| Transcript | ||
| · | Why ignore the warning signs? | |
| 0:00 | · | Why is there only one firsthand account of the Vesuvius eruption? How is it possible the Romans |
| 0:05 | · | had such well-cared-for teeth? And what's the deal with the Giants? After nearly two thousand years, |
| 0:10 | · | there are still plenty of unanswered questions about the Pompeii eruption. |
| 0:15 | · | The inhabitants of Pompeii and nearby settlements like Herculaneum almost |
| 0:18 | · | certainly had warnings that something was going on with their local volcano. |
| 0:22 | · | Now obviously the ancient Romans neither had advanced seismological equipment nor our modern |
| 0:27 | · | understanding of how volcanoes like Vesuvius work — namely, that it erupts periodically |
| 0:31 | · | and that eruptions probably will be preceded by increased activity like earthquakes. But |
| 0:36 | · | contemporary accounts make it clear that people noticed changes in the mountain. |
| 0:40 | · | Writing more than a century later, Cassius Dio wrote that locals had |
| 0:43 | · | reportedly seen giants on the mountain, followed by earthquakes and loud rumbling |
| 0:47 | · | from the ground. These "giants" may have actually been plumes of gas emitted from |
| 0:51 | · | the mountain. When you think about it, they kinda fit the bill of boisterous, |
| 0:54 | · | destructive creatures in the Roman imagination. Or it was just really giants... |
| 0:59 | · | It's not obvious how everyday Pompeians reacted to these signs. Clearly, |
| 1:03 | · | they elicited some amount of fear, but there's good evidence that buildings — and even water |
| 1:08 | · | pipes — in Pompeii and the surrounding area had been or were in the process of being repaired at |
| 1:12 | · | the time of the eruptions. The damage may well have been the result of recurrent earthquakes, |
| 1:17 | · | like a fairly large and destructive one that struck the area in 62 A.D. - which |
| 1:21 | · | was 17 years before the big one in 79 A.D.. While some people had already left Pompeii |
| 1:26 | · | as a result of what were probably increasing geological disturbances, |
| 1:29 | · | there were others that weren't about to leave the lucrative environment of the bustling city. |
| 1:36 | · | "I'm not leaving...I'm not leaving." |
| 1:39 | · | That ended up being a poor choice. |
| · | A foggy timeline | |
| 1:42 | · | The fateful day of the eruption was long believed to be August 24, 79 A.D., We say "believed" |
| 1:48 | · | because we're going by the accounts of ancient writers who related stories of the disaster. |
| 1:52 | · | Namely, they were going by what Pliny the Younger offers up in the only eyewitness account of the |
| 1:56 | · | eruption. He wrote his account in two letters to Roman emperor and historian Tacitus. |
| 2:01 | · | But Pliny's account, which includes the dramatic evacuation attempt undertaken by his uncle Pliny |
| 2:06 | · | the Elder, may not be fully accurate. While Pliny the Younger observed the eruption from |
| 2:10 | · | a much safer vantage point across a bay of water, he may have been so overcome that he got the dates |
| 2:15 | · | wrong. Or, given that it was written about two decades after the events of the disaster, Pliny |
| 2:20 | · | may have simply misremembered. Centuries later, among the ruins of Pompeii's surprising graffiti, |
| 2:25 | · | archaeologists found one inscription written on a wall in charcoal. It includes a date that, |
| 2:30 | · | according to our modern calendar system, puts the inscription in mid-October. Given |
| 2:34 | · | how easily the charcoal would have come off the wall, chances are that it was set |
| 2:38 | · | down shortly before the eruption buried it in ash and other debris. There was a |
| 2:42 | · | lot of graffiti in Pompeii, like a lot! But post-dating graffiti isn't really a thing, |
| 2:47 | · | This revelation cinched long-held suspicions by archaeologists who have studied the site, |
| 2:51 | · | given how other excavators found evidence of heating systems in use |
| 2:55 | · | and the consumption of harvested fruits that didn't jive with a summer date. In |
| 2:59 | · | his defense Pliny the Younger earned his nickname - he was around 17 when Vesuvius |
| 3:03 | · | erupted and his letters recounting the incident were written 25 years later. |
| · | Why didn't a water evacuation work? | |
| 3:08 | · | There's one obvious question hanging over the proceedings: |
| 3:10 | · | why didn't people escape by water? It was a seaside resort on the Bay of Naples, |
| 3:15 | · | and not only was open water right there while a fiery volcano rained down ash and other debris, |
| 3:20 | · | but there were also docks and ships that could get people out of town. So, |
| 3:24 | · | why have archaeologists uncovered human remains in the shoreside boat houses of nearby Herculaneum? |
| 3:29 | · | "The skeletons still lie exactly where they fell two thousand years ago..." |
| 3:35 | · | The explanation may have had something to do with the weather. For starters, |
| 3:38 | · | waters in the bay were normally rough – and with ground-trembling earthquakes, |
| 3:42 | · | it's not like they would've been less choppy. Then, there were the winds. Pliny the Younger |
| 3:46 | · | wrote in his account that winds blowing inland kept some boats from leaving, though he added: |
| 3:51 | · | "This wind, of course, was fully in my uncle's favor and quickly brought his boat to Stabiae." |
| 3:55 | · | Pliny the Elder did make it out from the initial destruction, but according to the Younger's |
| 3:59 | · | account, he died after inhaling volcanic fumes in his own attempt to rescue those trapped on land. |
| 4:04 | · | It's possible that some waterways would have been eventually choked and crushed by falling pumice, |
| 4:09 | · | ash, and other debris. Throw in the fact that 2000 years ago not everyone knew how to swim, |
| 4:14 | · | would you rather drown escaping the volcano or ride it out and |
| 4:17 | · | hope the flying rocks miss you? Water wasn't that safe of a bet. |
| · | How big was the eruption? | |
| 4:21 | · | For such a dramatically destructive event that |
| 4:23 | · | killed thousands and buried multiple cities beneath feet of ash and pumice, |
| 4:27 | · | it's odd we don't know how large the eruption of Vesuvius actually was. |
| 4:31 | · | Today, one common measure of a volcano's power is its volcanic explosivity index, |
| 4:35 | · | or VEI. A relatively gentle effusive eruption with low-viscosity lava and little pressure, |
| 4:41 | · | just like something from Hawaii's Kilauea , gets a VEI of 0. The infamous 1980 eruption |
| 4:46 | · | of Mount St. Helens, which blew about a third of the mountain off, gets a 5. |
| 4:50 | · | "Residents of towns near the mountain, of course, were considerably shaken..." |
| 4:56 | · | The Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program guesses that Vesuvius gets a tentative |
| 5:00 | · | VEI of 5. Though the exact scale of the eruption isn't easy to pin down, |
| 5:05 | · | there's little doubt that it was enormous. Pliny the Younger's account indicates that Vesuvius |
| 5:10 | · | was actively erupting for more than 18 hours and created a tremendous mushroom cloud that ballooned |
| 5:15 | · | above the landscape for miles. To be more precise, he likened it to the shape of an umbrella pine. |
| 5:20 | · | To put it in perspective, Mount St. Helens is the largest eruption in |
| 5:24 | · | US history – so Vesuvius was at least as powerful as that one. |
| · | What's with the nice teeth? | |
| 5:28 | · | When modern archaeologists uncovered victims of the disaster, |
| 5:31 | · | they found that the ancient people of the city had unusually good teeth for the time. |
| 5:35 | · | If it weren't for the falling debris, pyroclastic flows, and smothering ash, |
| 5:39 | · | they would have been pretty darn lucky. If you're wondering why, one reason is |
| 5:42 | · | likely because the Pompeians ate a low-sugar diet, – less sugar equals less rotting teeth. |
| 5:48 | · | They also – ironically – had Vesuvius to thank. The geological system that produced the volcano |
| 5:53 | · | appears to have introduced fluorine into the local water system. Somewhat like fluoridated |
| 5:57 | · | water today, it could have helped stave off tooth decay by strengthening tooth enamel. But, |
| 6:01 | · | there's a dark side to all that fluorine. According to a 2011 paper published in PLoS One, |
| 6:07 | · | the ancient residents of the area around Pompeii appear to have at least occasionally suffered |
| 6:11 | · | from skeletal fluorosis. That's the result of getting too much fluoride as a youth, |
| 6:15 | · | and causes joint pain and leads to more bone breaks. Pretty teeth isn't exactly |
| 6:19 | · | a fair trade-off for not being able to run away from lava because of joint pain. |
| · | Did they not understand volcanoes? | |
| 6:24 | · | In Strabo's Geography — written about five decades before the eruption that destroyed Pompeii — the |
| 6:28 | · | ancient geographer describes the barren, burned summit of Vesuvius that loomed above rich fields |
| 6:33 | · | below. Meanwhile, Diodorus Siculus wrote that Vesuvius still showed the marks of a great, |
| 6:38 | · | fiery past. Supposedly, it was also witness to a long-ago battle between |
| 6:42 | · | the hero Heracles and a group of massive, boisterous giants. Giants again... you know, |
| 6:47 | · | maybe we shouldn't have just "poo-poo'ed" those giant stories from earlier. Just Sayin'... |
| 6:51 | · | Anyway, it's not clear just how much people understood the possibility that it could erupt |
| 6:55 | · | again. After all, there were the busy cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the |
| 7:00 | · | surrounding rich farmlands, all filled with people who didn't seem that worried about the |
| 7:03 | · | local mountain – well, outside the giants that obviously lived there. People barely mention the |
| 7:08 | · | volcano in writings around the time, and so far only one fresco uncovered in Pompeii appears to |
| 7:13 | · | depict Vesuvius — which shows a more complete peak – not like how it looks today, all blown |
| 7:18 | · | apart in the eruption. Their misunderstanding meant they regarded Vesuvius as an innocuous part |
| 7:23 | · | of the landscape – albeit loaded with giants – instead of a disaster waiting to happen. |
| · | What about the refugees? | |
| 7:28 | · | It's clear that some people were able to escape Pompeii before destruction obliterated the city. |
| 7:33 | · | Most estimates account for around 13,000 survivors from a pre-eruption population of 15,000, given |
| 7:38 | · | that about 2,000 sets of remains have been found by modern archaeologists in the ruins of Pompeii |
| 7:43 | · | and nearby Herculaneum. Still, with population numbers not exactly accurate — after all, |
| 7:48 | · | the disaster happened nearly two millennia ago — that number remains a pretty broad estimate. |
| 7:53 | · | The more tricky thing, however, is figuring out exactly where those survivors went and what they |
| 7:58 | · | did after the eruption. In the aftermath, it appears that nearby settlements that |
| 8:02 | · | were relatively unaffected, such as Naples and Ostia, began to expand. It stands to reason that |
| 8:07 | · | at least some of the survivors traveled to the closest stable area and put down stakes there. |
| 8:12 | · | Inconsistencies in family names and addresses make it hard for researchers |
| 8:16 | · | to tease out specifics. The most recent effort undertaken by classics professor Steven L. Tuck, |
| 8:21 | · | which compares Roman inscriptions with unique names associated with the Pompeii region, |
| 8:25 | · | found more than 200 likely survivors. It's a start, but where are the other |
| 8:30 | · | almost 13,000 survivors? Is that 13,000 number highly inflated? |
| · | Where are other firsthand accounts? | |
| 8:36 | · | Besides the firsthand account written by Pliny the Younger, no others seem to exist. What gives? |
| 8:41 | · | "That does not make sense." |
| 8:43 | · | Scholars estimate the literacy rate of ancient Rome was 15%, |
| 8:47 | · | though that number could vary depending on when and where you were. Given the well-appointed |
| 8:51 | · | villas excavated by modern archaeologists, it's obvious that at least some elites lived |
| 8:55 | · | in Pompeii. It stands to reason that a number of those upper-class people |
| 8:59 | · | would have known to read and write. If even one or two of that group managed to escape, |
| 9:03 | · | then they surely could have found a pen and paper to scribble down what happened. |
| 9:07 | · | Yet, at least for now, we only have Pliny's account of what he saw from |
| 9:10 | · | across the Bay of Naples, written 20 plus years after the eruption. Perhaps there is |
| 9:14 | · | another account hidden somewhere else or a Pompeian refugee did write their |
| 9:18 | · | recollections down, all lost to time on crumbling fragments of papyrus. |
| 9:22 | · | Or maybe, just maybe, it's in the Bible. This is a serious long shot, but biblical scholar James |
| 9:27 | · | Tabor suggests that the Book of Revelation's terrifying apocalyptic imagery may include a |
| 9:32 | · | coded account of the eruption. He contends that the fall of Babylon described in the text is |
| 9:37 | · | potentially a description of how the port city of Pompeii was consumed by volcanic destruction |
| 9:41 | · | as its inhabitants faced God's divine wrath. That's a bit of a stretch – a giant stretch. |
| 9:48 | · | In the long aftermath of the disaster of Pompeii, it's become somewhat fashionable |
| · | Why blame the inhabitants? | |
| 9:51 | · | to blame the dead for their own fate. Why are all these people living near a giant-infested |
| 9:56 | · | volcano? If only they had been smarter and wiser, they would have sensibly left the |
| 10:00 | · | city early and abandoned their heavy valuables. And that is arguably the most confusing thing |
| 10:05 | · | about many modern descriptions of Pompeii's destruction, which make it seem as if people |
| 10:09 | · | just sat there in their homes, guarding their property and waiting for the eruption to end. |
| 10:13 | · | But in one house, the remains of a heavily pregnant person and 11 others were found, |
| 10:17 | · | hinting that a young woman close to giving birth could not simply run away and that members of her |
| 10:21 | · | family stayed to support her. The bones of another man — who appears to have died in the superheated |
| 10:26 | · | pyroclastic flow that came barreling down the slopes of Vesuvius — showed a limb disability |
| 10:30 | · | that would have made it difficult for him to walk – it was probably due to all that floride. |
| 10:35 | · | All the modern blame-gaming can't make sense of what happened 2000 years ago. |
Things That Don't Make Sense About The Disaster Of Pompeii [10:47]
By Free Republic | Created at 2024-09-25 16:24:59 | Updated at 2024-09-30 23:39:09
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