A DNA Discovery Shatters the Truth About Pompeii’s Famous Victims
Some of the victims of the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D. in Pompeii were cast in plaster to preserve the scene.
New DNA studies of those victims tell a different tale than what experts had previously speculated.
Common interpretations of three well-known relationships were proven false by the scientific study.
The Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D. blanketed Pompeii in destruction. To preserve the historical nature of the event and help tell the stories of the residents of the city, some of the victims who had been buried by the ash and debris from the volcano were eventually cast in plaster. It turns out that the stories of a few of those individuals weren’t quite as truthful as we previously thought.
A new study—published in Current Biology by a team of researchers at Harvard University and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in Naples, Italy—asserts that ancient DNA taken from some of the victims challenges stories long told about those particular Pompeii citizens.
“The findings demonstrate the importance of integrating genetic analysis with archaeological and historical information to enrich or correct narratives constructed based on limited evidence,” Alissa Mittnik, a co-author of the study, said in a statement.
For decades, many of the stories told about the relationships and connections between individuals discovered within the Archaeological Park of Pompeii were based simply on the physical appearances of the victims and their proximity to one another. In one situation, for example, the tableau of an adult with a golden bracelet holding a child on their lap was interpreted as a mother holding her offspring. This recent DNA analysis, however, shows that there was no maternal presence or any familial relationship involved in the scene. Instead, the adult in the scene wearing the jewelry was a male who was biologically unrelated to the child.
A second scene features four victims huddled together, often believed to be a family. But when the research team analyzed DNA from three of the victims, they found no genetic ties between them.
In a third situation, two individuals are seen lying in what is believed to be an embrace. Some have hypothesized the two people could be sisters, a mother holding a daughter, or even lovers. The DNA shows that at least one of the two people was a male, eliminating two of the three common interpretations.
The ancient eruption buried several Roman towns, killing inhabitants and laying ash deposits across cities that preserved everything from buildings to sculptures and mosaics to human victims. Shortly following the eruption, rain helped functionally cement the bodies within the ash. When excavators descended upon the area centuries later, the outlines of roughly 1,000 victims remained and—in over 100 cases—the cavities were filled in with plaster to preserve their positioning.
While this DNA analysis dispels some of the myths of Pompeii, the goal of the team behind this work was not necessarily to sleuth out any definitive histories. And DNA on its own wouldn’t be enough to know the stories of these victims. For one, some of the remains may have been moved from their original positions, and the plaster casts could have been “creatively restored” in the past, the study authors wrote. The team also warned that using so few clues, such as jewelry, to spin a full tale proves risky, especially in an area rich with differing cultures.
The intent of the team was never to get these stories right once and for all—rather, they wanted to ensure that the tales were merely less wrong. “Instead of establishing new narratives that might also misrepresent these people’s experiences,” David Reich, co-senior author of the study, said in a statement, “the genetic results encourage reflection on the dangers of making up stories about gender and family relationships in past societies based on present-day expectations.”
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