Pompeii
Nearly two millennia ago, it was another October day in the Bay of Naples when the residents of Pompeii heard a loud bang and looked at the sky, only to realise that Mount Vesuvius had erupted without any warning. Soon, it was erased from the face of the earth.
Since Pompeii and another nearby city, Herculaneum were dug up in the 18th century, the two lost habitats attracted researchers. After analysing ancient DNA collected from the famed body casts, scientists have claimed their findings can alter the history written since Pompeii’s rediscovery.
The DNA evidence shows that individuals’ sexes and family relationships do not match traditional interpretations, mainly formulated based on modern-day assumptions.
The researchers from Europe and the USA extracted DNA from highly fragmented skeletal remains mixed with the plaster casts, focusing on 14 of the 86 casts undergoing restoration. What they found was largely in contrast to long-held assumptions based solely on the physical appearance and positioning of the casts.
“For instance, one notable example is the discovery that an adult wearing a golden bracelet and holding a child, traditionally interpreted as a mother and child, were an unrelated adult male and child. Similarly, a pair of individuals thought to be sisters, or mother and daughter, were found to include at least one genetic male. These findings challenge traditional gender and familial assumptions,” says team member David Reich of Harvard University.
The genetic data complicates simple narratives of kinship. At the House of the Golden Bracelet—the only site that yielded data from multiple individuals—the four persons commonly interpreted as parents and their two children are, in fact, not genetically related.
As a port, Pompeii is typically viewed as a city with a diverse and mobile population. The new evidence reveals the genomic backgrounds of its residents, providing a better understanding of their diversity and origins.
The inhabitants of the ill-fated town primarily descended from recent immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean because of the cosmopolitan nature of the Roman Empire, says the study that appeared in Current Biology. They toiled hard for a better life till that October day.