Why is there only one firsthand account of the Vesuvius eruption? How is it possible the Romans had such well-cared-for teeth? After nearly two thousand years, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about the Pompeii eruption.
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00:00Why is there only one first-hand account of the Vesuvius eruption? How is it possible
00:04the Romans had such well-cared-for teeth? And what's the deal with the giants? After
00:09nearly 2,000 years, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about the Pompeii
00:13eruption.
00:14The inhabitants of Pompeii and nearby settlements like Herculaneum almost certainly had warnings
00:20that something was going on with their local volcano. Now, obviously, the ancient Romans
00:24neither had advanced seismological equipment nor our modern understanding of how volcanoes
00:28like Vesuvius work — namely, that it erupts periodically and that eruptions probably will
00:33be preceded by increased activity like earthquakes. But contemporary accounts make it clear that
00:38people noticed changes in the mountain.
00:40Writing more than a century later, Cassius Dio wrote that locals had reportedly seen
00:44giants on the mountain, followed by earthquakes and loud rumbling from the ground. These giants
00:49may have actually been plumes of gas emitted from the mountain. When you think about it,
00:53they kind of hit the bill of boisterous, destructive creatures in the Roman imagination. Or it
00:58was just really giants.
01:00It's not obvious how everyday Pompeians reacted to these signs. Clearly, they elicited some
01:04amount of fear, but there's good evidence that buildings, and even water pipes, in Pompeii
01:09and the surrounding area had been or were in the process of being repaired at the time
01:13of the eruptions. The damage may well have been the result of recurrent earthquakes,
01:17like a fairly large and destructive one that struck the area in 62 AD, which was 17 years
01:22before the big one in 79 AD.
01:25While some people had already left Pompeii as a result of what were probably increasing
01:28geological disturbances, there were others that weren't about to leave the lucrative
01:33environment of the bustling city.
01:36I'm not leaving.
01:39That ended up being a poor choice.
01:42The fateful day of the eruption was long believed to be August 24, 79 AD. We say believed because
01:48we're going by the accounts of ancient writers who related stories of the disaster. Namely,
01:53they were going by what Pliny the Younger offers up in the only eyewitness account of
01:56the eruption. He wrote his account in two letters to Roman emperor and historian Tacitus.
02:02But Pliny's account, which includes the dramatic evacuation attempt undertaken by his uncle
02:06Pliny the Elder, may not be fully accurate. While Pliny the Younger observed the eruption
02:10from a much safer vantage point across a bay of water, he may have been so overcome that
02:14he got the dates wrong. Or, given that it was written about two decades after the events
02:18of the disaster, Pliny may have simply misremembered.
02:22Centuries later, among the ruins of Pompeii's surprising graffiti, archaeologists found
02:26one inscription written on a wall in charcoal. It includes a date that, according to our
02:30modern calendar system, puts the inscription in mid-October. Given how easily the charcoal
02:35would have come off the wall, chances are that it was set down shortly before the eruption
02:39buried it in ash and other debris.
02:42There was a lot of graffiti in Pompeii. Like, a lot. But post-dating graffiti isn't really
02:46a thing. This revelation cinched long-held suspicions by archaeologists who have studied
02:51the site, given how other excavators found evidence of heating systems in use and the
02:55consumption of harvested fruits that didn't jive with a summer date. In his defense, Pliny
03:00the Younger earned his nickname. He was around 17 when Vesuvius erupted, and his letters
03:04recounting the incident were written 25 years later.
03:08There's one obvious question hanging over the proceedings. Why didn't people escape
03:12by water? It was a seaside resort on the Bay of Naples, and not only was open water right
03:17there while a fiery volcano rained down ash and other debris, but there were also docks
03:21and ships that could get people out of town. So why have archaeologists uncovered human
03:25remains in the shoreside boathouses of nearby Herculaneum?
03:30The skeletons still lie exactly where they fell 2,000 years ago.
03:35The explanation may have had something to do with the weather. For starters, waters
03:38in the bay were normally rough, and with ground-trembling earthquakes, it's not like they would have
03:43been less choppy. Then, there were the winds. Pliny the Younger wrote in his account that
03:47winds blowing inland kept some boats from leaving, though he added,
03:51"...this wind, of course, was fully in my uncle's favor and quickly brought his boat
03:54to Stabia."
03:56Pliny the Elder did make it out of the initial destruction, but according to the Younger's
03:59account, he died after inhaling volcanic fumes in his own attempt to rescue those trapped
04:03on land.
04:05It's possible that some waterways would have been eventually choked and crushed by falling
04:08pumice, ash, and other debris. Throw in the fact that 2,000 years ago, not everyone knew
04:13how to swim. Would you rather drown escaping the volcano or ride it out and hope the flying
04:17rocks miss you? Water wasn't that safe of a bet.
04:21For such a dramatically destructive event that killed thousands and buried multiple
04:25cities beneath feet of ash and pumice, it's odd we don't know how large the eruption of
04:29Vesuvius actually was. Today, one common measure of a volcano's power is its Volcanic Explosivity
04:35Index, or VEI. A relatively gentle, effusive eruption with low-viscosity lava and little
04:41pressure, just like something from Hawaii's Kilauea, gets a VEI of zero. The infamous
04:461980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which blew about a third of the mountain off, gets a
04:50five.
04:51"...residents of towns near the mountain, of course, were considerably shaken."
04:56The Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program guesses that Vesuvius gets a tentative
05:01VEI of 5. Though the exact scale of the eruption isn't easy to pin down, there's little doubt
05:06that it was enormous. Pliny the Younger's account indicates that Vesuvius was actively
05:10erupting for more than 18 hours and created a tremendous mushroom cloud that ballooned
05:15above the landscape for miles. To be more precise, he likened it to the shape of an
05:19umbrella pine.
05:20To put it in perspective, Mount St. Helens is the largest eruption in U.S. history, so
05:25Vesuvius was at least as powerful as that one.
05:28When modern archaeologists uncovered victims of the disaster, they found that the ancient
05:32people of the city had unusually good teeth for the time. If it weren't for the falling
05:36debris, pyroclastic flows, and smothering ash, they would have been pretty darn lucky.
05:41If you're wondering why, one reason is likely because the Pompeians ate a low-sugar diet.
05:45Less sugar equals less rotting teeth. They also, ironically, had Vesuvius to thank.
05:51The geological system that produced the volcano appeared to have introduced fluorine into
05:55the local water system. Somewhat like fluoridated water today, it could have helped stave off
05:59tooth decay by strengthening tooth enamel. But there's a dark side to all that fluorine.
06:04According to a 2011 paper published in Plus One, the ancient residents of the area around
06:08Pompeii appear to have at least occasionally suffered from skeletofluorosis. That's the
06:13result of getting too much fluoride as a youth and causes joint pain and leads to more bone
06:17breaks. Pretty teeth isn't exactly a fair tradeoff for not being able to run away from
06:21lava because of joint pain.
06:24In Strabo's Geography, written about five decades before the eruption that destroyed
06:27Pompeii, the ancient geographer describes the barren, burned summit of Vesuvius that
06:32loomed above rich fields below. Meanwhile, Diodorus Siculus wrote that Vesuvius still
06:36showed the marks of a great, fiery past. Supposedly, it was also witness to a long-ago battle between
06:42the hero Heracles and a group of massive, boisterous giants. Giants again. You know,
06:47maybe we shouldn't have just poo-pooed those giants stories from earlier. Just saying.
06:51Anyway, it's not clear just how much people understood the possibility that it could erupt
06:55again. After all, they were the busy cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the
07:00surrounding rich farmlands, all filled with people who didn't seem that worried about
07:03the local mountain. Well, outside the giants that obviously lived there.
07:08People barely mention the volcano in writings around the time, and so far only one fresco
07:11uncovered in Pompeii appears to depict Vesuvius, which shows a more complete peak, not like
07:16how it looks today, all blown apart in the eruption. Their misunderstanding meant they
07:20regarded Vesuvius as an innocuous part of the landscape, albeit loaded with giants instead
07:26of a disaster waiting to happen.
07:28It's clear that some people were able to escape Pompeii before destruction obliterated the
07:32city. Most estimates account for around 13,000 survivors from a pre-eruption population of
07:3715,000, given that about 2,000 sets of remains have been found by modern archaeologists in
07:42the ruins of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum. Still, with population numbers not exactly
07:47accurate — after all, the disaster happened nearly two millennia ago — that number remains
07:52a pretty broad estimate.
07:53The more tricky thing, however, is figuring out exactly where those survivors went and
07:58what they did after the eruption. In the aftermath, it appears that nearby settlements that were
08:02relatively unaffected, such as Naples and Ostia, began to expand. It stands to reason
08:07that at least some of the survivors traveled to the closest stable area and put down stakes
08:11there. Inconsistencies in family names and addresses make it hard for researchers to
08:16tease out specifics.
08:17The most recent effort, undertaken by classics professor Stephen L. Tuck, which compares
08:21Roman inscriptions with unique names associated with the Pompeii region, found more than 200
08:26likely survivors. It's a start, but where are the other almost 13,000 survivors? Is
08:32that 13,000 number highly inflated?
08:36Beside the first-hand account written by Pliny the Younger, no others seem to exist. What
08:40gives?
08:42That does not make sense!
08:44Scholars estimate the literacy rate of ancient Rome was 15 percent, though that number could
08:48vary depending on when and where you were. Given the well-appointed villas excavated
08:52by modern archaeologists, it's obvious that at least some elites lived in Pompeii.
08:57It stands to reason that a number of those upper-class people would have known how to
09:00read and write. If even one or two of that group managed to escape, then they surely
09:04could have found a pen and paper to scribble down what happened. Yet, at least for now,
09:08we only have Pliny's account of what he saw from across the Bay of Naples, written 20-plus
09:12years after the eruption.
09:14Perhaps there is another account hidden somewhere else, or a Pompeian refugee did write their
09:18recollections down, all lost to time on crumbling fragments of papyrus. Or maybe, just maybe,
09:24it's in the Bible.
09:25This is a serious longshot, but biblical scholar James Tabor suggested the Book of Revelation's
09:30terrifying apocalyptic imagery may include a coded account of the eruption. He contends
09:35that the fall of Babylon described in the text is potentially a description of how the
09:38port city of Pompeii was consumed by volcanic destruction as its inhabitants faced God's
09:43divine wrath. That's a bit of a stretch. A giant stretch.
09:48In the long aftermath of the disaster of Pompeii, it's become somewhat fashionable to blame
09:52the dead for their own fate. Why are all these people living near a giant, infested volcano?
09:57If only they had been smarter and wiser, they would have sensibly left the city early and
10:01abandoned their heavy valuables. And that is arguably the most confusing thing about
10:05many modern descriptions of Pompeii's destruction, which makes it seem as if people just sat
10:10there in their homes, guarding their property and waiting for the eruption to end.
10:14But in one house, the remains of a heavily pregnant person and 11 others were found,
10:18hinting that a young woman close to giving birth could not simply run away and that members
10:21of her family stayed to support her. The bones of another man, who appears to have died in
10:25the superheated pyroclastic flow that came barreling down the slopes of Vesuvius, showed
10:30a limb disability that would have made it difficult for him to walk. It was probably
10:33due to all that fluoride.
10:36Simply put, it's no one's fault. It was a volcano. All the modern blame-gaming can't
10:40make sense of what happened 2,000 years ago.