An ancient-DNA analysis of victims in Pompeii who died in Mount Vesuvius’ eruption reveals some unusual relations between the people who died together.
According to a new study, ancient DNA extracted from Pompeii victims of Mount Vesuvius’ eruption around 2,000 years ago shows that some people’s relationships were not what they first appeared to be.
For example, it was long believed that a mother was cradling her infant in her lap when an adult wearing a golden bracelet did so. The pair were actually “an unrelated adult male and child,” according to the latest DNA research, according to a statement from study co-author David Reich, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School.
Reich also cited the discovery of at least one genetic male in a couple believed to be sisters or mother and daughter who died in an embrace. These results cast doubt on conventional gender and familial presumptions.
Reich and a global team of academics examined the genetic makeup of five people who perished in the A.D. 79 eruption, which claimed the lives of almost 2,000 people in a study published Thursday (Nov. 7) in the journal Current Biology.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted, it buried individuals alive and preserved the outlines of countless bodies behind the calcified layers of volcanic ash, pumice, and pyroclastic flow that coated the surrounding area. Only in the 1700s were the city’s remnants rediscovered. Archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli refined his plastering technique in the next century, creating casts of the victims by filling in the human-shaped holes left by the decomposition of the bodies.
With the use of the casts, researchers were able to see the victims in their final moments and speculate about who they were based on information about their whereabouts, postures, and clothing. However, the issue with this method was that their interpretations were shaped by contemporary presumptions. For example, the researchers wrote in the study that the four individuals at the house wearing the golden bracelet, including the adult holding the child, were two parents and their children, even though none of them shared any genetic ancestry.
The group examined 14 castings for their study and retrieved DNA from five of them broken bone remains. The scientists identified the individuals’ sex, ancestry, and genetic ties by examining this genetic data. According to the statement, the researchers came to the conclusion that the victims had a “diverse genomic background,” mainly deriving from recent immigration from the eastern Mediterranean, thereby validating the multiethnic reality of the Roman Empire.
In a statement, study co-author Alissa Mittnik, an archaeogeneticist at Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said, “Our findings have significant implications for the interpretation of archaeological data and the understanding of ancient societies.” They stress how crucial it is to combine genetic data with historical and archeological data in order to prevent misunderstandings brought on by presumptions from the present.
The authors said in the study that it’s likely that previous misunderstandings resulted in the “exploitation of the casts as vehicles for storytelling,” which means that curators might have modified the victims’ “poses and relative positioning” for exhibits.
Carles Lalueza-Fox, a researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF) in Barcelona who focuses on studying ancient DNA but was not involved in the work, told Live Science via email that sex misassignment is “not uncommon” in archaeology.
For me, the discovery of a guy wearing a golden bracelet attempting to save an unrelated child is more fascinating and culturally complicated than presuming it was a mother and her child. Of course, we perceive the past through the cultural lenses of the present, and this perspective is occasionally skewed,” Lalueza-Fox stated.