co-authored by Pier Paolo Petrone , a palaeobiologist at the Federico II University Hospital in Naples, suggested that the surge temperatures were so high that many people’s internal organs suddenly shut down – a death through extreme thermal shock.

In 2018, Petrone and his colleagues reported reddish, iron-rich compounds on the often-cracked bones of several Herculaneum victims. This spatter, they said, came from the destruction of red blood cells as those scorching surges vaporised the victims’ soft tissues—like their muscles, tendons, nerves, and fat. Boiling fluids in the brain would have also created pressure and caused their skulls to explode. These claims were met with skepticism by some experts , who noted that bodies being cremated at far higher temperatures do not experience vaporisation.

This debate remains unsettled—but a new study by Petrone and company, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine , will only add more fuel to the fire.

Soap and glass

Cerebral tissues in archaeological discoveries are extremely rare. Even when found, they are often unpreserved, having turned into a soapy mixture of compounds like glycerol and fatty acids. Petrone decided to take a closer look at one particular victim, found in the 1960s inside the Collegium Augustalium , a building dedicated to the cult of Emperor Augustus , who ruled Rome from 63 B.C. to A.D. 14.

Unexpectedly, a glassy substance was found inside the cracked skull , which was surprising because the eruption itself produced no glassy volcanic material. The skull’s glass contained proteins and fatty acids common in the brain, as well as fatty acids typically found in the oily secretions of human hair. No plant or animal sources of these substances were located nearby.

The glassy shards, Petrone explains, are likely the remains of the victim’s brain—and the first example of its kind ever found in any ancient or modern context.

This tissue-turned-glass had to have been created by vitrification, a process wherein a material heats until it liquifies and then very rapidly cools into glass rather than an ordinary solid. Charred wood nearby suggests that the temperatures in the building potentially reached 968 degrees Fahrenheit (528 degrees Celsius). This was seemingly hot enough to ignite body fat, vaporise soft tissues, and melt brain tissue. The brain matter was then suddenly quenched, but Petrone says what permitted that to happen currently remains a mystery.

“It’s amazing and horrifying at the same time to think that such intense heat can turn your brain into glass,” says Miguel Vilar , a biological anthropologist at the National Geographic Society, who was not involved with the work.

But the vitrification process here is not yet fully fleshed out, and because it isn’t clear why the fate of this victim’s brain is (at present) unique among the volcano’s victims, it cannot be said for sure that this is truly vitrified brain matter.

Baked not burned

The other new paper, appearing this week in the journal Antiquity , examined remains that point to a different end for people who died along Herculaneum’s waterfront. Men gathered on the beach, perhaps trying to arrange a seaward evacuation, while women and children mostly took cover in stone boat chambers named fornici . Everyone perished, and to date, 340 bodies have been excavated from the area.

The victims’ bones were long seen as nothing more than annihilated remnants. But in the past decade, new scientific techniques have been able to analyse burned human fragments to provide windows into the time around these people’s deaths.

“You can actually tell a lot about someone’s life from their cremated remains,” says Tim Thompson , an applied biological anthropologist at Teesside University in England. So, he and his colleagues thought, why not apply these techniques to Vesuvius victims?

The team examined rib bones from 152 individuals in six of the 12 fornici. They looked at the quality of collagen, a key protein that is fairly robust over long timescales but that can nevertheless deteriorate in the presence of, among other things, high temperatures.

A group studies body casts in the House of Cryptoporticus while touring the ruins of Pompeii. In addition to this city near modern-day Naples, the port town of Herculaneum and many other sites near Mount Vesuvius were buried by its pyroclastic flows and surges in A.D. 79.

Of those 152 people, only 12 showed highly deteriorated collagen. Most of those 12 samples came from children, whose less mineralised skeletons would leave their collagen more vulnerable to breaking down over time. There is also an experimentally proven correlation between the degree to which a bone has been crystallised and its exposure to high temperatures. The team found that these victims’ bones had low levels of crystallisation.

Both findings indicate—convincingly, says Jaskulska—that the fornici victims were not exposed to extremely high temperatures from the pyroclastic surges at the moment of or shortly after their deaths.

Various studies looking at the altered magnetic properties of materials, the damage to plasters , wood, and mortars, and so on have estimated a range of temperatures for the eruption’s pyroclastic surges. These range from highs of 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees C) down to lows of 464 degrees Fahrenheit (240 degrees C).

The new study suggests the lower end of the range is more plausible. Even at those cooler temperatures, the victims’ bones should have experienced more damage. The absence of this harm means the cadavers had additional protection from the surges.

The heat damage was likely reduced by the intact fornici walls, given that the people were found in close proximity. Swelling outer tissues and internal water pooling around long bones also meant the skeletons were baked rather than burned.

Crucially, the victims were not being ignited on a pyre; instead, the surges heated the air around them, which is less effective at destroying human tissue than actual fire.

Death in darkness

What didn’t transpire, Thompson says, was any soft tissue vaporisation. Even at temperatures exceeding 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit (648 degrees C) in controlled cremation studies, it takes at least 40 minutes for human tissue to be fully destroyed. Pyroclastic surges cannot come close to replicating these conditions.

“As an idea, it just doesn’t hold weight,” Thompson says.

Petrone agrees that huddled masses would have more protection from heat damage. But he disagrees that temperatures were low inside the fornici, pointing to the glassy-brained victim inside the Collegium , whose skeleton was charred and fractured, and whose skull seemingly exploded due to high surge temperatures.

Scientific schisms aside, no one doubts that the final moments of these people’s lives would have been nightmarish, Thompson says. They died trembling in darkness, through extreme heat exposure or suffocation. Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer and author who observed the eruption from a distance, recalled in a letter that some people were so frightened by the event that they actually prayed for death. Many begged for the help of the gods, he wrote, but even more imagined that there were no gods left, and that the last eternal night had fallen on the world.

Although macabre to ponder, the manner in which these people perished can reveal important characteristics of pyroclastic surges, which aren’t yet fully understood, Krippner notes. That, in turn, can help scientists today in their efforts to foresee, and mitigate, a future volcanic disaster. In effect, the doomed people of Herculaneum could be helping to protect the lives of others 2,000 years after they died.

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This Man Was Encased in Volcanic Ash in Pompeii. Here’s What His DNA Reveals

The adult man’s genome is the first to be fully sequenced from remains found in the ancient city

Elizabeth Djinis

History Correspondent

The image of the destruction of the Roman port city of Pompeii in 79 C.E. by the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius is one that likely haunts the mind of any classics student. Its fate was fodder for terrifying descriptions of death and despair, and ever since the city’s ruins were discovered in the 16th century, its eerily preserved people have inspired fear and fascination. They’ve been the subject of furious study ever since—and somehow, researchers and the public are still captivated by preserved Pompeiians centuries later.

Now, for the first time, researchers have fully sequenced the complete DNA of a Pompeiian, offering an inside view of one person who died in the eruption’s aftermath.

A new study published Thursday in Scientific Reports provides more detail on the complex genetic make-up of a Pompeiian man. Academics analyzed petrous bones located at the base of the skull of two sets of remains found in the Casa del Fabbro, or House of the Craftsman . The bones belonged to a 5-foot-4 man in his late 30s or early 40s and a woman over 50 years old about five feet in height. DNA extracted from the female’s bones did not give sufficient information for a full analysis.

Both bodies were found lying on a triclinium eating space in what was likely the home’s dining room. Like others in Pompeii, they were going about their daily lives when disaster struck. In fact, the study’s authors write, more than half of “individuals found in Pompeii died inside their houses, indicating a collective unawareness of the possibility of a volcanic eruption or that the risk was downplayed due to the relatively common land tremors in the region.”

Further testing showed the man likely had spinal tuberculosis. Surviving reports of Rome suggest the disease was a common affliction at the time.

Though scientists had tried to sequence Pompeiian DNA before, previous attempts to study more than small strands failed. This time, they succeeded—but given the study’s small sample size and the fact that the woman’s DNA could not be analyzed, it’s unclear how similar research could fare in the future.

Researchers now hope to use the technique on other remains. Serena Viva , an anthropologist at the University of Salento and one of the study’s co-authors , tells the Guardian ’s Angela Giuffrida the work answers the longstanding question as to whether it’s possible to sequence entire Pompeiian genomes.

“In the future, many more genomes from Pompeii can be studied,” she says. “The victims of Pompeii experienced a natural catastrophe, a thermal shock, and it was not known that you could preserve their genetic material. This study provides this confirmation, and that new technology on genetic analysis allows us to sequence genomes also on damaged material.”

Ironically, the way Pompeii’s residents died may actually have made their DNA more salvageable, the study’s authors assert. They say the pyroclastic materials produced during the volcanic explosion may have actually “shielded” bones “from environmental factors that degrade DNA.”

“One of the main drivers of DNA degradation is oxygen (the other being water),” wrote Gabriele Scorrano , an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s lead author, in an email to CNN ’s Sana Noor Haq. “Temperature works more as a catalyst, speeding up the process. Therefore, if low oxygen is present, there is a limit of how much DNA degradation can take place.”

While new research may reveal how rich Pompeiians’ lives were, tales from 79 C.E. show just how tragic and sudden their death really was.

Roman chronicler and administrator Pliny the Younger ’s harrowing letters about the volcano’s sudden eruption still leave modern readers with an idea of the event’s horror. His uncle, renowned admiral Pliny the Elder, would perish in its wake.

“Some people were so frightened of dying that they actually prayed for death,” Pliny the Younger wrote. “Many begged for the help of the gods, but even more imagined that there were no gods left and that the last eternal night had fallen on the world.”

From the results, researchers learned that the Pompeiian man had a genetic profile consistent with the central Italian population of the Roman Imperial Age. His ancestors likely came to Italy from Anatolia , or Asia Minor, during the Neolithic Age .

“Our findings suggest that, despite the extensive connection between Rome and other Mediterranean populations, a noticeable degree of genetic homogeneity exists in the Italian peninsula at that time,” write the study’s authors.

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Elizabeth Djinis | | READ MORE

Elizabeth Djinis is a writer and journalist based in Rome, Italy. Her work has been published in the  New York Times, National Geographic, Glamour  and  Teen Vogue,  among others.

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• CORRESPONDENCE
• 09 July 2019

Preserve Mount Vesuvius history in digging out Pompeii’s

• Roberto Scandone 0 ,
• Lisetta Giacomelli 1 ,
• Mauro Rosi 2 &
• Christopher Kilburn 3

Università Roma Tre, Rome, Italy.

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Centro Studi RS, Rome, Italy.

University of Pisa, Italy.

University College London, UK.

When an eruption from Mount Vesuvius buried the town of Pompeii in southern Italy in ad 79, it left behind not only intimate details of daily life in the Roman empire, but also an extraordinary record of how volcanoes behave. These archaeological and volcanic histories together offer a unique insight into how societies live and die in the shadow of a volcano. It is alarming, therefore,that volcanic deposits are being sacrificed during archaeological excavations.

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HASS7 Ancient Civilisations: Case Study: Pompeii

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Primary Sources

• Pompeii Art & Architecture gallery The art & architecture in the excavations of old Pompeii show what life was like for its citizens.
• Pliny the Younger on the eruption of Mt Vesuvius

General Information

• Pompeii [History.com] Videos, images & information. Investigate life in Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius, the events of 79AD and the rediscovery in 1748.
• Pompeii: Portents of Disaster BBC Ancient History site.
• Images of Pompeii: City in Ash Images of the ruins of Pompeii. In A.D. 79, a massive eruption by Mount Vesuvius buried the town in ash, freezing it in time.
• Ancient Rome: The City of Pompeii Ducksters site.
• Pompeii World Book Online

Extension Activities:

• Pompeii: Unravelling Ancient Mysteries Interactive site with details of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Vesuvius

Books from the Library

• The Paninis of Pompeii by Andy Stanton Call Number: F STA ISBN: 9781405293853 Publication Date: 2020-09-01 Welcome to the last days of Pompeii as you've NEVER imagined them before! Join fart-trader Caecilius, his wife, Vesuvius, and their 10-year-old son, Filius, in a bizarre world of accidental gladiators, pizza-emitting volcanoes, and the legendary Ma-wol-n-f. You'll meet the household servant, Slavius; thrill at the misadventures of Barkus Wooferinicum; and generally have an uproariously hilarious time of it all. Full of ludicrous characters, surreal escapades, and outrageous word play--if you thought Mr Gum was weird, then get a load of the Ancient Pompeiians! A hilarious new series from the funniest that will have 7+ readers howling with laughter.

• Work and play every day in Pompeii: Gallery
• Everyday life in Pompeii revealed.
• Pompeii [Encyclopedia Britannica]
• Daily life in Ancient Pompeii
• Pompeii ruins: Guide to the Ancient city.
• The A to Z of Pompeii
• Ancient Rome: Food, jobs and daily life.
• Ancient Rome: The Arena and entertainment.

Links to more media

• Pompeii: Mystery of the people frozen in time.
• Wonders of the world: Archaeological areas of Pompeii.

What happened to Pompeii and Herculaneum?

When a group of explorers rediscovered the site in 1748, they were surprised to find that, underneath a thick layer of dust and debris, Pompeii was mostly intact. The buildings, artifacts and skeletons left behind in the buried city have taught us a great deal about everyday life in the ancient world.

SOURCE:   http://www.history.com/topics/pompeii 

What happened in Pompeii?

Since Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying the city of Pompeii, it has been frozen in time. But now, more secrets behind the ancient Roman city are being revealed with the help of new technologies in Science Channel’s Lost World Of Pompeii Pompeii is a delicately conserved attraction that is under constant threat from the wears and tear of extensive tourism, the specter of landslides and the possibility of another devastating eruption from Mount Vesuvius.

SOURCE : Timeline - World History Documentaries (2018), What Happened The Day Pompeii Died? | Lost World Of Pompeii | Timeline, Duration 48.03, URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOEBVWc8crI

Pompeii: Everyday life revealed

Pompeii is nestled in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, whose massive eruption in 79 AD simultaneously destroyed and preserved this bustling Roman town.

SOURCE : ClickView, Poempeii: Life before death (2016), Duration 1.31.58, URL:  https://online.clickview.com.au/libraries/videos/6811701/pompeii-life-before-death

Pompeii was one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in human history. The way in which the people of Pompeii died is well known but how they lived largely remains largely a mystery until now. For years archaeologists have speculated over conflicting evidence, but now an extraordinary find has emerged which promises to shed a whole new light on life in Pompeii. In a dark cellar in Oplontis, just three kilometres from the centre of Pompeii, the preserved remains of 74 skeletons which didn't succumb to the torrent of volcanic ash are about to be put under the microscope of forensic science. What is most interesting about the remains is that they are physically divided on either side of the room into two distinct groups: on one side the rich with fabulous treasure and jewels, on the other their slaves and servants with nothing. A barrage of tests will unlock the secrets of how these two very different halves of Roman society lived, producing the most comprehensive scientific snapshot ever of Pompeian life before the eruption - and the results are surprising.

SOURCE : ClickView, Pompeii (2009), Duration 54.31, URL:  https://online.clickview.com.au/libraries/videos/55630/pompeii

• Street View of Pompeii. Via Google.

What did Pompeii tell historians about Ancient Rome?

• Pompeii: Its discovery and preservation
• The legacy of the Roman Empire
• Archaeology's interactive dig.
• Ancient Roman inventions.
• Pompeii and the Roman villa: essay [PDF]
• The legacy of the Greco-Roman civilisation. [PPT]
• Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. [PPT]
• Myths of Pompeii: reality and legacy. [PDF]
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By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 29, 2022 | Original: August 27, 2010

Pompeii, a flourishing resort city south of ancient Rome, was nestled along the coast of Italy in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano. Its most famous eruption took place in the year 79 A.D., when it buried the city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of volcanic ash. The dust “poured across the land” like a flood, one witness wrote, and shrouded the city in “a darkness…like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.” Two thousand people died, and the city was abandoned for almost as many years. When a group of explorers rediscovered the site in 1748, they were surprised to find that beneath a thick layer of dust and debris, Pompeii was mostly intact. The buildings, artifacts and skeletons left behind in the entombed city have taught us a great deal about everyday life in the ancient world.

Where Is Pompeii?

Located on the west coast of Italy along the shores of the Bay of Naples—south of the modern-day city of Naples— ancient Greek settlers made Pompeii part of the Hellenistic sphere in the 8th century B.C. An independent-minded town, Pompeii fell under the influence of Rome in the 2nd century B.C., and eventually the Bay of Naples became an attraction for wealthy vacationers from Rome who relished the Campania coastline.

By the turn of the first century A.D., the town of Pompeii, located about five miles from Mount Vesuvius, was a flourishing resort for the most distinguished citizens of the Roman Empire . Elegant houses and elaborate villas—many filled with exquisite artworks and sparkling fountains—lined the paved streets.

Much of the city’s wealth derived from its rich volcanic soil—the region was a center for olives, grapes and other crops, and wine from Pompeii was enjoyed in some of Rome’s most fashionable houses.

Tourists, townspeople and enslaved people bustled in and out of small factories and artisans’ shops, taverns, cafes, brothels and bathhouses. People gathered in the 20,000-seat arena and lounged in the open-air squares and marketplaces.

On the eve of the fateful eruption in 79 A.D., scholars estimate that there were about 12,000 people living in Pompeii and almost as many in the surrounding region.

Did you know? Mount Vesuvius has not erupted since 1944, but it is still one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. Experts believe that another catastrophic eruption is due any day—an almost unfathomable catastrophe, since almost 3 million people live within 20 miles of the volcano’s crater.

Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius did not form overnight, of course. Vesuvius is part of the Campanian volcanic arc that stretches along the convergence of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates on the Italian peninsula—it been erupting for thousands of years.

Sometime around 1995 B.C., for example, an unusually violent eruption (known today as the “ Avellino eruption ”) shot millions of tons of superheated lava, ash and rocks about 22 miles into the sky. That Bronze Age catastrophe destroyed almost every village, house and farm within 15 miles of the mountain.

Villagers around the volcano had long learned to live with their volatile neighbor. Even after a massive earthquake struck the Campania region in 63 A.D.—a quake that, scientists now understand, offered a warning rumble of the disaster to come—people still flocked to the shores of the Bay of Naples, and Pompeii grew more crowded every year.

Pompeii Eruption 

Sixteen years after that telltale earthquake, in either August or October of 79 A.D. , a number of small earthquakes rocked the Pompeii region. The people there shrugged off the temblors since they “were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania,” according to the writer and eyewitness Pliny the Younger.

Then, shortly after noon on that fateful day, Mount Vesuvius erupted again. The blast sent a plume of ash, rock and scorching-hot volcanic gases so high into the sky that people could see it for hundreds of miles around.

Pliny the Younger, who watched the eruption from across the Bay of Naples, 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, geologists refer to this type of volcanic blast as a “Plinean eruption.”)

As it cooled, this tower of debris drifted to earth: first the fine-grained ash, then the lightweight chunks of pumice and other rocks. It was terrifying—“I believed I was perishing with the world,” Pliny wrote, “and the world with me”—but it was not yet lethal: Most Pompeiians had plenty of time to flee, and many did.

Herculaneum and Pompeii

For those who stayed behind in Pompeii, Herculaneum and other towns, conditions soon grew much worse. As more and more ash fell, it clogged the air, making it difficult to breathe. Buildings collapsed under overloaded roofs, but still some people remained in the city, now covered under several feet of ash.

Then, on the morning of the following day, a “pyroclastic flow”—a 100-miles-per-hour blast of superheated gas and pulverized rock—poured down the side of the mountain and vaporized everything and everyone in its path.

By the time the Vesuvius eruption sputtered to an end on the second day of the eruption, Pompeii was buried under millions of tons of volcanic ash.

Some people drifted back to town in search of lost relatives or belongings, but there was virtually nothing left to find. Pompeii, along with the neighboring town of Herculaneum and a number of villas in the area, was abandoned for centuries.

Pompeii Bodies

About 2,000 Pompeiians died in the city, but the eruption in total killed up to 16,000 people in Pompeii, Herculaneum and other towns and villages in the region.

Bodies of men, women, children and animals were frozen right where they’d fallen—many of the bodies uncovered later were still clutching valuable household objects they’d hoped to carry safely out of the city. Some bodies were found with their arms poignantly wrapped around children or other loved ones.

Later archaeologists even uncovered jars of preserved fruit and loaves of bread. Most of the city’s buildings were intact, and everyday objects and household goods still littered the streets. The powdery volcanic ash that buried Pompeii had proved to be an excellent preservative.

Pompeii Exhibit

Pompeii remained mostly untouched until 1748, when a group of explorers looking for ancient artifacts arrived in Campania and began to dig. They found that the ashes had acted as a marvelous preservative: Underneath all that dust, Pompeii was almost exactly as it had been almost 2,000 years before.

Many scholars cite the excavation of Pompeii as an influence in the neo-Classical revival of the 18th century. Europe’s wealthiest and most fashionable families displayed art and reproductions of objects from the ruins, and drawings of Pompeii’s buildings helped shape the architectural trends of the era.

For example, wealthy British families often built “Etruscan rooms” that mimicked those in Pompeiian villas. Today, many of the preserved artworks, frescoes and other artifacts are on exhibit at the Pompeii Antiquarium , located among the city’s ruins.

The excavation of Pompeii that has been going on for almost three centuries continues today, and the entire site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Scholars and tourists remain just as fascinated by the city’s eerie ruins—and the artifacts and bodies buried on that fateful day over 2,000 years ago—as they were in the 18th century.

“Many disasters have befallen the world,” wrote the German philosopher-poet Goethe, after touring Pompeii’s ruins in the 1780s, “but few have brought posterity so much joy.”

HISTORY Vault: Ancient History

From Egypt to Greece, explore fascinating documentaries about the ancient world.

History of Pompeii. Pompeii Online . Antiquarium. Pompeiisites.org . Resurrecting Pompeii. Smithsonian Magazine . Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata. UNESCO World Heritage Convention . 

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Lessons from Pompeii: An Incomplete Record of the Past

In June of this year, Bolshaya Udina, a formerly extinct volcano in Eastern Russia was declared active due to increased seismic activity. Ensuing predictions of a Vesuvius size eruption sparked memories of Pompeii’s infamous demise in 79 A.D., an event that both archeologists and volcanologists are still working to fully dissect(Osborne 2019a). With the looming possibility of another large scale catastrophe, many are turning to those same researchers to uncover what Pompeii’s past can disclose about Bolshaya Udina’s future(Scandone et al. 2019). 

Bolshaya Udina, the now active volcano with potential to cause Pompeii-like conditions(Gramling 2019).

Unfortunately enough, tensions between volcanologists and archeologists studying the site are hindering fruitful collaboration. Since the early eighteenth century, archeologists have been documenting the stratigraphic record of Pompeii, using the law of superimposition, stating that the lowest layers of a site form first, to understand the workings and development of Roman life in the city. Excavations yielding frescoes, mosaic tiles, fountains, and courtyards have revitalized the city, solidifying it as a dynamic archeological wonder that the world has remained fascinated with for centuries(Garcia-Navarro 2019). Still, a crucial element of the city’s history remains overlooked by the field: its demise.

The most recent 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius(Osborne 2019b).

In the pursuit of artifacts and features trapped within the ash sealed stratigraphy of the land, archeologists have been accused of destroying the evidence of volcanology. Volcanology uses volcanic deposits to explain how people died, and so, removal of these deposits in the excavation process is, essentially, ignoring elements of the stratigraphic record. Despite pleas from volcanologists to preserve the volcanic evidence, archeologists continue to cut through sites, regularly removing deposit layers(Osbourne 2019b). 

The value of forgoing excavation or allowing volcanologists to oversee stratigraphic record keeping has been proven useful before. In the 1980s, studies of deposits in newly excavated sites, revealed that the people of Pompeii died from pyroclastic flow, a combination of volcanic gas clouds and magma. Before this volcanological study, however, it was assumed that pumice rain was responsible for killing Pompeii’s population. Thus, this breakthrough prompted a change in strategy for preparing for future eruptions(Osbourne 2019b). Today, the hope is to again use the two fields to understand how pyroclastic flows would sweep around existing buildings, so that current and future populations, like those near Bolshaya Udina, living in similar conditions can adapt accordingly(Solly 2019).

Though there is a trend of geologic history being destroyed for the sake of recording cultural history, progress is being made. Many volcanologists remain barred from entering archaeological sites in Pompeii, but agreements were recently made between researchers allowing volcanologists from the University of Naples Federico II to study stratigraphy alongside archeologists. With the goal of collaboration between the disciplines, volcanologists are being given access to study damage to victims of Vesuvius based on different eruptive stages by recording stratigraphy, taking samples, and mapping damage(Osborne 2019b).

With no projection of when Bolshaya Udina will erupt, we are simply left to wonder if an incomplete record of the past will fix itself in time to offer a useful vision for the future. 

Garcia-Navarro, Lulu 

2019  Volcano Experts and Archeologists are Clashing over Access to Study Pompeii. NPR , July 28, 2019.  

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/28/745989999/volcano-experts-and-archaeologists-are-clashing-over-access-to-study-pompeii , accessed  September 21, 2019.

Gramling, Caroline

2019  Is a long-dormant Russian volcano waking up? It’s complicated. ScienceNews , June 17, 2019. 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dormant-russia-volcano-bolshaya-udina-waking-complicated , accessed September 21, 2019. 

Osborne, Hannah

2019  Extinct Russian Volcano Has Woken Up and Could Unleash ‘Pompeii-Size’ Eruption, Scientists Warn. Newsweek , June 6, 2019.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-extinct-volcano-woken-pompeii-eruption-1442479 , accessed  September 21, 2019.

2019  Pompeii Archaeologists Committing Vandalism to Volcanology by Destroying History Of Vesuvius Eruption, Scientists Claim. Newsweek , July 17, 2019.

https://www.newsweek.com/popmpeii-archaeologists-vandalism-vesuvius-eruption-1449676 , accessed September 21, 2019.

Scandone, Roberto & Lisetta Giacomelli, Mauro Rosi, Christopher Kilburn 

2019  Preserve Mount Vesuvius history in Pompeii’s. Nature , July 9, 2019.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02097-3 , accessed September 21, 2019.

Solly, Meilan

2019  Why Archaeologists and Volcanologists Are Clashing Over Excavations at Pompeii. Smithsonian , July 24, 2019.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-archaeologists-and-volcanologists-are-clashing-over-excavations-pompeii-180972716/ , accessed  September 21, 2019.

Additional Reading 

Digging Deeper into Pompeii’s Past 

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/344-1907/features/7714-pompeii-new-investigations  

Extinct volcano has woken up and scientists say it could erupt ‘at any moment’

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/07/europe/russia-volcano-scli-intl-scn/  

Did Vesuvius Vaporize its Victims? 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/10/news-pompeii-deaths-vesuvius-vaporized-skulls-exploded-chemistry/

2 thoughts on “ Lessons from Pompeii: An Incomplete Record of the Past ”

What responsibility, if any, do archaeologists have to the environment? What are the ethics behind and lasting environmental effects of archeology? What work have archaeologists been doing to protect the environment while conducting research?

Archaeologists have a responsibility to the environment, for the environment provides historical, cultural, and scientific context to all archaeological finds. It is imperative that archaeologists record all patterns of stratigraphy including environmental or depositional strata like volcanic ash. Even when environmental factors may not seem of great significance to archaeologists, they are to consider the interests of other researchers who may find value in that data. In the case of the Pompeii excavations, volcanologists are an outside party that ought to be considered. On top of these general codes of conduct, all projects are to be completed with integrity and respect for the environment to fulfill ethical responsibilities to the public, researchers, and current and/or indigenous land inhabitants of a site. These ethical principles and procedural standards are stated and enforced by the Register of Professional Archaeologists, an association that holds the right to bring any registered professional archaeologist before a grievance committee if the stated codes are trespassed.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 is also important in the environmental preservation of archaeologically or historically significant sites. Section 106 requires archaeologists, permitted to excavate by federal agencies, to survey project effects before starting work. The Act also encourages minimizing or avoiding environmental impact on sites. Often times, archaeologists will consult with State Historic Preservation Offices(SHPOs) throughout the course of a project to ensure that the Section 106 standards are carried out properly.

These examples provide guidelines for how archaeologists should treat the environment, and also, what enforcement procedures are in place to ensure that these guidelines are followed.

Lipe, William D. 2006 Archaeological Ethics and Law. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 2006. https://crowcanyon.org/index.php/archaeological-ethics-law , accessed October 23, 2019.

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I. CASE BACKGROUND

1. abstract.

It is difficult to imagine an environmental occurrence leading to the destruction of an entire population. Yet, this is what happened in 79 AD when a volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, erupted near Pompeii, one of the Roman Empire's provinces. This volcanic eruption hid the sun, caused a tsunami, and buried the city, killing its inhabitants. There was only one eyewitness to this event, who recorded the eruption and its effects in letters, and excavations of the city did not begin until 1748, nearly 1700 years after the eruption and the fall of Pompeii. Even more interesting is the fact that, in addition to the lives and environment destroyed by the eruption within Pompeii itself, Mt. Vesuvius' eruption also had an effect on Rome. Throughout its history, Pompeii had proven itself to be a worthy adversary of Rome, joining in rebellions against the Roman armies, most notably during the Social War in 90 BC. The destruction of Pompeii ended the possibility of any future conflict between powerful Rome and its province.

2. Description

"Ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames . . . Meanwhile on Mount Vesuvius broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night.

We also saw the sea sucked away and apparently forced back by the earthquake: at any rate it receded from the shore so that quantities of sea creatures were left stranded on dry sand. On the landward side a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size. . . . We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying" ( Mt. Vesuvius ).

Pliny's Voyage

Although Mt. Vesuvius had erupted in 62 AD, the volcano's 17 years of dormancy had led the Pompeiians to believe it was no longer active. The horrors mentioned above were therefore deadly as well as shocking for the city's citizens, who quickly attempted to flee the city. Most people were unable to run away fast enough and eventually lost their lives from falling buildings, the gases in the atmosphere, or falling ash. In the end, the eruption of the only active volcanic mountain on the European mainland "killed thousands of people, devastated the surrounding countryside, and destroyed at least eight towns," including Pompeii (de Boer 74).

3. Duration

The Social War lasted approximately one year, from 90 BC to 89 BC. The war began when Pompeii declared rebellion against the Roman Empire and ended with a Roman victory.

Begin Year: 90 BC

End Year: 89 BC

Duration: 1 year

4. Location

A. Sovereign Actor: Rome

B. Non-sovereign Actor: Pompeii

II. ENVIRONMENT ASPECTS

6. type of environmental problem: many, 7. type of habitat: temperate, 8. act and harm sites.

Act Site: Pompeii

Harm Site: Pompeii

III. CONFLICT ASPECTS

9. type of conflict: intra-state/civil, 10. level of conflict: political, civil, 11. fatality level of dispute (military and civilian fatalities): high.

According to one source, the casualties of Roman soldiers during its battles with Pompeii totaled approximately 300,000. Adding the unknown number of deaths from Pompeii to these 300,000 Roman soldiers, it is evident that this intra-state conflict was a high one, at least for that period.

IV. ENVIRONMENT and CONFLICT OVERLAP

12. environment-conflict link and dynamics: indirect, 13. level of strategic interest: sub-state.

Although the Roman Empire was not being threatened by an outside power, the uprising of Pompeii and the other Roman provinces during the Social War presented Rome with a formidable threat. This is why Rome sent such a commanding force of 300,000 soldiers to quell the uprisings. In addition, the fact that Rome chose to establish a colony of Roman veterans within Pompeii itself suggests that the Romans also saw the Social War as a matter of honor and a protection of their way of life, as well as their powerful empire.

14. Outcome of Dispute: Victory

The outcome of the Social War was certain: the Roman forces defeated Pompeii in 89 BC. This victory was further stressed with the fall of Pompeii, which provided Rome with the assurance that Pompeii would never rise against the empire again. As previously mentioned, the effect on Rome was minimal, as they had successfully avoided a loss of power. However, the Roman victory forever changed Pompeii for both good (they were given full Roman citizenship rights) and bad (Rome was to remain in control of Pompeii until 79 AD).

V. RELATED INFORMATION and SOURCES

15. related ice cases.

Hadrian's Wall

16. Sources: Relevant Literature and Websites

I. Literature

Aldrete, Gregory S. Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia . Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Colley, Allison. Pompeii . London: Duckworth, 2003.

De Carolis, Ernesto. Vesuvius, AD 79: the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum . Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.

Etienne, Rober. Pompeii : the day a city died . New York: H.N. Abrams, 1992.

Lobley, J. Logan. Mount Vesuvius : A descriptive, historical, and geological account of the volcano and its surroundings . London: Roper and Drowley, 1889.

Nappo, Salvatore. Pompeii: A Guide to the Ancient City . Singapore: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1998.

Robles, Emmanuel. Vesuvius . New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle. Volcanoes in human history: the far-reaching effects of major eruptions . Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002.

II. Websites

Background and Lines

Colonial Rome

Colonial Era Rome

Mt. Vesuvius

-- Copyright Info

Mt. Vesuvius Webcam

Pompeii-BBC

The Roman Empire

Roman Involvement in Pompeii

The Social War

The Social War-2

Volcanic Phenomena at Pompeii

A botanical Pompeii: we found spectacular Australian plant fossils from 30 million years ago

Adjunct Assoc Professor Central Queensland University and Principal Curator Geosciences Queensland Museum, CQUniversity Australia

Disclosure statement

Andrew Rozefelds receives funding from the Herman Slade Foundation and Churchill Trust, Australia.

CQUniversity Australia provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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The Australian continent is now geologically stable. But volcanic rocks, lava flows and a contemporary landscape dotted with extinct volcanoes show this wasn’t always the case.

Between 40 and 20 million years ago – during the Eocene to Miocene epochs – there was widespread volcano activity across eastern Australia. In places such as western Victoria and the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland, it was even more recent.

Erupting volcanoes can have devastating consequences for human settlements, as we know from Pompeii in Italy, which was buried by ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. But ash falls and lava flows can also entomb entire forests, or at least many of the plants within them.

Our studies of these rare and unique plant time capsules are revealing exquisitely preserved fossil floras and new insights into Australia’s botanical history. This new work is published in the journal Gondwana Research .

Remarkable preservation

The most common volcanic rocks are basalts. The rich red soils derived from them are among the most fertile in Australia.

But the rocks in which fossils occur are buried under basalts or other volcanic rock, and are called silcretes – the name indicates their origins are from silica-rich groundwaters. Silica is the major constituent of sand, and familiar to most of us as quartz.

What makes the silcrete plant fossils so fascinating is the superfine preservation of plant material. This includes fine roots and root nodules, uncurling fern fronds and their underground stems, the soft outer bark of wood, feeding traces and frass (powdery droppings) of insects, and even the delicate tissues and anatomy of fruits and seeds.

For this fine preservation to occur, first there needs to be a rapid burial, like that from a volcanic eruption. Then, there has to be an abundant source of silica — a condition met when the volcanic rocks began to weather.

The process where silica infills and preserves plant structures is referred to as “ silicification ” or “permineralisation”. When plant material is buried, it provides acidic conditions that are ideal for this to happen.

And the process need not take millions of years. Overseas studies of plants in hot springs or undertaken in the laboratory have shown that some types of silica will quickly infiltrate wood and plant tissues.

Why are these plant fossils significant?

Because of their rapid entombment by the volcanoes, we can be sure the plants were in situ (that is, their original location) and were actively growing. This means we can gain detailed information about the make-up of these past plant communities.

In other areas where plant fossils might accumulate – such as river deltas – we can never be sure how far the bits of plants were carried, and whether they were from different types of vegetation.

Silicification not only preserves plants, but also leaf litter on the forest floor and even the underlying soil containing roots and root nodules. The fossil plants that are preserved at different sites varies, indicating the presence of distinct plant communities.

The abundance of seeds and fruits at one site near Capella, in central Queensland, even indicated to us that the local volcanic eruptions are likely to have occurred in summer or early autumn during the fruiting season.

The extraordinary preservation of these fossils allows us to compare them with modern plants. In turn, this means we can accurately identify them.

The ferns include fronds and underground stems (rhizomes) of the familiar bracken fern ( Pteridium ). We have also found the distinctive seeds and lianas of the grape family (Vitaceae), along with evidence of insect damage in the wood. Two sites also had evidence of palms.

While there have been few previous studies on silcrete plants, we have revealed new insights into the history of the modern Australian flora.

Volcanoes shaped plant communities

Volcanic activity both destroys and modifies existing plant communities. It also provides new substrates for plants to colonise.

Several sites contained ferns – this may be because they are among the first living plants to colonise new volcanic terrains via their tiny wind-borne spores. For instance, it has been documented that bracken ferns were pioneer plants of the barren cone of the famous Krakatoa volcano after its eruption in 1883.

But the diversity of seeds and fruits at another site suggests that an existing forest was buried by volcanic activity.

Researchers have suggested that the key factors responsible for the evolution of the Australian fauna and flora during the Cenozoic period (the last 66 million years) were predominantly climate and environmental change. It happened, in part, due to the movement of the Australian continental plate northwards.

But the broad-scale volcano activity that occurred in eastern Australia during the Cenozoic has rarely been invoked as a key driver of such changes.

So remarkably preserved, the silcrete plant fossils are now providing startling new insights into the history of some groups of Australian plants and the vegetation types in which they grew.

The author would like to acknowledge co-author Raymond Carpenter from the University of Adelaide who contributed to this article.

• Volcanic eruptions
• Basalt rocks
• Australian plants
• Australian fossils
• Fossil plants

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Ancient Roman Site Found Frozen in Time in The Wreckage of Pompeii

A rchaeologists have found an unusual treasure that has been buried for nearly 2,000 years under the ash and debris that rained down from the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius, in 79 CE.

In the rooms of an ancient home, or domus, excavations have revealed a construction site, in perfect condition. That includes tools, unused tiles, bricks hewn from volcanic material called tuff , and the pièce de résistance – piles of lime to mix Ancient Roman concrete .

Home renovation may seem somewhat mundane, but the discovery gives us a pristine snapshot of how the Ancient Romans constructed the buildings in which they lived. And it also reveals some new information about the construction techniques that produced buildings that are still standing, thousands of years later.

"The excavation in Region IX, insula 10, planned during the years of the Great Pompeii Project is yielding, as was to be expected, important results for furthering our knowledge of the ancient city," says Massimo Osanna , Italy's Director General of Museums.

Excavation works in Region IX , a largely unexplored area, follow on from previous excavations of another, adjacent area , Region V , and were born out of the need to stabilize walls of eruptive material at the edge of excavation sites "that loom dangerously over the excavated areas," Osanna says .

Historians and scientists are fascinated by how ancient humans lived and innovated, but much of that information is lost to time. We have echoing ruins, objects and fragments of objects, bones and, if we're lucky, written records. But Pompeii is a whole other realm.

What happened to the people of Pompeii was a horrifying tragedy, but when scorching volcanic ash buried the city in 79 CE, it preserved it, a single moment in time frozen for millennia to come. Excavation work is painstaking and ongoing, but it's gradually revealing the minutiae of the day-to-day lives of the city's inhabitants.

The construction site was unveiled in a house whose ongoing excavation had previously revealed it belonged to a baker, with a large oven.

An artwork depicting flatbread and a glass of wine, as well as electoral manifestos revealing support for a politician named Aulus Rustius Verus, have also been found in the house. And three Pompeii victims – two women and a boy – were found not far from the oven.

As they worked further on the house, archaeologists started to uncover evidence of construction. The partially covered atrium contained piles of building materials, and marks on the jamb of the door leading to the tablinum , or reception room, were probably tally marks to keep track of the building site accounts.

In the lararium , in which the household shrine is kept, the researchers found amphorae, clay vessels they believe were used to mix plaster to finish the walls. And construction tools found in several rooms included plumb-bobs – lead weights on a string, used to make sure vertical lines were straight – and hoes used to stir concrete.

Finally, the discovery seems to confirm the method of mixing Roman concrete discovered only last year. Previously, it had been thought that the lime was mixed with water prior to being added to dry sand known as pozzolana to make concrete.

Through analysis and experimentation, scientists found that this is not necessarily the case : Rather, dry lime and dry pozzolana are mixed together with hot water at very high temperatures to produce a very durable, fast-setting, and self-healing concrete.

The materials found at the newly uncovered construction site confirm this method, the archaeologists say.

"It is yet another example of how the small city of Pompeii makes us understand so many things about the great Roman Empire, not least the use of cement," says Archaeological Park of Pompeii Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel .

"The data emerging seems to point to the use of quicklime in the construction phase of the walls, a practice already hypothesized in the past and capable of considerably speeding up the time of a new construction, but also of the renovation of buildings damaged, for example, by an earthquake."

The rediscovery of these construction techniques, lost for so many years, could also yield innovations for engineers today, the researchers add , in repairing damaged buildings or reusing materials.

Premium Content

The island of Santorini is hiding an explosive secret

Over three thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption ended an ancient civilization. A new study offers clues about what the next major eruption could look like.

The Greek island of Santorini is an undeniable aesthetic marvel, with its iconic white-and-blue houses perched high above an azure bay. But this paradisical locale has a spectacularly violent origin story.

Santorini is arc-shaped and has a flooded interior because, in the distant past, colossal eruptions have rapidly excavated a hole out of the center of the island. After each eruption, the Santorini volcano starts to recharge its magma supply, readying itself for another gigantic blast. The most infamous of these outbursts took place in the year 1560 B.C. One of the most powerful eruptions in the past 10,000 years, this explosion and the resulting debris and tsunamis arguably marked the beginning of the end of seafaring Minoan civilization.

The island is currently somewhere in the middle of this cataclysmic cycle, and volcanologists are presently most concerned with the island’s Kameni volcano. Effectively a rooftop extension of the considerably larger Santorini volcano, it’s a small mostly underwater edifice at the heart of Santorini with two peaks, Palea and Nea Kameni, poking above the water.

In the year 726, one of Kameni’s eruptions generated significant explosions and threw out myriad molten matter. Based on volcanic rocks recovered from the eruption, this was thought to be the worst-case scenario that Kameni could produce.

Now, a new study, published in Nature Geoscience , reveals that the actual eruption was one to two orders of magnitude more powerful.

They estimate that at least 100 billion cubic feet of lava, ash, and scorching-hot rocks were expelled from Kameni, making it comparable to the formidable 2022 detonation of the submarine Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano in the Pacific. “Such an eruption happening today would have major implications,” says Jonas Preine , a geophysicist at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and the study’s lead author.

This is unwelcome news, both for the 15,000 people who live on Santorini, and for the two million tourists who visit it every single year. “It raises the possibility that moderate to large explosive eruptions may be more likely than previously thought,” says David Pyle , a volcanologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved with the new work.

But “this is not a reason for the people of the Aegean to be panicking right now,” says Preine. The risk of a major eruption in the near future at Santorini is low, and there are no signs that one is on its way soon. And this study boosts volcanologists’ understanding of the island and its eruptive risks, allowing scientists to better shield people from future dangers.

“Submarine volcanoes are expensive to study,” says Preine. “But it’s worth it. There’s a whole zoo of hazards that could be associated with them.”

Investigating Santorini’s volcanic history

Santorini is one of many caldera-forming volcanoes around the world—those that seem to operate on cycles culminating in massive explosions that form a cauldron-shaped depression (the ‘caldera’). The island’s volcanic activity dates back around 650,000 years, and in that time, it has produced at least five of these catastrophic blasts, including that civilization-crippling one in 1560 B.C.

Since then, the island’s volcanic story has been written by the two-peaked Kameni volcano. Producing both effusive, lava-spewing eruptions and decently explosive ones, it last erupted in 1950, and has been quiet aside from some seismic unrest between 2011 and 2012. But that doesn’t mean it’s sleeping.

“The volcano is still fairly active, so there is, of course, always some risk,” says Isobel Yeo , a submarine volcanologist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England who was not involved with the new work. And when it comes to submarine volcanoes, scientists are acutely aware that they “are capable of taking us by surprise.”

The 726 eruption has been a focus for those hoping to understand how hazardous Kameni might be in the future. Historical accounts sound frightening: it was said that the waters of the bay began to boil, before “the entire sea was on fire,” says Preine—after which, deafening explosions blanketed the sky with ash and the land with pumice stones.

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But the volcanic evidence found by scientists didn’t seem to quite match up to those apocalyptic descriptions. “Pumice only forms and is distributed in explosive eruptions,” says Rebecca Williams , a volcanologist at the University of Hull who was not involved with the new work. But “a significant challenge to fully understanding the eruptive history of an island volcano is that most of the rock record is lost to the sea.”

The 726 eruption was no exception: only small traces of it were left on land. As a result, even though this was known to be a dangerous event, “the impact of this eruption was never really taken seriously,” says Preine.

What will Santorini’s next eruption look like?    

Hoping to decode more of Kameni’s obfuscated volcanic past, members of the International Ocean Discovery Program drilled into the marine basins of the caldera at various sites, extracting sediment cores each time.

In doing so, they found a considerable volume of ash and pumice that they traced back to the 726 eruption. It quickly became clear that this eruption really was as significant and severe as the historic accounts had portrayed it, one that likely involved thunderous underwater booms giving way to towering columns of ash and pumice.

An explosive eruption throwing out 100 billion cubic feet of erupted matter is certainly a frightening thought. But the reality was likely more nightmarish.

“The estimate they provide is at the lower end, because they are using only the volume of material deposited within the caldera,” says Yeo. “Lots of material was likely transported and deposited away from the volcano during the eruption.”

This study raises the possibility that Kameni is capable of greater harm than anyone suspected. A similarly explosive eruption today “raises the possibility not only of substantial ash and pumice fall, but also tsunamis generated by possible ’sector’ collapse of the island, which is built on unstable pumice deposits,” says Kathy Cashman , a volcanologist at the University of Oregon not involved with the work.

The team’s discovery also means that Kameni’s worst-case scenario is, well, worse than previously thought. Fortunately, scientists have long taken the island’s volcanic risks into consideration.

“Santorini should be taken seriously given the volcano’s tsunamigenic potential and the large number of people that could be affected,” says Amy Donovan , a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge who wasn’t involved with the work. “While this paper does say that 726 was bigger than we thought, it doesn’t significantly increase my concern about what was already a concerning volcano for multiple reasons.”

Unsurprisingly, the volcano is also vigilantly monitored around the clock. “Any signs of unrest are likely to be detected in their earliest phases and warnings issued,” says Yeo.

The implications of this research won’t remain local to the island. Santorini is widely considered to be one of the key sites whose study led to the modern science of volcanology. It’s been extensively examined, its every accessible detail forensically analyzed countless times. “And still, it gives us large surprises,” says Preine. “This volcano that you’re looking at every day has some secrets that we’re still discovering.”

What, then, does that say about other caldera-forming volcanoes around the world, especially those submerged beneath the ocean? “If we’ve been unaware of this at Santorini, we’re surely unaware of similar eruptions at other volcanoes,” says Preine. “This is a huge blind spot for the volcanology community.”

The clock is ticking. “Almost no submerged volcanoes are monitored,” says Yeo, “and this needs to change.”

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