When Mount Vesuvius, the massive volcano in southern Italy, erupted in 79 AD, residents had no time to escape before showers of ash and rock buried them forever. However, new research reveals that some people did survive – but they were then killed by a second force of nature.
The volcanic eruption caught people in the middle of their days, before 18 hours of ash and rock particles rained down on the city. That’s why the residents of the Roman city were frozen in time, the ash solidifying in a protective shell around their bodies.
But two new skeletons excavated from a house in the city were not buried under the ash, but rather on top of it. Italian experts from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Italy and the Pompeii Archaeological Park now think they know what’s to blame: a giant earthquake.
The researchers who discovered them had been investigating the house, known as Casa dei Pittori al Lavoro, when they noticed something strange. All of the signs of a volcanic phenomena having happened – particularly signs usually found during excavations near Vesuvius – were missing. “There had to be a different explanation,” said co-author Dr Mauro Di Vito.
That’s when they discovered the skeletons. Both male and around the age of 50, they had suffered severe fractures and trauma, deepening the mystery.
Neither seemed to have died from inhaling ash or from the extreme heat. Instead, they appeared to have been crushed by the sudden collapse of a large wall.
The researchers think that inhabitants who survived the Vesuvius eruption thought themselves safe and decided – albeit hopelessly – to flee. That’s when the strong earthquakes started.
Studying co-occurring earthquakes (yep, you guessed it – that’s two earthquakes that happen at the same time) is not easy. Essentially, that’s because it’s hard to distinguish which effects are volcanic and which are seismic.
“These complexities are like a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces must fit together to unravel the complete picture,” said first author Dr Domenico Sparice, first author of the paper published in Frontiers in Earth Science.
“We proved that seismicity during the eruption played a significant role in the destruction of Pompeii and, possibly, influenced the choices of the Pompeiians who faced an inevitable death.”
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