In Their Final Moments, a Pompeii Family Fought to Survive

One day in 79, Pompeii was criticized. The explosion of the near Mount Vesubio sent a cloud of ashes and fungal rocks to the atmosphere, chamuscanding the old Roman trade center and resorts with a incessant hail of small volcanic rocks.

Many residents ran for their lives, trying to find security with their loved ones before crowding the volcanic debris buried the 1,500 estimated residents who remained in Pompeii.

In a study published last month in the magazine Scavi Di Pompei, scientists documented events in a house in the condemned city where a family sought refuge inside a rear room pushing a wooden bed against a door in a vain attempt to stop a lobed.

The small but headed residence is known as Helle and Phrixus’s house, after a richly decorated fresco in the dining room. It represents the mythological brothers Phrixus and Humle who escape from their evil stepmother in a winged ram only so that Helle falls and, sinisterly, drown in the sea below.

As with many old Roman residences, its atrium, an open robberies located centrally in the house, was used for ventilation and rainwater collection. But that day, the recess allowed the volcanic rock to exceed the space more quickly. Most of the poms “had no idea what was happening,” said Gabriel Sigh, author of the study and director of the Pompeya Archaeological Park. “Many thought the end of the world had arrived,” he added.

In the years that followed, the hot ash that was possible buried the solidified house and left an imprint that archaeologists filled with plaster to rebuild the shape of the wooden bed that remained. The technique helps illustrate the horror of Pompean’s dead in their final moments and how perishable everyday articles made of wood, textiles and leather were located in their environments.

The skeletal remains of four people, most likely members of the same family, were identified in the study. The Lapilli, which reached heights of up to nine feet in some places, could not be controlled, and the researchers believe that people made a final attempt to escape, leaving the small room in which they had closed the scams. They go only to Triclinium, the formal dining room where their remains were found.

“The family in the House of Hell and Phrixus probably died when the so -called pyroclassic flow, an avalanche of hot ashes and toxic gas, arrived and parts of the building collapsed,” said Dr. Sighing.

He and his colleagues suggest that the remains of the four people who are in the house were from a family that stayed and could have included some members adorned who worked at the residence. Even so, archaeologists do not know with certainty if they live there or simply refuge after the owners had already escaped.

“It is not certain that the individuals found in the house as victims were part of the family,” said Marcello Mogetta, associate professor of Roman art and Arhaeology at the University of Missouri who did not participate in the study.

Among the skeletal remains there was a bronze noise that belonged to a child. The ancient amulets were like strands around the neck of young free children to protect them from danger until they reached adult hood.

“The amulet was supposed to protect them, so there is a cruel iony in the fact that it was not so,” said Caition Barrett, a professor of archeology at Cornell University who did not participate in the study.

Bourbon explorers sent by Carlos III in the 18th century carried out rudimentary pompeya excavations that disturbed the skeletal remains of the victims found in the house of Helle and Phrixus. When they got together in the residence in search of value objects such as jewels and works of art, they left holes on the walls. These first excavators often had little interest in human remains, either with respect to their preservation, dignifying their deaths or studying their material culture.

But today is human toll what feels more prominent for archaeologists and for many of the visitors who regularly pour into Pompeii. Whether or not the remains belonged to those who were relatives, they will be something that researchers can try to discover through the DNA analysis in the near future.

Family or not, does not change the human tragedy of history.

“Whatever the nature of their specific relationships, they would have the bone of the last people to sacrifice comfort in the end,” said Dr. Barrett.