DNA study reveals people united in final embraces didn’t know each other

Par Elena Dusi (La Repubblica)

In Pompeii, everything has to be rewritten. The person found with a large gold bracelet on his wrist and a child in his arms, for example, is not, contrary to what the traditional interpretation says, a mother fleeing with her child. The two other individuals curled up next to them are not father and brother. And the two bodies entwined in the cryptoporticus house do not belong to two sisters, despite what we have always thought.

Analysis of DNA extracted from the bones of fourteen casts from Pompeii reveals that in those moments of terror in AD 79, when Vesuvius was spewing ash and lapilli, earthquakes shook the city and as the winds whipped it with burning gases, the interpretations around the presumed kinship ties were also consumed.

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Pompeii, a special year

The individual with the gold bracelet and the child in his arms are both male and unrelated. Those who…