Transcription
In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy erupted, shooting over 100 million tons of scalding ash and rocks 20 miles into the atmosphere. The most famous eruption in human history. The scale of the eruption is almost impossible to get your head round. The explosion buried the gorgeous ancient towns Pompeii and Herculaneum under a blanket of ash up to 24m thick. But its volcanic debris also preserved these amazing towns and the remains of many of the people trapped inside them.
Now, with access to the very latest discoveries and technology, it's time to explore the evidence of their lives, to try to understand their world from their point of view, even to give them back their voices.
The Admiral gave orders for the warships to be launched and came on board himself with the intention of bringing help, steering straight to the danger. I'll be exploring the ancient landscape for clues and using the latest scientific revelations to uncover how these people lived 2,000 years ago. This is actually a fragment of material from Pompeii. It's all being handmade. And the shocking truth of their deaths. This is his femur of his leg, and most of his body material has vaporized. With the help of these new discoveries, I'm going to explore the stories of five people who lost their lives: a young boy trapped inside a villa, a soldier strangely found on the beach, an overworked slave, a young woman with a secret, and a man mysteriously cowering in his room when the devastation hit. Thanks to new geological discoveries, we can track the eruption blow by blow to see how these people's lives were snatched from them.
79 AD. For four days in Autumn, the region around Vesuvius has been hit by increasing earth tremors. No one realized that this was a warning that an eruption was imminent. Among them, a 20-year-old woman living in the town of Herculaneum. Forensic analysis has revealed amazing details of her life. Can you tell how she chose to dress her hair that morning? Yes, we can see this melted iron hair comb. It has preserved traces of her hair, plaited as was fashionable for higher-class Roman women. But even so, she had a terrible case of nits. So she's scratching there because it's sort of driving her mad. Yes, exactly. But there's something else. In just a month's time, she was expecting her first child. This is the female 6cm lung, corresponding to a fetus of about 8 months. So she could have given birth very, very soon. Yes, one month. She would never know that she was carrying a baby girl.
The disruption of the earthquakes must have been a huge problem for these bustling market towns, whose economy depended on trade. But on a normal day, our young pregnant woman might have chosen to prepare for the impending arrival of her newborn, which could have involved a lot of shopping. And Herculaneum was certainly rammed with shops. There was everything available from perfume and ironmongery to all kinds of Mediterranean delicacies. These are streets that a young pregnant woman would have known really well. A wine merchant's advertising has survived across 2,000 years. The town looks pretty neat and tidy now, but there is a real problem with littering and rubbish being left on these streets. And we know that because of an inscription here: "See, if anyone wants to throw away dung in this place, is warned that it is not permitted to throw it. If anyone provides intelligence about this, free men are made to pay a fine, and slaves are to be punished by being beaten on their backsides." It's just a hint of how frenetic this place was. So imagine these streets absolutely buzzing, packed with people and produce, a bit more like this downtown street in Naples. So I am channeling my inner ancient Roman and going in search of some of the supplies they recommended for pregnancy.
There was plenty of Roman medical advice around that our pregnant woman might have been aware of. Some of it sensible, some of it pretty out there. For morning sickness, "Oh my goodness, I needed help with that. A day's fast was recommended, followed by a rub down with olive oil, which sounds lovely, and then very easily digestible food, so boiled eggs and a kind of porridge and water with no wine allowed." Ciao, ciao. If she'd hoped for a boy baby, then she might follow the advice of Pliny the Elder himself. "Twee-t." "I to stick." Clearly, a bit less cool for them these days. Okay, no problem. Thank you, Jay. Bye. We know that our pregnant woman was going to have a daughter, so maybe cock's testicles weren't on her list. At 8 months pregnant, in preparation for the birth, you could order up little strips of wool to cover your female parts, sea sponges to dampen your faces to wipe up any mess, or swaddling bandages for babies. And then on the day of the birth itself, there was this advice for inflammations of the uterus. "It is found a good plan to apply wild boar's dung or swine's dung topically with oil. More effectual remedy is to dry the dung and sprinkle it in the patient's drink." I just suspect that is only something a man would write, knowing he would never have to drink it. While all done, but one less controversial item for the expectant mom has miraculously survived here in Herculaneum. Oh, perfect. Oh my goodness. Okay, so one thing that every parent needed is stored in here. And I just should emphasize that it's incredible that I've been given access to this place because here are totally unique treasures. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So what you're looking at is a 2,000-year-old crib for a baby. It's made of wood, and it survived because the heat here was so ferocious, it flash-burnt anything that was made of wood. And there's actually been a chemical reaction, so it's carbonized, that the minerals have actually physically changed their chemical compound, so you can see it's got this kind of sheen on it. So this crib has survived, and this would be exactly the kind of thing our poor young pregnant woman would have thought that she'd have needed. And it's just one of dozens of wooden objects that amazingly have been preserved by the eruption, each one a prized personal possession of one of Vesuvius's victims. So bland food, testicles, and a crib. What else? Oh, yeah, something for herself, for that amazing hair. But I don't mean a visit to the salon. I'm thinking of something more medicinal, and for those annoying lice. One Greek doctor of the time recommended eating garlic and putting honey on your hair. Greek honey, of course. Or there was always one of these: a nit comb. The ancient nit combs from Pompeii and Herculaneum are exactly the same design as the ones that we still use today.
10:00 in the morning on the day of the eruption. The earthquakes are getting worse. A few miles from Herculaneum stood the town of Pompeii. Here, in one of its most luxurious houses, surrounded by gardens, water features, and brightly colored wall paintings, lived a little boy under five years old. His body was discovered close to that of a man, a woman, and another small child who'd taken shelter in a stairwell. Possibly they were his family. The bodies of the little boy and his family had been preserved in a way that is unique to the victims of Pompeii: as plaster casts. After the eruption, they were buried in volcanic ash. Their flesh rotted away, leaving cavities in the ash. Archaeologists then filled these cavities with plaster. The result is accurate plaster copies of the victims, exactly as they died. For our little boy, let's try to imagine how this last day, the day of the eruption, might have begun. Our little boy would have started his morning, as probably every child has through time, protesting about being washed and dressed. But because this was a really wealthy family, they would almost certainly have used some pretty fancy bathroom products. We've got recipes from the time, so we know that the Pompeians used pumice to clean their teeth, and they even imported urine from Portugal as a teeth whitener. His mom's face cream would have been made with sensible things like honey and resin and barley and eggs, but then some slightly more unusual ingredients, like chicken fat or ground deer antler. And we know from some of the most popular poets in Rome that it was thought really important that women should keep clean and sweet-smelling. "Do not let your armpits reek like a goat. Let your teeth turn black through laziness, but wash out your mouth every morning." So that told her. Now, we can't know what the adult woman found with the little boy smelt like, but we do know that she was super glamorous. Her body was found heavy with jewelry, including this: a solid gold bracelet. It's decorated with a picture of Selene, the goddess of the moon, wearing a veil of stars and flanked by two snakes.
Next time for our little boy to get dressed. And fascinating new research reveals the details of exactly what he wore. The little boy's cast has just been 3D scanned, so we can tell really precisely what he was wearing on that morning. And it's this very short tunic that finishes well above the knee. But then look at it from another angle. We can tell that the cloth has been tied up on his left hand shoulder. But look at his back. It's got rocked up. And as a mom, you know, you just want to tug it down and help him out. Remarkably, we now also know what his tunic was made of. The material has been analyzed microscopically, and we know that it's made of linen. This is actually a fragment of material from Pompeii. You can see it's all being handmade. You can see the kind of weft and the warp there. Linen was really common in Pompeii. It was worn by well-to-do people because it was a material that allowed your skin to breathe and to keep you cool. So we know that that little boy got dressed this morning as he always would have done, not knowing that it was going to be his last day alive. Whatever the plans were for his day, suddenly everything changed. Around 11:00 in the morning, there was the hiss of an explosion and a cloud of ash appeared above Mount Vesuvius. To take me through the evidence for the eruption is geologist Professor Chris Jackson. There's actually a relatively small eruption, a blast of ash comes out before the big one. Before the big one? Yeah, that's interesting because you don't, well, with the records that we've got that survived, you don't hear about that. Nobody's writing about it. No. So exactly, this is one of the times when the geological record comes to our aid, because what we find here, east of Vesuvius, are ash deposits associated with that smaller initial eruption. But I mean, my goodness, if that's happening, there's no way the people in Pompeii and Herculaneum aren't going to notice that something's going on. It would have been a very, very worrying time. Just imagine the shock. Vesuvius hadn't shown any sign of activity for hundreds of years. Most people thought it was a mountain. Now that mountain had exploded.
The explosion would have triggered chaos and panic for all those we're following. The streets would have been filled with people pushing and shoving and panicking, while some thought the best strategy was to hunker down and try to brave it out. None of those I'm following left, but it would prove a fatal mistake. The first explosion was only the starting gun. Unknown to them, these people had just one hour left. Then, close to noon, Vesuvius erupted. The top of the volcano's been blown off. It's actually fragmenting and forming pumice, and we can see these bits flying out of the volcano here. I tell you, actually, what's really clear from this as well is that Herculaneum is closer, but it seems that Pompeii is getting the main hit. Exactly, because of the atmospheric conditions, the wind direction at the time of the eruption. As we fly up into the cloud, you can imagine the whole of the sun would have been blotted out by this column of ash, which rose up to about 10 miles into the atmosphere. I mean, so these poor, poor people. So it's pretty much pitch black. They've got, even if the pumice is quite light, they're still being pelted with millions of rocks of pumice, and they're desperately working out how to try to escape. Yeah, you either decide to escape or you actually decide to stay inside your house. Have you, have you been next to a volcano when it's erupted? Chris, I have been fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to be near volcanoes when they erupt. You can feel the blast of the eruption, you get pelted with ash, you can smell the volcanic gases. And what does it sound like? It sounds like nothing I've ever heard before in my entire life. It is just a loud, booming noise, so almost like heavy artillery being let off. For the people I'm following, it must have felt like the end of the world. They were now in a race to save themselves and their loved ones. Although he couldn't have imagined it, there was one victim who would die a hero as this catastrophic day unfolded: a battle-scarred veteran soldier. He's got a limp and a slightly whistly voice. The possessions he was carrying: high-end weaponry, a lot of cash, and a whole carpenter's toolkit, point to him being a military carpenter of the Emperor's Praetorian Guard. I'm standing on the headland right above ancient Misenum, just across the bay from Vesuvius, where the fleet and around 10,000 troops, almost certainly including our soldier, were based. The one written account of the eruption that we have is by Pliny the Younger, the nephew of the fleet's Admiral, writing from Misenum. He got the same apocalyptic view of the eruption that our soldier could well have experienced. "It was like an umbrella pine rising out of the ground, a trunk splitting off into branches. Some areas were white, others were mingling, depending on how much ash had been carried in its blast." I mean, can you imagine the fear they must have felt? But seen from Herculaneum, in the shadow of the volcano, the cloud of debris must have been truly terrifying. Just think of our young pregnant woman, desperately trying to protect herself and her unborn child. All that could have been on her mind was that she needed to get out or take cover. She, and nearly everyone else in the town, had the same idea. We know that they headed for the docks, which offered the possibility of escape. Can you imagine the wave of relief that our young pregnant woman felt once she'd made it down here? Because these things are a bit like a bomb shelter, and built with incredibly thick walls and roof. So maybe, just maybe, she relaxed for one moment, thinking that at last she was safe. Initially, she was, because high multitude winds were blowing the cloud of pumice and ash away from her town, Herculaneum, and towards Pompeii. But there was at least one person in Herculaneum who didn't follow the crowds down to the docks, and he's the last of the people whose story I want to uncover. He was discovered by archaeologists in rather mysterious circumstances. This is the *Augustales*, a kind of state-recognized members' club. This one was founded in honor of the Emperor Augustus Caesar. It was for very influential people in the town. But what makes this special is that the members here were mainly freedmen, so men who'd formerly been slaves. I think you can really feel the purpose and energy of this place, because the people who met here had a real sense of civic pride. We know from inscriptions that they paid for public buildings and artworks for the town, and even funded things like gladiatorial games. At the center of this pillared hall stands a shrine. Hard to believe, isn't it, that it was painted 2,000 years ago? These colors are just incredible. So this is a shrine to Hercules, the kind of action-man superhero of the ancient world, and he was really important to Herculaneum. The story went that he actually founded the city and given it its name. That's Hercules up there with the goddesses Minerva and Juno, and it is so beautiful. This is so special. But there's something around here I have got to show you. The real secret here is that it's also the final resting place of another victim of Vesuvius. Honestly, I am so lucky, Gratia, Alandra, to get access in here because people are never normally allowed in. To just get a sense of where we are. So the shrine is to my right there, and this is this slightly strange, mysterious room with bars on the windows. And there's something remarkable inside. Okay, so just so you can understand what you're looking at. This in the corner of the room is a bed, and this is the original wood around the edge. But in the middle, there are the remains of a body. And we know this was a man. There are just enough remains to make out that he laid here. Who is this man, though? It's all slightly odd. It doesn't quite add up, because this is, this is a pretty posh room, but you've got bars on the window there. So maybe he was some kind of a caretaker? This could have been a treasury to the club. As the eruption began, he may have heard commotion in the street outside as people rushed past in panic to the docks. He certainly chose not to go down with the other people at the port. So maybe he just felt it was his duty to stay. At this point in Herculaneum, only a light dusting of ash was falling on the streets outside. So he may have felt protected.
The eruption would have been watched at a safe distance by our soldier and the rest of the fleet, including its Admiral, Pliny the Elder, a distinguished military man who also had a really keen interest in nature. Pliny the Elder was ever more intrigued by this strange plume emerging from the volcano, and being a man of science, he decided to order up a ship so he could go to investigate. But just before he set off, an urgent message arrived from a female friend of his who lived near Vesuvius, begging him to come to rescue her. Suddenly, an interesting scientific phenomenon had become a crisis. So he ordered backup. And it's at this point that we think our soldier enters the story, on board one of Pliny's ships, launched to take part in one of the most daring rescue missions of the ancient world. The Admiral gave orders for the warships to be launched and came on board himself with the intention of bringing help, steering straight to the danger. The evidence of his belongings suggests our soldier was a specialist military carpenter in the fleet, and that he carried his tools, ready for any repairs that might be needed. Around mid-afternoon, he'd have set off with the fleet across the Bay of Naples. But already the boat was being bombarded with pumice and ash and burning rock. So he might have had to use his carpentry skills. Now, pumice actually floats in the water, and it forms these kind of thick sheets like rafts that would have banged up against the boats. I mean, for the sailors, it must have been terrifying. The ships were around 40 meters long, but even with over 200 oarsmen, they only traveled at 8 knots, taking three and a half hours to reach the other side of the bay. So it was probably late in the afternoon by the time they got there, and conditions were deteriorating rapidly, minute by minute. The pumice fall was getting heavier, and the visibility would have been getting worse and worse. By the time they approached the coast, it was almost as dark as night. Warships this size were too large to dock at the seaside town of Herculaneum. So how could they reach the thousands of desperate civilians hoping for rescue? A clue's been found on the beach, close to where the soldier was discovered. Archaeologists found this. It's a boat that capsized and then was thrown up onto the beach. Now, we know it's not just an ordinary fishing boat because this is an official naval design. So it feels pretty certain to me that this is a boat employed on that rescue mission. Boats like this could have been launched from the large warships, and given his special set of skills, our soldier was perfectly placed to aid the rescue mission. He may have been on the beach itself, helping with the evacuation.
As our pregnant woman desperately waited in line in Pompeii, the fall of volcanic debris was much more severe than it was in Herculaneum. The ash cloud was being blown in Pompeii's direction, and pumice rained down relentlessly, clogging the roads and smashing in roofs. Half a mile outside Pompeii lies Villa Casale. Two human bodies were found here: one that of a young man. Video taken at the time of the excavation reveals how a plaster cast of his body was made. Archaeologists discovered a cavity in the ground where his flesh once was before it rotted away. They removed the bones, then filled in the cavity with plaster, which was then carefully chipped out of the ash to reveal an accurate plaster copy of his body. His spine shows evidence of carrying heavy loads, so he was possibly a slave. The evidence also suggests that the villa was a farm. Our slave may have worked in the fields, perhaps tending a crop of grapes to make the Pompeian wines that were famous across the empire. In the stables, a horse was found saddled up, as though ready to make a break for it. The animals must have been wild with panic. There were huge sheets of fire and leaping flames shining through the dark night. The position of the men's corpses suggests they'd sought shelter in a basement passageway, deciding to wait here for the bombardment to end. A decision that was to prove fatal, because things now took a turn for the worse. So around 8:00 p.m. in the evening, things really, really kick off, and we actually have this acceleration in material coming out of the volcano. And at this point, this column of ash is reaching about 20 miles up into the atmosphere. 20 miles? 20 miles! I mean, that's just so terrible. Yeah, all of this material is raining down upon Pompeii. Can you hear each other? If people are calling out for help, would their voices have carried? The volcano itself will make a noise when it erupts, but then after that, it'll be maybe just the pitter-patter of ash falling down. But just the general chaos amongst the population, it is that which will be the noise which makes it difficult for people to communicate with each other. And this is going on for hours. So I mean, so that's hours worth of fear. Yeah, so Pompeii is really in the firing line here. We have ash, both kind of small particles, but also big bombs, raining down on the city. The roads would have been coated with this material, but also the roofs of the houses will be getting increasingly battered by this fallout from the volcanic column. Totally, totally petrifying. Exactly. And you have no idea when this volcano is going to stop erupting either. So you have no idea whether or not you should stay and hunker down and look after yourselves in your houses, or whether you should try and plan your escape.
As night fell, Vesuvius continued to spew out vast quantities of rock. In Pompeii, our little boy was hunkered down inside one of the town's grandest houses. The adult woman was found with a lot of jewelry on her, surely waiting for the chance to make a break for it. As Vesuvius erupted, the family must have been speechless with terror. I mean, material is coming out of the volcano at around 500 meters an hour. But we don't know why they didn't leave. Were they trying to save the beauty in their home, or were they just desperately trying to find somewhere to shelter? We know from the positions of their remains that as time drew on, the little boy and other victims sought safety in a stairwell. The eruption had started around noon and kept spewing out pumice and scalding ash through the night and into the early hours of the next day. Pompeii and the surrounding countryside were now covered in three meters of volcanic debris. Then, at around 4:00 in the morning, the assault stopped. At last, for some, a chance to get out. Out. This is an area in the city known as The Garden of the Fugitives, because 13 bodies of fleeing victims were found here, now captured as casts, having made a run for it. They'd been stopped in their tracks. But if they died after the bombardment, what exactly killed them? It was a new and deadly phenomenon. This huge column of ash built up in the atmosphere, and now it starts to collapse because it can't be supported anymore by material coming out of the volcano. And that generates something called a pyroclastic flow. So it's basically that collapsing down the side of the mountain. So as it collapses down, the ash, the rocks, the gases are all brought with it, and they are traveling very, very quickly, so several tens of miles an hour, maybe even a few hundred miles an hour. And it's hot, several hundred degrees Celsius. So you can imagine if this hits one of these towns, then it's going to be bad news for anybody there.
A few minutes after the column of ash collapsed, a mighty pyroclastic flow barreled down the side of the mountain straight towards Herculaneum, and our soldier, our pregnant woman, and our caretaker. And it was this caretaker, who seems to have been resident in one of the town's meeting places, who was in the front line, apparently taking refuge in a side room. All that we know about him is that in those final moments, he chose to throw himself down and lie with his face buried into the bed, maybe praying to Hercules, maybe just desperately trying to get some refuge from that hot gas and ash. In an instant, this building was engulfed as volcanic debris poured in through the windows. We know it became hotter than an oven. What little remains of this man's body reveals just how intense the heat was. This is his femur of his leg, and most of his body material has vaporized. But the fat has left this kind of stain in the ash and pumice. He's lying face down, and we know that he suffered extraordinary heat. There was a kind of heat shock wave here, around 520 degrees Celsius, and what that did is it actually exploded his skull. Death would have been virtually instant. The pyroclastic flow raced on down through the town to the docks, where the inhabitants of the city were still trying to escape. One of the people down here on this beach was our soldier. Now, we don't know what he saw or heard, but we do know that the force of the pyroclastic flow smashed him to the ground, burning his flesh right off. The sea vaporized the soldier's exposed bones were scorched by the scalding ash. Black marks show where the bones were hit directly by flying burning debris. There's nothing he could have done to save himself. Nearby, in one of these chambers, our young woman might have felt the heat of the pyroclastic flow just seconds before burning ash and gas poured through the doors. The walls of the chambers shielded the intense heat, so instead of stripping her flesh, she would have baked. Breathing the hot mixture of gases into her lungs would have killed her by asphyxiation in just two breaths. Herculaneum was covered in around 3 meters of hot ash, but this was just the first wave. Within the hour, a second surge hit the town, burying it in a further 2 meters of ash. The pyroclastic flows, they just keep coming. Yep, they continued. There was a third flow here, which almost reached Pompeii. So that's interesting. So the Villa Casale is just here in the countryside. So that's going to be what took out the two men and the horses. Exactly. Major new research by Italian volcanologists and the British Geological Survey reveals more details about the flow than ever before. We now know that as it approached Pompeii, it slowed and cooled dramatically. We're talking about temperatures of probably around about 100 degrees Celsius. But even so, does that mean it's worse for them? Because does that mean it's going to take people slightly longer to die? It means you're not incinerated, but if you're being hit by a fast-moving flow containing gas which is 100 degrees Celsius, it's going to kill you more slowly. So the estimates here are that some of the people could have taken about 15 minutes to die. Awful.
In Villa Casale, on the outskirts of Pompeii, our slave and another man had left a horse saddled up in the stables, ready to escape, while they sheltered in a passageway in the house. Around 6:30 a.m., without warning, they were overwhelmed by gas and ash swirling at around 100 degrees. After many minutes, they died. The heat was ferocious, but nothing like it was in Herculaneum. So here, body tissue could survive long enough for ash to fall on it and form a kind of casing, which is why centuries later, archaeologists have been able to make casts like this one. Revealing detail that we have is the posture of the older man. He was holding his fists in front of him, a position often called the boxer's pose, the body's automatic response to heat stress. But Pompeii itself hasn't actually been hit by a pyroclastic flow, has it? No, it's been spared up to this point. But then there was a fourth, fifth, and sixth flow, and as you can see, they went straight through Pompeii. So nobody is going to survive that. No. So the sixth one would have been the largest one, and in fact, it was so large that deposits from that flow are found way over here on the other side of the Bay of Naples. The family of our little boy was found sheltering in the stairwell. He was a meter or so away, somehow separated. We now know that in temperatures of 100 degrees, these victims of Pompeii would have endured close on 15 minutes of boiling hot ash before they finally died. It seems our family group suffered the same terrible fate as those two men: the mother with the little child's brother or sister on her lap. But our little boy died alone. The sixth and final pyroclastic flow still had enough energy in it to come hurtling across the water here. And Pliny the Younger described what he saw: "I looked around, a dense cloud was spreading across the earth like a flood. Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless night, but as though a lamp had been extinguished. You could hear the screams of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of men, all calling out for their families, desperately trying to recognize them by their voices."
The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD expended the energy of 100,000 atomic bombs. Since then, it's erupted several times and is now monitored 24 hours a day by sensors around the crater. Over 2 million people, including the whole population of Naples, live within Vesuvius's range. Fortunately for them, they can rely on scientists to identify the danger signs of an eruption. Back in 79 AD, the only people who survived were those who had an instinct to get out before Vesuvius exploded. But there were plenty of those who did. Our poor victims suffered desperate ends, but there isn't the only story. Most people from Pompeii and Herculaneum actually managed to escape, and many of them ended up here in central Naples, in what was the ancient city of Neapolis. Now we know that because we have their names in written records and on stone inscriptions, and many of those families lived here for generations. So it could just be that the descendants of the survivors of Vesuvius are still walking these streets today.