In the year A.D. 79, a massive volcano in southern Italy awakened suddenly, causing one of the deadliest natural disasters in the ancient world. The eruption led to the deaths of at least 1,500 people in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Recent analysis suggests that powerful earthquakes that occurred at the same time as the eruption may have contributed to the tragedy, as reported by volcanologist Domenico Sparice and his team from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Naples.
Earlier excavations in Pompeii uncovered bodies of residents who were completely covered in ash, preserving the story of a swift and scalding demise. In Herculaneum, individuals who sought refuge in stone boathouses likely survived the initial heat only to succumb slowly to volcanic gases. In the recent study, Sparice and his colleagues examined collapsed buildings in Pompeii and studied the skeletons of two individuals found within one such building. The injuries observed in the skeletons resembled those caused by modern earthquakes that lead to building collapses.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago released a mixture of superhot gases, ash, and rocks into the atmosphere, which then fell back to the earth and covered the nearby Roman cities. Additionally, the volcano unleashed pyroclastic flows – dense currents of hot gas and rock that sped down its slopes towards the cities at its base.
Eyewitness Pliny the Younger described the eruption in letters from his vantage point in Misenum, across the Bay of Naples. He recounted feeling violent tremors that shook everything around him. The seismic shocks triggered by the eruption may have caused the residents of Pompeii to face a deadly dilemma – seek shelter in unstable buildings or run into the scalding ash outside.
To understand the role earthquakes played in the death toll, Sparice and his team examined two newly excavated rooms in a house in the Insula of the Chaste Lovers area in Pompeii. The two male individuals found in the house were around 50 years old at the time of their death. Their skeletons were discovered near collapsed walls and exhibited multiple fractures, indicating they experienced powerful crushing forces, likely due to the earthquakes that followed the eruption.
The researchers suggest that the killer earthquakes may have been triggered by the collapse of the volcano’s central crater, signaling the beginning of the deadliest phase of the eruption. Pyroclastic flows swept across the region, burying Pompeii under a thick layer of sediment.
The findings from this study provide a clearer understanding of the events that unfolded during the eruption and shed light on why some people chose to stay and face the disaster. The evidence-based approach taken by the researchers helps to confirm assumptions made by archaeologists and offers insights into the experiences of the people of Pompeii on that fateful day. These studies also help to dispel previous notions about who was impacted by the eruption, showing that a diverse cross-section of the population was affected by the tragedy.
