The precise date of the catastrophe of the eruption of Vesuvius which caused the disappearance of the city of Pompeii under a rain of lapillilapilli and killed part of its inhabitants with a fiery cloudfiery cloud in less than 17 minutes is not known with certainty, apart from the year 79 AD. Excavations continue not only at Pompeii, but also at the nearby city of Herculaneum and, regularly, new discoveries are made. Herculaneum is less famous than Pompeii, but it is better preserved and we found there, for example, the famous papyri from the library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, also called Piso.
Just as these papyri ended up revealing some of their secrets thanks to 21st century technologye century, the remains of the bodies found in Pompeii molded in the layers of ashes were also the subject of new discoveries with this technology, in this case that of the sequencing of DNA fragments, as shown by a publication in the journal Current Biology.
It presents the results of work carried out by an international team led by scientists from the Harvard Medical School in the United States, the University of Florence in Italy and the Max-InstitutPlanckPlanck of evolutionary anthropology in Germany.
A press release from the Harvard Medical School (HMS), which accompanies this publication, explains that this work concerns the analysis ofADNADN remains of five people who died during the eruption of the VesuviusVesuvius. The DNA fragments studied are part of those of 14 individuals taken during the restoration in 2015 of 86 of the famous casts of plasterplaster bodies of the victims. Remember that in the 1800s, casts were made by pouring plaster into the voids left by the decomposition of these bodies.
These voids and the skeletons they contained were preserved over millennia in layers deposited by a pyroclastic flowpyroclastic flowthat is to say a avalancheavalanche of rocks and ashes mixed with a gas at very high temperature (300 to 500 °C, hence the name also given as fiery cloud) moving at more than 100 km/h which engulfed Pompeii under 15 to 30 meters of ashes.
Men mistaken for women in Pompeii
Analyzes geneticsgenetics were very surprising, largely contradicting previous hypotheses based solely on the physical appearance and positioning of the casts, and they shook up the identifications and interpretations of the bodies found and subsequently cast in plaster. Some interpretations date back several decades and, as the press release explains, different discoveries have been made:
- an adult wearing a gold bracelet and a child on his lap, often interpreted as a mother and her son or daughter, turned out to be a biologically unrelated man and child;
- three of four presumed family members at one site were unrelated genetically;
- two individuals lying in a position often thought to be an embrace – previously assumed to be sisters, a mother and daughter, or lovers – include at least one man, which excludes two of the three common interpretations.
Clearly, archaeologists will therefore have to be wary of interpretations which seem obvious concerning the sex and kinship of the individuals found in the ashes of Pompeii and as explained by Alissa Mittnik, co-lead author of the study, former genetics researcher at HMS and today group leader at the Max Planck Institute: “ The results demonstrate the importance of integrating genetic analysis with archaeological and historical information to enrich or correct narratives constructed on the basis of limited evidence. »
« Instead of establishing new narratives that might also distort these people's experiences, the genetic findings encourage reflection on the dangers of inventing stories about gender and family relationships in past societies based on current expectations “, adds David Reich, professor of genetics at the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, also the co-senior author of the published paper.
Explanations of DNA-based discoveries at Pompeii. To obtain a fairly accurate French translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. English subtitles should then appear. Then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “Subtitles” and finally on “Automatically translate”. Choose “French”. © Discovery Future
A cosmopolitan Pompeian population from Greece
David Caramelli, from the department of anthropology at the University of Florence, is not to be outdone by his colleagues and in another press release, from the Max Planck Institute, he also explains: “ This research shows how genetic analysis can significantly enrich narratives constructed from archaeological data. The findings challenge long-held notions such as associating jewelry with femininity or interpreting physical proximity as evidence of familial relationships. »
What came as no surprise, however, was that genetic analyzes confirmed that the ancient Pompeians were largely descended from people who had immigrated from the eastern Mediterranean.
Indeed, for centuries, southern Italy had been colonized by several Greek cities to the point that it was called Greater Greece, the Great Greece by the Romans. This was particularly the case of Elea, founded around 535 BC. BC by the Greeks of Phocaea, an ancient Greek city in Ionia on the coast of Aegean SeaAegean Seain the Gulf of Smyrna (today Izmir, Turkey).
Elea is the birthplace of the famous Greek school of philosophy known as the Eleatics, whose best-known members are Zeno of Elea and Parmenides.
Even closer to Naples because 12 kilometers to the west and before Elea, there was Cumae founded in the 8the century BC BC, by the Greeks of the island of Euboea and made it the first real Greek colony of the Great Greece. Cumae would then found Palaiopolis (the ancient city) which, around 500 BCE, with new settlers would become Neapolis (new city), better known today as Naples.
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