{"id":175542,"date":"2024-11-15T11:52:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T11:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/15\/in-pompeii-earthquakes-may-have-upped-the-death-toll\/"},"modified":"2024-11-15T11:52:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T11:52:15","slug":"in-pompeii-earthquakes-may-have-upped-the-death-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/15\/in-pompeii-earthquakes-may-have-upped-the-death-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"In Pompeii, earthquakes may have upped the death toll"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1030\" height=\"687\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/1030_pompeii_earthquakes_cast.jpg?resize=1030,687&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"In Pompeii, earthquakes may have upped the death toll\" title=\"In Pompeii, earthquakes may have upped the death toll\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 2,000 years ago, a huge volcano in southern Italy suddenly, explosively woke up. Ash and gas from the eruption killed at least 1,500 people in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. That event has gone down in history as one of the ancient world\u2019s deadliest natural disasters. Now, a new study suggests that it wasn\u2019t just erupting material that doomed Pompeii. Earthquakes\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/earth-science\/articles\/10.3389\/feart.2024.1386960\/full\" rel=\"noopener\">may have been another killer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers shared their findings July 17 in&nbsp;<em>Frontiers in Earth Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/explainer-volcano-basics\">Explainer: The volcano basics<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The volcano that savaged Pompeii and Herculaneum was Mount Vesuvius. It erupted in A.D. 79. Its thick clouds of superhot gas, ash and rock reached into the stratosphere. That choking, scalding mix quickly fell back to Earth, blanketing nearby cities.<\/p>\n<p>Adding to the destruction were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/analyze-can-you-outrun-these-geological-disasters\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"3863\">pyroclastic flows<\/a>. These were dense torrents of hot gas and rock that sped down the volcano\u2019s slopes toward the nearest cities.<\/p>\n<p>Past excavations of Pompeii revealed people fully encased in ash. Their bodies tell the tale of a swift, scalding end. In Herculaneum, people that sheltered in stone boathouses may have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/mount-vesuvius-suffocated-not-vaporized-some-victims\" rel=\"noopener\">survived the heat only to slowly suffocate<\/a>&nbsp;from toxic volcanic gases.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/analyze-can-you-outrun-these-geological-disasters\">Analyze This: Can you outrun these geological disasters?<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>But there\u2019s also historical evidence of an earthquake during the disaster.<\/p>\n<p>Roman author Pliny the Younger&nbsp;witnessed it&nbsp;from Misenum, across the Bay of Naples from the volcano. He later <a href=\"https:\/\/igppweb.ucsd.edu\/~gabi\/sio15\/lectures\/volcanoes\/pliny.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described the catastrophe in a series of letters<\/a>. In one, he wrote of \u201cearth tremors\u201d felt at Misenum. Apparently, they became \u201cso violent that everything felt as if it were being shaken and turned over.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/?p=201705\">Explainer: How volcanoes erupt<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The force of the eruption could have caused such strong, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/scientists-say-seismology-definition-pronunciation\">seismic<\/a> shocks, says Domenico Sparice. This volcanologist led the research. He works at Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. That\u2019s in Naples, Italy.<\/p>\n<p>If earthquakes did rattle Pompeii, they may have forced the city\u2019s people to make a deadly choice. Seek shelter from the eruption in buildings made unstable by quakes. Or flee outside into the scalding ash.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3146222\">After Pompeii\u2019s victims were entombed in ash, their bodies gradually decayed. This left voids in compacted ash in the shapes of their bodies. When excavators discovered these empty spaces in the 1800s, they poured plaster into the voids \u2014 creating molds of the exact poses Pompeii victims were in at death (one pictured).  <\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3146222\">by Andrea Pucci\/Moment\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Tale of two skeletons<\/h2>\n<p>Sparice and his colleagues wondered what role earthquakes might have played in Pompeii\u2019s death toll. So they turned to two newly excavated rooms in a Pompeiian house. It was in an area of town known as Insula of the Chaste Lovers.<\/p>\n<p>Walls here were decorated with unfinished paintings, called frescoes. Piles of mortar leaned against garden walls and rested on the kitchen counter. Vesuvius seemed to have interrupted the building\u2019s renovations.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"wp-block-sciencenews-inline-related-post alignleft\">\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/lets-learn-about-earthquakes\">Let\u2019s learn about earthquakes<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Remains of two men were found in the house near remnants of a crumbled wall. Both were around 50 years old when they died. Their skeletons showed multiple rib fractures. Their pelvic, arm and facial bones also had severe breaks. Those injuries hint that powerful forces crushed the men. One man was huddled on his left side, his left hand protecting his head.<\/p>\n<p>Together, the evidence suggests these men took shelter from the initial hot rain of gas and ash inside the house. They survived that deadly downpour, which lasted some 18 hours. But after the ashfall let up, the ground shook. A lot. Those earthquakes were strong enough to bring down the home\u2019s walls and crush the men.<\/p>\n<p>The collapse of the volcano\u2019s central crater could have triggered the killer quakes. That collapse also set off the volcano\u2019s final, deadliest phase. Pyroclastic currents of hot gas, ash and molten rock swept across the region.<\/p>\n<p>Pompeii was left buried beneath a 1.8-meter (6-foot) layer of debris.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A fuller picture of Pompeii\u2019s doomsday<\/h4>\n<p>The findings confirm \u201cwhat archaeologists have assumed was the reality,\u201d says Kevin Dicus. This archaeologist works at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He did not take part in the new study. Earthquakes were thought to be part of Pompeii\u2019s demise. That\u2019s partly due to Pliny the Younger\u2019s account. But Dicus appreciates the new physical evidence for this idea.<\/p>\n<p>The study also \u201cgives us a better picture of what the people at Pompeii went through on that day,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd why some people chose to stay and ride it out. It was clearly already a hellscape outside. The ash cloud turned day to night. Rock and ash were raining on them. Now we can add a violently trembling ground to the mix.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Findings like these revise the picture of who was trapped by the eruption, Dicus adds. Scientists once thought that it was mostly the old, ill or enslaved people who could not escape. In truth, it seems Pompeii\u2019s apocalypse claimed a wide range of victims.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">This animation, originally shown at the Melbourne Museum in Australia, reveals what Pompeii might have looked like on the day it was destroyed by a powerful volcanic eruption.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/pompeii-earthquakes-death-toll\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly 2,000 years ago, a huge volcano in southern Italy suddenly, explosively woke up. Ash and gas from the eruption killed at least 1,500 people in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. That event has gone down in history as one of the ancient world\u2019s deadliest natural disasters. Now, a new study suggests that it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/1030_pompeii_earthquakes_cast.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1860,14880,29450,11469,137252],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175544,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175542\/revisions\/175544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}