I recently watched Pompeii New revelations on channel 5, this documentary covers what happened after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and how it affected the people in surrounding areas and how they rebuilt their lives.
It was explained in the documentary that Pompeii was looted several times throughout history, people dug deep into the volcanic ash to find any treasure beneath. This started happening very soon after the eruption and many times since. Dan snow also explained how people are still digging down and stealing artefacts from the site. Including a local who built a tunnel down under his modern house to find treasure that lay beneath. We may never know what was taken from the site or how it may have given us an insight to the daily life of the person who once called that villa home.
Its scary to think how the people there that day must have felt when the volcano erupted, how they must have tried to flee for their lives. With the ash and pumice raining down around them, they never stood a chance! Even after the initial eruption, many pyroclastic clouds came hurting down the volcano onto the ground below.
Bodies were discovered in the boat houses on the beach at Herculaneum, they had been killed within seconds when the 6th pyroclastic cloud came down Mount Vesuvius. The sheer heat of the material would have killed the people instantly, with the temperature being around 700 degrees centigrade. The bodies were all huddled together, maybe for support or to try and protect each other from what was about to come.
Pompeii is such a special place, frozen in time by the ash and pumice. A snapshot in time, it shows us how people were going about their everyday lives, showing us what a typical Roman town looked like, with temples, bath houses, villas and many food places. In many ways, they were just like us, having social places to meet, going out for food and working to be able to feed the family and keep a roof over their heads.
Many believe that the people didn’t realise they were living so close to a volcano, if they had know, would it have changed their fate? Or was it just a ticking time bomb? We may never know, maybe some new evidence will come to light that may explain why people chose to live so close to Mount Vesuvius.
