What Really Happened at Pompeii on 24th August AD79?

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What Really Happened at Pompeii on 24th August AD79?

Introduction

On 24th August AD79, Mount Vesuvius, a large volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples, erupted. It is famous for the way that it destroyed the Roman town of Pompeii, and in doing so, preserved the agony of Pompeii's unfortunate inhabitants. This is shown above in this 17th century sketch showing the Vesuvius erupting. The fact that this sketch was drawn almost 2000 years after the eruption is typical of pictures and accounts of the eruption, as there is only one surviving first-hand account of the eruption, coming from Pliny the Younger, who was living with his uncle, Pliny the Elder, who was the admiral of the Roman Fleet at Misenum, a town at the North side of the Bay of Naples, the other side to Pompeii which was further south. Despite Pliny the Younger's first hand account of the eruption, there are many different theories as to what killed the people of Pompeii. Using various different sources, in this essay I aim to investigate what really destroyed Pompeii and killed the people of the town.

Monte Somma Mount Vesuvius

This picture shows the view of Mount Vesuvius from Naples. This is roughly the view that Pliny the Younger would have got when viewing the Vesuvius erupting. From the view in the picture above, Pompeii would be on the other side of the mountain. Monte Somma is the remnant of the Vesuvius before the eruption of the Vesuvius in AD79 and indicates that in AD79 most of the cone of the Vesuvius was blown away by the eruption. The Mount Vesuvius in the photograph is the new cone that has grown up over the years since AD79.

Main Essay

Until recently, scientists often ignored the evidence that was presented before them. The mystery of what happened to the people of Pompeii was often put down to the victims being trapped and killed by lava flow. However, this theory has now been disproved, after the 1944 eruption of the Vesuvius. This occurred during the Second World War, when the Vesuvius erupted, spewing out lava in the direction of the city of San Sebastiano. When it first spew from the mouth of a volcano lava, actual molten rock, is seeringly hot and very fluid, but by the time it has flowed down the mountain for a few miles it is cooler, more solid and moves at a snail's pace. It poses little real risk to life and death. In San Sebastiano people survived because although they couldn't halt the lava's progress, they could see it coming and get out of the way. Pompeii is 9 miles from the Vesuvius and lava from the volcano would probably have taken 6 days to get there. In fact, no lava has ever been found in the debris that covered that covered these people, a fact that many early scientists ignored. Also, I know that the people of Pompeii were not killed by slow moving lava, because of what was said in a paper published online by the National Archaeological Institute of America, which said that,

'At Herculaneum, which suffered in much the same way as Pompeii' by the volcano. By studying the bone fragments and the positions of the remains of 48 victims from the beach site, the anthropologists argue that they have established "beyond a doubt" that they died in a fraction of a second after being exposed to blast of 750-degree Fahrenheit heat.'
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If the people of Pompeii were not killed by a lava flow, then what did kill them? Could they have been buried or killed by the 'hail of pumice,' described by Pliny the Younger. This seems unlikely, as although Pumice stones can hurt they are light and porous. They could cause those who were unable to walk, being either too ill or old, to be buried, but could not be the cause of death for the vast majority of the people of Pompeii. Also, the Pompeii bodies were found on top of the 6ft of pumice rock and ...

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