Victims of the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago not only died from volcanic ash and gas, but earthquakes also claimed lives.
Archaeologists have discovered two skeletons buried under a collapsed wall in Pompeii, which was destroyed by the violent event.
The remains are believed to be men aged at least 55, found on the Casti Amanti insula, a block of buildings comprising several houses and a bakery.
They were found under a wall that collapsed before the area was covered in volcanic material. The area was undergoing reconstruction at the time of the eruption in 79 CE, following an earthquake a few days earlier.
The eruption was one of the deadliest in history, but it is also the most famous, due to the great preservation of its victims in the surrounding area.
“In recent years, we have become aware that there were violent and powerful seismic events that were occurring at the time of the eruption,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
He added that the new archaeological techniques and methodologies have allowed ‘a better understanding of hell, which completely destroyed the city of Pompeii in two days, killing many inhabitants,’ which made it possible to determine the dynamics of the deaths up to the last seconds.
More than 1,300 victims have been found at the archaeological site south of Naples in the last 250 years. Most are believed to have died from suffocation in the giant cloud of hot volcanic ash that engulfed the city.
Last month, a team working near Herculaneum discovered that the first fiery stream released from the volcano was so hot it turned the victims’ brains to glass.
Since that deadly event, Mount Vesuvius has remained active, including an eruption in 1906 that killed more than 100 people, and another in 1944 that destroyed nearby US Army Air Force aircraft deployed during World War II. World.
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