#the eruption of mount vesuvius

[illustratus]

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (1796) by Michael Wutky

[blueiscoool]

A photo of the body casts of two adults and two children who died in what's now called the house of the golden bracelet in Pompeii. A new DNA analysis shows that these four people are not genetically related to one another. (Image credit: Archeological Park of Pompeii).

DNA Analysis Rewrites The Stories of People Buried in Pompeii

An ancient-DNA analysis of victims in Pompeii who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption reveals some unusual relations between the people who died together.

Ancient DNA taken from the Pompeii victims of Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago reveals that some people's relationships were not what they seemed, according to a new study.

For instance, an adult who was wearing a golden bracelet and holding a child on their lap was long thought to be a mother with her child. But the new DNA analysis revealed that, in reality, the duo were "an unrelated adult male and child," study co-author David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement.

In another example, a couple who died in an embrace and were "thought to be sisters, or mother and daughter, were found to include at least one genetic male," Reich said. "These findings challenge traditional gender and familial assumptions."

In the study, published Thursday (Nov. 7) in the journal Current Biology, Reich and an international team of researchers looked at the genetics of five individuals who died during the A.D. 79 eruption that killed around 2,000 people.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it covered the surrounding area in a deadly layer of volcanic ash, pumice and pyroclastic flow, burying people alive and preserving the shapes of many bodies beneath the calcified layers of ash. The remains of the city were rediscovered only in the 1700s. In the following century, archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli perfected his plaster technique, in which he filled in the human-shaped holes left after the bodies had decomposed to create casts of the victims.

The casts of two people who died about 2,000 years ago in the house of the cryptoporticus in Pompeii. A new DNA analysis found that one individual was biologically male, but the sex of the other could not be determined. (Image credit: Archeological Park of Pompeii).

The casts allowed scholars to study the victims in their last moments and make hypotheses about their identities based on details such as their locations, positions and apparel. The problem with this approach, however, was that their interpretations were influenced by modern-day assumptions — for instance, that the four people at the house with the golden bracelet, which included the adult holding the child, were two parents with their children, when in reality none of them were genetically related, the researchers wrote in the study.

For their research, the team analyzed 14 casts and extracted DNA from fragmented skeletal remains in five of them. By analyzing this genetic material, the scientists determined the individuals' genetic relationships, sex and ancestry. The team concluded that the victims had a "diverse genomic background," primarily descending from recent eastern Mediterranean immigrants, per the statement, confirming the Roman Empire's multiethnic reality.

The cast of a person who died in the villa of the mysteries in Pompeii in A.D. 79. (Image credit: Archeological Park of Pompeii).

Our findings have significant implications for the interpretation of archaeological data and the understanding of ancient societies," study co-author Alissa Mittnik, an archaeogeneticist at Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said in the statement. "They highlight the importance of integrating genetic data with archaeological and historical information to avoid misinterpretations based on modern assumptions."

It's possible that past misconceptions led to the "exploitation of the casts as vehicles for storytelling," meaning that curators may have manipulated the victims' "poses and relative positioning" for exhibits, the team wrote in the study.

Sex misassignment is "not uncommon" in archaeology, Carles Lalueza-Fox, a biologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF) in Barcelona who specializes in the study of ancient DNA but was not involved with the study, said in an email.

"Of course we look at the past with the cultural eyes of the present and this view is sometimes distorted; for me the discovery of a man with a golden bracelet trying to save an unrelated child is more interesting and culturally complex than assuming it was a mother and her child," Lalueza-Fox said.

By Margherita Bassi.

[lionofchaeronea]

Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands of the Bay of Naples, Joseph Wright of Derby, ca. 1776

[the-cricket-chirps]

Andy Warhol, Vesuvius, Naples, ca. 1985

Joseph Wright, Vesuvius in Eruption, 1774

Andy Warhol, Vesuvius 365, 1985

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Ancient loaves of bread from the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum that were carbonized in volcanic pyroclastic flows of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Italy.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Louis Hector Leroux (French, 1829-1900) Herculanum, 23 août, an 79, 1881 Musée d'Orsay

[magmahearts]

TIMING: current PARTIES: @ariadnewhitlock & @magmahearts LOCATION: downtown wicked's rest SUMMARY: after seeing a movie together, cass and ariadne make plans to get smoothies. unfortunately, they're interrupted. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

The movie was fine. It wasn’t a particularly good movie, though it wasn’t bad enough to be funny, either. It was subpar, mostly; the kind you watched and immediately forgot about on the walk home. That was fine, of course. The movie wasn’t the point of the outing. The point was to hang out with Ariadne, whose company was enough to make any movie worth watching. Cass grinned as she walked, arm looped through her friend’s and feet kicking.

They hadn’t done this as much lately. With Makaio back home and not yet ready to meet anyone else just yet, Cass had been leaving her cave less and less. But she missed Aria, and she felt guilty for spending less time with her without being able to give her any kind of solid reason for it. The movie was an excuse, really. She hadn’t even really wanted to see it. She’d just wanted to see her friend.

“Do you want to get smoothies or something?” She was a little anxious being away from the cave for this long — part of her still worried she’d come home to find it empty, to find herself abandoned by her father — but she thought she could handle another hour or so. “There’s a really good smoothie place nearby.”

—

She was just happy to spend time with Cass. Ariadne couldn’t think of anything that they could do together that she wouldn’t be happy about. Which was amazing. Not surprising, because Cass was literally the most amazing, but still amazing in its own way if only because she’d never thought that she’d end up with a best friend like you heard about in books and movies and tv. And like, she knew she was totally biased, but she also figured that Cass was better than any of the best friends available in books or movies or tv.

They hadn’t had time to hang out in what felt like forever (though obviously wasn’t literally forever), even though they’d talked online, and so when Cass had invited her out, Ariadne had agreed without a second thought. The movie had been mediocre, but it was fun to have watched it with her best friend.

She needed to stop repeating best friend in her head over and over, as if something was going to take a drastic shift and change. Cass wouldn’t do that. The two of them were going to be best friends for hundreds and hundreds of years. “Yes! Smoothies sound good. I’d love that!” Ariadne wondered for a moment if she was being overly enthusiastic, but with Cass, she knew she could be any part of herself and her friend would accept her for it. “I think I want one with all the berries they have. How about you?”

—

She thought she’d probably needed this. Having her dad around was great and incredible and wholly unparalleled, but Cass was a social person and her father seemed to prefer the quiet. She respected him, and she understood that preference, but it still made her feel a little uneasy sometimes. She liked the conversations they had, but she wasn’t sure there were enough of them. With Ariadne, there never seemed to be even a moment of quiet between them. Cass needed that sometimes, needed to hear herself talk just to remind herself that she had someone to talk to. 

It was better for her dad, too, she thought; with Cass spending the evening with Ariadne, Makaio got an evening to himself. She worried he’d grow tired of her eventually, the way most people did. Maybe giving him breaks like this could delay that inevitability. They had forever, after all; she wanted to use it.

Ariadne accepted the invitation for extending their evening, and Cass preened. This was fun. This would be fun! “Oh, berries are good! I like it when my smoothie is purple. I’m not sure what I need to mix together to make it the most purple. I think we should experiment a little bit. Like, put some blue and red stuff together and test it out. I want it to be really cute.” The taste was secondary to that, really. Looping her arm through Ariadne’s, Cass began to lead the other girl towards the smoothie shop. “What color is yours with all the berries?”

—

She hadn’t been a quiet child, not especially, though she hadn’t been wildly loud either. Not by any stretch. Still, with Cass, Ariadne felt a certain comfort that she hadn’t felt in forever. Certainly not with the blonde lady and Jade trying to murder her. She loved how much Cass had to say, and she loved listening to everything. It was wonderful, no matter what Cass was talking about, though of course if it were something sad or hard to hear, wonderful wasn’t the right word to describe it, but anything with Cass could be made into something beautiful.

“I love that. I think experimenting is good, and experimenting to make stuff purple is the best.” She gave a firm nod. “Like Steph, with Steph and Cass. Best friends just like us.” Ariadne seamlessly looped her arm with her Cass’s. “Mine’s kinda purple. Pretty good purple. So we could start with mine and see how we can make it the best purple it can be? I bet with teamwork, we can really get it good.” 

—

She still wasn’t quite used to people listening to her. At best, people were willing to let her blather and ignore whatever it was she was saying. At worst, they told her to stop talking altogether. But Ariadne listened to her, and there was a quiet thrill in that. She thought of her father, waiting for her back in her cave. She thought of how carefully he had listened when she spoke about her experience with Rhett, about how frightened she’d been. She had a best friend who listened to her and now, she had a father who did, too. It wasn’t something she’d ever dared to hope for, but it was exhilarating. Cass wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get used to it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

“Yeah! Exactly! Purple’s a great color, and I think more things should be purple in general. Food, drinks, all kinds of stuff. Pink, too!” She grinned at the idea of starting with Ariadne’s drink as a base and building on it. The anxiety that had lived in her chest since her father’s arrival ebbed a little. She was so worried about him leaving, and she still was, but this was a nice distraction. “Oh! We can try —” 

She cut off, step faltering a little. There was a man ahead of them, blocking their path. Cass tilted her head a little, tugging Ariadne to move around him. “Excuse us. We’re just…” The man sidestepped, continuing to block them, and Cass tensed. 

A smile stretched across his face, slow and dangerous. “So,” he said, “which one of you’s the corpse?”

—

She could’ve listened to Cass for hours. Ariadne figured she probably had, at some point, when Cass was so deeply devoted to a topic that she became even more mesmerizing than she usually was. It was better than anything she could’ve ever hoped for. If she could’ve created good dreams then they would have been exactly like this. The dream friend, everything she’d ever wanted but hadn’t had as a child. Her cousin’s friendship counted, but she and Cass were so similar in so many ways, and everything just clicked.

“I agree! Purple is the best! Absolute best. There should be more purple food that doesn’t taste like fake grapes. I think that gives purple a bad reputation, maybe, somehow?” Ariadne shrugged. “Pink absolutely! God, pink candies? Top tier. Did you know you can buy all pink Starbursts now? Proof positive that there must be a good amount of good in the world, don’t you think?”

Except she felt someone watching them. All out of nowhere. Which would have been a sucky feeling no matter what, but given how the last month had gone, it put her especially on edge.

This couldn’t be happening. No way, no how.

She followed Cass’s gaze, shrinking against her friend as the man moved to not let them pass. Corpse. That had to mean her, right? “I – neither of us, thanks so much!” She forced sheer cheer into her voice, so much so that Ariadne wasn’t sure if she was even the one saying that anymore. 

“Cut the shit, girlies.” He still said it with a perfect smile. “I’m only asking so I know how to handle this.” 

Ariadne completely clung to Cass, now. Grateful for the warmth her friend had, both in energy and in physicality. “I – Cass?” She whispered, eyes wide. “He’s – we need to –” then she cleared her throat. “We’re going to get smoothies, please. Please could you let us by, please?”

—

She tried to convince herself, at first, that this was nothing. That it was a misunderstanding, that this guy just happened to be in their way and would laugh and apologize and let them by without any more problems. But then he spoke. Then he said corpse, and Cass was right back in front of that cave again, Rhett’s hand at her throat. She thought of Ariadne, locked in that same awful man’s van for days, not knowing if or when she’d be saved. She thought of her father back in the cave, of the scar on his chest and the look on his face as he spoke. 

Why couldn’t people like this leave them alone? Why couldn’t they just go away? Cass and Ariadne weren’t hurting anyone. They were on their way to get smoothies. They weren’t bad or wrong or evil. They just… were. All they wanted to do was be. Was that so bad?

Ariadne spoke, and she sounded afraid. Cass’s eyes burned daggers through the man’s skull. “I know,” she said, voice gentle as she addressed Aria. “I know what he is.” Then, her tone hardened when she spoke to the hunter. “We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re just —”

He struck like a cobra, quick and decisive. It wasn’t a deadly strike; if anything, it was just… a way of testing the waters. Cass barely felt the sting; she just saw the bubbly, magma-like blood drip down onto the concrete alongside the shimmering sparkles of Ariadne’s. Twin wounds where their arms were clasped together shimmered up. The hunter’s brows shot up to his hairline as he studied them, head tilting. 

“Not sure what you are,” he said to Cass. Then, turning to Ariadne, “But I know exactly what to do with you.” 

It was all the warning either girl was given before the hunter struck again, this time targeting Ariadne and Ariadne alone.

—

She was dead.

She was very very much dead, but the idea of her being a corpse was unnerving. Especially in how the man was talking to her. About her. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but Ariadne was also determined not to break down. At least, if she could avoid it. Do her best to avoid it. She didn’t like not liking people, but when people tried to kill her just because she had died and come back to life, she had to figure maybe (possibly) it was okay for her to not like somebody.

There was no reason for people like this, for people like the bad scientist with the beard,or the blonde lady, or Jade, or anybody else, to go after them. Cass, especially, who’d never done anything wrong in her life. Ariadne, at least, had actually killed somebody (which Jade knew now and which yikes), and so there was reason for people to hate her. It didn’t mean she wanted it, or liked it (not at all), but it made sense – 

– and then a knife struck against where she was holding onto Cass, and Ariadne was proud of herself for one small moment that she didn’t scream, except that her blood was exposed, and then the dude was saying he knew what to do with her, and she didn’t like that. 

Didn’t like how he smiled or how he looked at her.

Before she could even fully process what was going on he came after her again and she felt herself fall to the ground and she kicked up in the air at the hunter man. Ariadne knew she could’ve done more, maybe, but she wasn’t about to leave Cass – and it wasn’t total nighttime so it wasn’t like she could astral project away. Or astral project to behind the hunter and kick him or push him or something like that. 

Like what a real hero would’ve been able to do. Like Cass.

She felt his blade cut into her thigh again, bright glittery near-liquid spilling out, staining her clothing. “Just – leave me alone!” She squeaked, angry at herself that she couldn’t sound more intimidating, that she couldn’t make herself scary.

“Once I’ve finished with you, of course.” The man’s smile was cruel and mean and Ariadne grabbed a handful of candies she’d had in her bag and threw them at him with all her might, hoping maybe it’d do some damage, or at least distract him.

—

It all happened so quickly. The man’s knife stung her arm and then she was cast aside and forgotten about as he laser focused on Ariadne instead. Cass was still reeling from the shock of it as, so fast it was hard to track, her best friend was shoved to the concrete with her attacker on top her her, knife at the ready. There was more glittery blood on the ground as the knife found Ariadne’s thigh, and Ariadne begged to be left alone, and the man didn’t care, and —

She kept going back to the cave, kept being transported as if she’d never left it at all. As if Rhett’s hand was still gripping her throat, as if his knife was still against her temple, as if she could still hear Alex and herself both pleading for her own life to someone who didn’t even consider her a person. 

Her father’s words echoed in her ears, the memory of his voice mixing together with the chaos of Ariadne and the hunter scuffling on the concrete. Do you think he would have lost sleep over it? Men like this don’t see us as people. But they were. Ariadne was. She was a person, and she was Cass’s friend, and she was worth more than ten of this stupid hunter. She was better than he could ever be. 

With a cry, Cass lunged at the man, leaping onto his back and yanking him backwards, desperate to pull him off her friend. “Don’t fucking touch her,” she snapped. The hunter fell back and, for a moment, Cass thought she’d been successful. But it quickly became clear that the move was an intentional one as her back hit the ground and he landed on top of her, pushing his weight against her until it was hard to breathe.

“I don’t know what you are,” he said lowly, “but I was going to let you live. I usually only kill the dead, but I don’t mind making an exception if you don’t smarten up. Let me do my job, and you can go.” He reared back against her again, hard enough for spots to dance along the edge of her vision, and then the weight disappeared. Cass had only a moment to be relieved before she realized he’d only left her to go back to Ariadne.

—

It was too fast.

It was always too fast. When the man with the van had grabbed her, it had been too fast.  In this past month, it had been too fast. When Cass had told her that the same man had attacked her and Alex, it had sounded too fast.She hadn’t been there then, of course, but it sounded fast. It sounded awful. Ariadne hated that feeling almost as much as she hated the hunger that came when she hadn’t fed in a while. Even though now she’d been doing better, at Inge’s encouragement. 

She knew that she hadn’t fed on this man, though. Not that Ariadne could recall each and every exact person she fed from, but she did her best, and this man was someone she was (pretty) sure she would remember.

She was back in the van but she couldn’t be, and Cass was here and Cass might’ve also been in trouble and - and - and – 

The hunter was on Cass now, and Ariadne shrieked (she wasn’t sure how big and scary and off putting it was, but hopefully a bit), except she’d fallen down again and tried to push herself up (selfishly thinking about how much of a pain it was going to be to do ballet tomorrow, but there had to be a tomorrow for her and Cass first), only just before the hunter had turned back around and went after her again.

“Stop it!” She shrieked, again, attempting to give his shins a quick kick and attempting to run (but not too far, because she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave Cass all alone). The man’s smile was the worst she’d come across so far. Well, probable worst, the man with the van’s smile still haunted her thoughts in the worst of ways. Ariadne grabbed the knife Inge had given her and gave a jab at the air, though the hunter deftly avoided it. Avoided it and struck her again, and Ariadne’s hand flew to her jaw, tears threatening to drop from her eyes. “Leave us alone!” Except he gave her a kick, catching her off guard, and sending her back to the ground.

—

It was like Cass didn’t matter at all. She was collateral damage, she was cast aside. And she didn’t want to be hurt, didn’t want to be a target again the way she had with Rhett, but — but she wanted to matter. She wanted to be important, wanted to be someone this man would remember, at least. She thought of Rhett, the way she always seemed to. She doubted he remembered her at all. He remembered Alex, she was sure, her claws in his skin, but Cass? Cass was no one. Nothing. The hunter who left that scar on her father’s chest probably didn’t remember him, either. This man wouldn’t remember Ariadne if he killed her here.

But Cass would.

Cass would remember forever, would grieve forever. This man would go on with his life, would sleep soundly, would forget he’d ever had this altercation at all when he had ten more just like it this month. And it wasn’t fair. Who was he to treat them like they were nothing? Who was he to decide that Ariadne was bad when Cass knew that she was good? 

The man had Ariadne on the ground again. Cass took a deep breath, filling her aching lungs with the oxygen he’d briefly denied them. She scrambled onto her hands and knees, she shot out, and she was slow. She was too slow. The man had a knife, he brought it down, he —

More glittering blood on the pavement as he pulled the knife out from between Ariadne’s ribs. Cass scrambled towards him, grabbed his feet and yanked him back with all her might. The knife came with him as he scrambled for purchase, sinking into the side of Ariadne’s ankle, and Cass screamed. 

Her glamour dropped. Her eyes burned bright red, the magma in her veins was hot. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he tried to sit up, yanked him back against her in a strange bear hug. Only this time, it was him who screamed. The smell of burning flesh filled the air and he struggled, but Cass only tightened her grip. 

“You think you get to decide?” Her voice cracked like a fire, like stone. “You think you’re better? You’re not! You aren’t! I said — I said you don’t fucking touch her!” As she yelled, the man continued to scream and thrash and struggle.

And it kind of felt good.

—

She didn’t need to breathe. The dead, in fact, very notably didn’t breathe, like, at all.

But she still felt something trapped in her lungs, in her chest, very much like when she’d held her breath underwater with Chance for way too long when they were both kids. Not wanting to give up until he did. But that lack of breath and tightening of her chest had been fun. This, right now, was not fun. Ariadne hated how it made her feel.

Before she could move, the man’s knife had slit through her shirt and into where her ribs should be. Where they were. Ariadne didn’t want to cry. That would be giving in, showing that she was easily defeated (which, of course, she was, but the hunter man didn’t have to know that). She felt her whole body convulse with pain, and she could see, out of the corner of her eye, Cass getting up (thank goodness she wasn’t dead), and then Cass was running at the two of them and there was a millisecond during which Ariadne felt like she could smile, before the man was yanked away, but not before he could do more damage, slicing into her ankle, and she did burst into tears then, if only for a moment, because she couldn’t lose her ability to dance, and so she hoped that whatever damage he’d done would be fixable on a – well, corpse. Except she did her best to not think of herself using the words that he had.

There were more important things to focus on now, anyhow. Like how absolutely beautiful and amazing her best friend looked without her glamour. It was awe-inspiring, and Ariadne made a mental note to tell Cass that when (not if, when – it had to be when) they got out of this mess.

But then there was another scream, and it wasn’t Cass, and it wasn’t Ariadne, and sitting up (weakly) she looked over in shock to see Cass holding him, the smell of burning flesh seeping into the air, almost enough to make her forget that she was actively bleeding glitter everywhere. “I – Cass!” She called out to her friend. 

“Hey – he’s – Cass?” Ariadne took in another shaky breath. “I’m okay. Let’s – we can go now. I have – ice – ouch – ice cream at my apartment and we can – Cass!” She did the best she could to get her friend’s attention. 

—

She was burning and he was burning and, for a moment, it felt like the whole world was, too. For a moment, Cass was Mount Vesuvius. She was erupting so beautifully, was raining rock and magma down, down, down while everyone marveled. The man in her arms was Pompeii, screaming and shuddering. She thought of the books she’d read on the event, the quiet excitement they’d left her with that she’d never told anyone about. Would this hunter turn to a cast when she was done with him? Would his body be frozen in time beneath stone? Could they leave him here, have him be a warning? 

Was it bad to want to?

He was still screaming, still burning, and Cass held on. He wasn’t a threat anymore; he hadn’t been a threat since the moment she grabbed him, and she knew it. She thought of her father, crouched in her cave. Why should we care for the lives of people who want us dead? He would have killed Ariadne. He would have killed her and gone home and slept through the night, would have done it without caring. Didn’t he deserve this? Didn’t she? She couldn’t stand up to Rhett, wasn’t sure she’d have been able to even if he were in front of her. She hadn’t been able to do much against Debbie, even if Nora had taken care of it for her. But she could stop this man. She could save Ariadne. She could. 

And then, Ariadne’s voice cut through the eruption, and Cass didn’t feel like Mount Vesuvius anymore. She didn’t feel powerful or large or looming, didn’t feel like a thing that had earned the right to sling magma and burst into flame. She felt like a little girl who’d done something bad, like a child being scolded. She gasped, glamour flying back up as she scrambled away from the hunter.

He looked bad. His skin was red and lumpy, sticking to the ground in every place where her body had been in direct contact with his. He wheezed, rolling onto his stomach to alleviate it, breathing in a way that sounded like it must have hurt. And Ariadne… 

What must Ariadne have thought of her? Cass couldn’t bring herself to look at her friend, couldn’t bear the thought that she might see disappointment or fear in her eyes. She thought of Kuma, of how terrified she’d been the first time Cass’s glamour dropped in front of her. She’d chosen to let the promise kill her rather than accept Cass for who she was, and Cass hadn’t even hurt anyone then. How could she expect Ariadne to look at her the same now?

Scrambling back further, Cass shot to her feet and stumbled back. “I — I’m sorry. I didn’t — I wasn’t trying to —” Her throat felt dry. She wasn’t looking at Ariadne, wasn’t looking at the hunter. She looked at her own hands, at those weapons of mass destruction she’d never used quite like this before. “I — I need to go. I have to… I’m sorry.” It was all she could manage as she turned, running as fast as she could towards her cave and somehow both longing for Aria to follow and praying that she wouldn’t. 

[histinart]

the last day of pompeii by karl bryullov (1833)

[postcard-from-the-past]

Mount Vesuvius erupting, Campania, Italy

Italian vintage postcard

[visionsofour-past]

• L'Eruzione del Vesuvio, 26 Aprile 1872, ore 5 PM

Date: 1872

Photographer: Giorgio Sommer

Medium: Albumen print

[pebblegalaxy]

Unveiling the Enigma of Pompeii: Exploring the Ancient Ruins and History

Title: Exploring the Enigmatic Ruins of Pompeii: A Journey Through History Introduction:Nestled near the picturesque Bay of Naples in Italy, the ruins of Pompeii stand as a captivating testament to the ancient Roman world. Frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Pompeii offers a remarkable glimpse into the daily life, architecture, and culture of a bygone era. In this…

[illustratus]

Vesuvius Eruption at Night overlooking the Scuola di Virgilio, 1822

by Josef Rebell

[blueiscoool]

Ancient Pompeii Reveals Two More Victims of Eruption With Coins and Jewelry

The skeletal remains of a man and a woman have been unearthed in Pompeii, along with a cache of coins and precious jewelry, archaeologists say.

The discovery is part of a dig in Region IX of the buried city that has uncovered a plethora of ancient buildings and artifacts, including a bakery, a home renovation and rooms decorated with elaborate drawings. Pompeii was home to around 20,000 people when it was buried under ash and volcanic glass during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The latest discovery adds more detail to the picture of what life was like in the city before the disaster. The bodies were found in a small bedroom that was being used as a temporary sleeping space while the large home was undergoing renovation, according to the archaeologists who made the discovery.

The woman was found on the bed. Clutched in her hands was a small cache of gold, silver and bronze coins, as well as gold and pearl earrings. “The room was chosen as a refuge by the two people, while waiting for the end of the fall of pumice that had been gradually filling the open spaces for hours in the rest of the house,” the archaeologists said in a statement.

Because the door was closed, the room remained free of pumice, but the couple were trapped inside. “Trapped in the cramped little room, their deaths were caused by the pyroclastic flow that buried them,” the archaeologists said.

The room, which contained a wooden bed, stool, chest and marble topped table, was near the Blue Shrine room, which was unearthed in June, and next to the large living area decorated with frescoes. Archaeologists also found bronze, glass and ceramic objects still in place on the table. A large bronze candelabrum was found on the floor.

“The opportunity to analyze the invaluable anthropological data relating to the two victims found within the archaeological context that marked their tragic end, allows us to recover a considerable amount of information about the daily life of the ancient Pompeiians and the micro-histories of some of them, with precise and timely documentation, confirming the uniqueness of the Vesuvian territory,” the park’s director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said.

He described the excavations as “a work in which archaeologists, anthropologists and volcanologists work together to reconstruct the last moments of the lives of men, women and children who perished during one of the greatest natural catastrophes of antiquity.”

The current excavations in Region IX were initially started to prevent the outer perimeter of the site from collapsing. They have provided some of the most important discoveries ever made in the ancient city.

By Barbie Latza Nadeau.

[haootia]

"why are you more upset about this disrespectful thing that someone just said to your face right now than this thing that happened 22 years ago in a different state/country to and by people you didnt know"

twitter is so funny right now

[the-cricket-chirps]

J.M.W. Turner

Mount Vesuvius in Eruption

1817

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Scholars of antiquity believe they are on the brink of a new era of understanding after researchers armed with artificial intelligence read the hidden text of a charred scroll that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago.

Hundreds of papyrus scrolls held in the library of a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum were burned to a crisp when the town was devastated by the intense blast of heat, ash and pumice that destroyed nearby Pompeii in AD79.

Excavations in the 18th century recovered more than 1,000 whole or partial scrolls from the mansion, thought to be owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.

However, the black ink was unreadable on the carbonised papyri and the scrolls crumbled to pieces when researchers tried to open them.

The breakthrough in reading the ancient material came from the $1m Vesuvius Challenge, a contest launched in 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, and Silicon Valley backers.

The competition offered prizes for extracting text from high-resolution CT scans of a scroll taken at Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire.

On Monday, Nat Friedman, a US tech executive and founding sponsor of the challenge, announced that a team of three computer-savvy students, Youssef Nader in Germany, Luke Farritor in the US, and Julian Schilliger in Switzerland, had won the $700,000 (£554,000) grand prize after reading more than 2,000 Greek letters from the scroll.

Papyrologists who have studied the text recovered from the blackened scroll were stunned at the feat.

“This is a complete gamechanger,” said Robert Fowler, emeritus professor of Greek at Bristol University and chair of the Herculaneum Society.

“There are hundreds of these scrolls waiting to be read.”

Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, added:

“This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times.”

“We are moving into a new era,” said Seales, who led efforts to read the scrolls by virtually unwrapping the CT images and training AI algorithms to detect the presence of ink.

He now wants to build a portable CT scanner to image scrolls without moving them from their collections.

In October, Farritor won the challenge’s $40,000 “first letters” prize when he identified the ancient Greek word for “purple” in the scroll.

He teamed up with Nader in November, with Schilliger, who developed an algorithm to automatically unwrap CT images, joining them days before the contest deadline on 31 December.

Together, they read more than 2,000 letters of the scroll, giving scholars their first real insight into its contents.

“It’s been an incredibly rewarding journey,” said Youssef.

“The adrenaline rush is what kept us going. It was insane. It meant working 20-something hours a day. I didn’t know when one day ended and the next day started.”

“It probably is Philodemus,” Fowler said of the author.

“The style is very gnarly, typical of him, and the subject is up his alley.”

The scroll discusses sources of pleasure, touching on music and food – capers in particular – and whether the pleasure experienced from a combination of elements owes to the major or minor constituents, the abundant or the scare.

“In the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” the author writes.

“I think he’s asking the question: what is the source of pleasure in a mix of things? Is it the dominant element, is it the scarce element, or is it the mix itself?” said Fowler.

The author ends with a parting shot against his philosophical adversaries for having “nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or particular."

Seales and his research team spent years developing algorithms to digitally unwrap the scrolls and detect the presence of ink from the changes it produced in the papyrus fibres.

He released the algorithms for contestants to build on in the challenge.

Friedman’s involvement proved valuable not only for attracting financial donors.

When Seales was meant to fly to the UK to have a scroll scanned, a storm blew in cancelling all commercial flights.

Worried they might lose their slot at the Diamond light source, Friedman hastily organised a private jet for the trip.

Beyond the hundreds of Herculaneum scrolls waiting to be read, many more may be buried at the villa, adding weight to arguments for fresh excavations.

"The same technology could be applied to papyrus wrapped around Egyptian mummies," Fowler said.

These could include everything from letters and property deeds to laundry lists and tax receipts, shining light on the lives of ordinary ancient Egyptians.

“There are crates of this stuff in the back rooms of museums,” Fowler said.

The challenge continues this year with the goal to read 85% of the scroll and lay the foundations for reading all of those already excavated.

Scientists need to fully automate the process of tracing the surface of the papyrus inside each scroll and improve ink detection on the most damaged parts.

“When we launched this less than a year ago, I honestly wasn’t sure it’d work,” said Friedman.

“You know, people say money can’t buy happiness, but they have no imagination. This has been pure joy. It’s magical what happened, it couldn’t have been scripted better."

Source: The Guardian

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