We are currently seeing how the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the Canary Island of La Palma, is wreaking havoc not only on its inhabitants, but also on the closest islands and even on the peninsula, due to the ashes and the rest of the consequences that are derived from the eruption.
But this kind of disasters caused by nature have always existedIn fact, some of them were much more serious and ended up causing brutal chaos, like what happened years ago in Pompeii, but we are going to talk about all of that now and with all the necessary details.
What happened in Pompeii
To begin with, we must know that the city of Pompeii has always been a city surrounded by death and misfortune. The first group of people to settle permanently in the city was in the 7th century BC, when the Oscos, a people from pre-Roman Italy, settled near the volcano. It was around the year 59 AD when an important duel between the inhabitants of the city and those of Nuceria caused great catastrophes and many deaths and all for a gladiator show. After this altercation and as a punishment, Emperor Nero closed the Pompeii amphitheater for a duration of 10 years.
In the year 59 AD there was a crowd brawl where many people died, including entire families, but the worst thing that happened to the city of Pompeii occurred in the year 62 AD and this was the great earthquake it suffered, causing a lot of damage to the city and the nearby cities, but which would also have some relation to the famous catastrophe that occurred years later.
When the city began to return to what it was, after rebuilding what it it was destroyed by the earthquakein the year 79 AD had to suffer a consequence of the earthquake years ago, which caused Vesuvius, the volcano that was located on the shores of the city, to suffer an eruption that killed thousands of people and the end of the city of Pompeii as we knew it, leaving everything under the ashes, even today people have been seen trapped in the ashes after cooling down, and you can see their faces of fear.
On August 26 the sun came out again and Vesuvius only released a large column of smoke, but Pompeii was completely blackened and destroyed, without the possibility of resurfacing as in the past. And this continued like this until almost 2000 years later, when the first aretalogical excavations began and they were carried out by a Spaniard, the Spanish engineer Roque Joaquín
Consequences of the eruption of Vesuvius
Once the first excavations began, the first buried bodies were discovered in the city of Pompeii and this caused a great impact on the society of the time, but it did not have the same impact on the scientific community.
It was around the year 1863, when an Italian excavator, named Giuseppe Fiorelli, thought of pouring plaster into the holes and in this way, with the bodies of people already decomposed, they made it visible how the inhabitants of the city had died, in this way the famous “sculpture” of the dog was found. And around the 1990s, a similar test was attempted with resin molds, but the first tests were not successful and were therefore not continued.
Several important reports have recently been made, not only about the victims who died but also the circumstances in which they died. Studying the reports of the excavations that have been available since the 18th century, the victims can be classified in two ways, depending on the type of death or the circumstances in which they died:
- The bodies found behind pumice stones, which come from the first eruption
- The ones that were found in the ashes, due to the ash clouds caused by the lava.
While in the first group 390 bodies were found and the vast majority of them were in public buildings or private houses, which were hidden there for fear of the volcano. On the other hand, within the second group, up to 655 people were counted and many of them outside the houses, which implies that they tried to hide and hide, but they did not have time, probably because they did not think it would advance so fast. . Although there are some of the bodies that do not know where to include themselves due to the doubts that their bodies show, since they seem to be a mixture of both.
We cannot know for sure everything that happened in Pompeii and even less at this time, but thanks to the positions in which some bodies were found, some things can be deduced. For example, that in the houses of middle and lower class people, animals lived inside with them, in fact remains of dog and even horse feces were found.
While in the houses of the nobles and the people who possessed more wealth, bodies of the rich people with their butlers could be found in other rooms of that house, thus it is understood that the slaves and the butlers of these people they lived with them.
What is now Pompeii
Now Pompeii has become one of the places that receives the most visits from tourists year after year, not only from Italy, but from all over the world. The ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii are very large and you can visit all the buildings where the citizens went about their daily lives, from luxurious houses where some mosaics can still be seen, to temples and religious buildings.
Among the buildings that stand out the most, of those that remain in good condition, is the brothel, an old brothel where you can see the old stone beds with paintings with erotic details. While if you go to the forum, you can see some of the bodies that ended up covered by the ashes of the volcano. Another curiosity, which can still be easily appreciated, are its zebra crossings, which were above the road, since the city was flooded on many occasions.
Pompeii was a big city Y It is incredible that it is in such a good state of conservation. So much so that while you visit the city you don’t get the feeling of having gone through so many hardships, but it seems that people are still living there, especially because of the state of the paintings and its buildings.