It had all started when an active volcano Mt Vesuvius (pictured) erupted catastrophically in Italy, nearby 5 cities, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, of the then Roman Empire Province on 24th Oct79AD.
The volcano itself (Mt Vesuvius) is a stratovolcano which has been built up of multiple layers of lava and ash. This creates it to be steep and tall, therefore has higher viscosity levels and tends to be more explosive.
Archaeologists have found the oldest age of rock is aproximately from ~25,000 years ago and the eruption has lasted two days, it hid the sun, caused tsunamis through the Tyrrhenian Sea and burried alive these 2 cities.
In this date the Romans were having an important celebration of the God of Fire, until it was interrupted by this event. At that time the region has also been experiencing quite frequent tremors/earthquakes but they were minor and their technology wasn’t advanced to predict this massive eruption, therefore it came as unknown and shocking to the citizens of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Ashes, pumice, even flames rocketed into the sky of the powerful darkness that took over on those days. People were scared for their own lives and their loved ones, some bodies were found praying for an easier and quicker death due to the horror they came across.
Many people were not able to run away fast enough to survive and unfortunately have lost their lives either from collapsing buildings or harmful being gases in the atmosphere. After the two day period it had killed thousands in the city of Pompeii which many corpses still remain unknown to this day. Between 15,000/20,000 people lived altogether in Pompeii and Herculaneum, however other articles support that the majority of them seemed to have survived this eruption. Many of the foreigners, migrants or slaves could not have been recorded with their family names at that period of time, which makes it harder now to track numbers of people exactly or make accurate estimations of the deceased. Multiple studies suggest that suffocation from the ash wasnt the only reason for a large amount of these victims.
In Herculaneum once they realised that this was something they never came across hundreds of citizens tried to escape with boats into the nearest port. After this had ended, both of the cities much of their proportion was covered into ash and since then to this day have not been reoccupied. Althought now 6m people live around Mt Vesuvius in the bay of Naples and the issue is that most of them dont even have evacuation plans in case this disaster returns after so many years.
The reason why they choose to live there now is because the soil is very fertile and rich in minerals, which allows farming, that can increase the economy with exporting products made in the area.
Another eruption had occured in 1944 with the same Volcano in the area but it wasnt as severe as in 79AD.
In conclusion this event has caused these two cities to be removed permanently from humans living there anymore, but not in nearby cities. Many corpses remain unknown and those that were found, appeared to be well-preserved similar to being “mummified” for over 2,000 years. The excesive heat temperature in the ash & pyroclastic flow had caused the skin/flesh to evaporate faster leaving behind only the shape and the bones.
Article/Tabloid By Margarita Xenitopoulou
Pompeii Volcanic Catastrophe 