The Bodies Of Pompeii With Bettany Hughes (History Documentary)
It's 79 AD and Mount Vesuvius is about to erupt. In 24 hours time, the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum are going to die. They will be part of the death toll of one of the worst natural disasters in history. Starting with a forensic examination of their remains, Bettany Hughes pieces together the final 24 hours of their lives in incredible detail.
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00:00:00In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy erupted.
00:00:07The scale of the eruption is almost impossible to get your head around.
00:00:15It buried the gorgeous ancient Roman towns Pompeii and Herculaneum under a blanket of
00:00:20ash up to 24 meters thick.
00:00:24But its volcanic debris also preserved these amazing towns and the remains of many of the
00:00:31people trapped inside them.
00:00:34Now, with access to the very latest discoveries and technology, I'm going to piece together
00:00:40the stories of some of those people caught up in the eruption, how they lived, so can
00:00:46you tell what her hairstyle was?
00:00:48Can you tell how she chose to dress her hair that morning?
00:00:51Yes, we can see this.
00:00:53The shocking truth of their deaths.
00:00:56This is his femur, and most of his body material has vaporized.
00:01:00With the help of these new discoveries, I'm going to explore the stories of five people
00:01:06who lost their lives.
00:01:08A young boy trapped inside a villa, a soldier strangely found on the beach, an overworked
00:01:16slave, a young woman with a secret, and a man mysteriously cowering in his room when
00:01:24the devastation hit.
00:01:26I'll bring all the clues together to uncover new revelations about the last hours of their
00:01:31lives.
00:01:43The story begins one day in the autumn of 79 AD, in the time of the Roman Empire, in
00:01:49the town of Pompeii.
00:01:54Earthquakes, the first sign that something is wrong.
00:02:00Pompeians had experienced earthquakes before, but these had been going on for three days,
00:02:06and they were getting worse.
00:02:08Most residents had chosen to leave, but very soon those who stayed would be buried along
00:02:14with their town, only to be rediscovered centuries later.
00:02:22But thanks to the particular conditions of the eruption here, the victims of Pompeii
00:02:26have been preserved in a way that is completely unique in archaeology.
00:02:33I've come here to find the first victims whose story I want to tell.
00:02:39Amongst a group of four, discovered on the ground floor of a large house, was this young boy.
00:02:50This little child is just so moving, and I know it's ridiculous, but you always feel
00:02:55guilty that you can't help him in his suffering.
00:02:58So what I want to try to do is to piece together his story.
00:03:05I want to find out how old he was, what sort of life he lived, and what a boy like him
00:03:11might have been doing in the direct lead-up to the eruption.
00:03:15But I'm going to start with the extraordinary way that he and those with him have been preserved.
00:03:23Now I know that these might look like some kind of fossilised remain, but they're not
00:03:28made of rock, they're not even made of volcanic ash, these people are made of plaster.
00:03:37This is what happened.
00:03:39Vesuvius's victims were buried in the volcano's ash.
00:03:44Over time, their flesh rotted away, leaving body-shaped cavities in the ash which contained
00:03:51a few of their remaining bones.
00:03:54Centuries later, excavators discovered these cavities.
00:03:59The archaeologists realised that what they'd uncovered were life-size human moulds.
00:04:06So they poured plaster into the cavities to produce these plaster casts, so basically
00:04:14what you're looking at are accurate replicas of the original victims.
00:04:22The fine ash that encased them captured and preserved the details of the ancient Pompeians'
00:04:27bodies and clothes just as they died.
00:04:33I've seen these casts so many times, but it's always a shock that the details that have
00:04:39been captured across 2,000 years are just extraordinary, as is the drama of what happened.
00:04:48So what can these casts tell us about this little boy?
00:04:53The first clue I have is where his body was found.
00:04:57As it turns out, a super impressive home in a thriving part of town.
00:05:03Our little boy lived in one of the most luxurious houses in Pompeii, built on three storeys
00:05:09with grand rooms and the most beautiful gardens, decorated with water features and a fountain.
00:05:19But does that mean he was a rich boy, or could he have been a young slave?
00:05:25To find out more about him and the other victims of Vesuvius,
00:05:29I'm bringing the evidence together in one place, my incident room.
00:05:36We know that the boy's body was found near two adults and another child, possibly a family group.
00:05:44They were discovered crouched in a stairwell for protection.
00:05:49In this photograph, taken during the excavation, we can't see our little boy.
00:05:54His body was found a few feet away.
00:05:58Could one explanation be that he was their slave?
00:06:03Perhaps his remains will reveal more.
00:06:06Because the little boy's bones are trapped inside his plaster body,
00:06:11the only way that we can analyse them is with scans like this or an x-ray.
00:06:16And you can tell certain things.
00:06:18So the length of his femur here tells us that he was probably aged between three and around five.
00:06:25And then there's something really interesting just underneath his head.
00:06:30Here, look.
00:06:32See?
00:06:33This.
00:06:34So that's possibly the remains of a bulla.
00:06:37And a bulla is a bit of amulet-filled jewellery that was only given to the sons of free men.
00:06:44So people have said that because he was away from the rest of the group,
00:06:48maybe he was a slave of some kind.
00:06:50But if he was wearing something like this,
00:06:52then he would definitely have been the son of the wealthy man who owned the household.
00:06:58And if we can imagine him dressed and wearing his bulla,
00:07:04he'd have looked a bit like this.
00:07:11So, can the house give us any insight into the little boy's life?
00:07:16The house was absolutely full of frescoes.
00:07:20What you're looking at here, basically, is a fantasy Roman garden
00:07:24full of beautiful birds and plants and flowers.
00:07:28So up here, for instance, you've got a fang-tailed pigeon
00:07:33just perching on a laurel or a bay tree.
00:07:36And a magpie.
00:07:38You've just got to think what this would have been like to that little boy.
00:07:41Maybe he loved the fountain.
00:07:43But you never know.
00:07:44I mean, he might have found it quite sinister.
00:07:48Because this figure over here, this is the god Pan.
00:07:53Now, Pan was the god of the countryside and of wildness.
00:07:58But also of fertility and frenzy.
00:08:01And his name gives us our word, panic.
00:08:08And there was good reason to panic.
00:08:12After three days of earthquakes, there was no sign of them stopping.
00:08:17The locals didn't know the science.
00:08:19They didn't know the connection between the earth tremors
00:08:21and the mountain up above them.
00:08:23In fact, many of them didn't even know that was a volcano at all,
00:08:27let alone a volcano that was waking up.
00:08:33Our little boy must surely have realised that there was something very wrong.
00:08:38When you have earthquakes in this region, it's really weird
00:08:41because the dogs roundabout start to bark and howl
00:08:44and then they fall eerily silent.
00:08:47So his parents must have been increasingly worried,
00:08:50particularly as, at this point, many people are already leaving the town.
00:08:55But our little boy and his family didn't leave while they had the chance.
00:08:59For them and for the others left behind, it would soon be too late.
00:09:14Four miles west of Mount Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples,
00:09:18lies what, 2,000 years ago, was the seaside town of Hercules.
00:09:24It's called Herculaneum.
00:09:27In the autumn of 79 AD, like Pompeii,
00:09:30it was hit by three days of intensifying earthquakes.
00:09:35And, like Pompeii, no-one understood that in just 24 hours,
00:09:40Vesuvius would erupt.
00:09:44So this is Herculaneum, isn't it incredible?
00:09:48So I'm walking on the modern ground level
00:09:51and what you're looking at is a massive hole
00:09:53filled with pumice and ash.
00:09:55And it's taken 300 years of on-and-off excavations to reveal this much.
00:10:00Now, this is only one-third of the town.
00:10:03There's still two-thirds left to discover.
00:10:08Herculaneum was a puzzle for archaeologists.
00:10:12Unlike Pompeii, there were barely any human remains to be found.
00:10:17The big question was, where had everyone gone?
00:10:21Then, in 1982, as the archaeologists dug further,
00:10:25they made a major discovery.
00:10:29The line of the old seafront, now 500 metres inland.
00:10:34OK, so now I'm surrounded by up to 24 metres worth of volcanic material
00:10:39that originally ought to have been where the sea was.
00:10:42And when archaeologists excavated, they found that, which is the Roman beach,
00:10:47and all these buildings were the docks.
00:10:49This was the seafront of Herculaneum.
00:10:52On this incredible 2,000-year-old beach,
00:10:56they found 59 skeletons,
00:10:59including the next person, whose story I want to explore.
00:11:02Just down there, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a man.
00:11:07His skeleton tells us about the terrible force of the volcano
00:11:11and the possessions that were found with him
00:11:14give us some clue as to who it belonged to.
00:11:16Give us some clue as to who he was
00:11:18and to the truth of the events of that day.
00:11:23The objects he had with him are so precious,
00:11:27they're now kept in a specially controlled environment
00:11:30behind the scenes at the Herculaneum Museum.
00:11:34But together, they don't really make much sense.
00:11:39This is completely unique as a collection
00:11:42and actually slightly confusing as well
00:11:45because there's such a variety of personal possessions here.
00:11:49So you've got here some specialist carpentry tools
00:11:53that are still in the position they originally were in a backpack.
00:11:58There's a thing called an awl that's used for making holes,
00:12:02an adze that hollows out wood or stone,
00:12:06and then two chisels,
00:12:08all of which might indicate a workman of some sort.
00:12:12But there's something else that's intriguing.
00:12:16He was heavily armed with the kind of weapons used by Roman soldiers.
00:12:21You've got stuff that you might expect a soldier to have,
00:12:24so two swords, one which is very ornate and ceremonial,
00:12:27and then this incredibly fancy belt.
00:12:32So he was almost certainly a Roman soldier.
00:12:36But besides the tools, something else is odd.
00:12:39There was also quite a lot of cash,
00:12:41and I've actually been allowed to touch this.
00:12:44So it's in the form of silver denarii, which are silver coins,
00:12:48and three of these beautiful things,
00:12:50which are, each one's an aureus, it's a gold coin.
00:12:56There's enough here to pay a regular Roman soldier for several months.
00:13:00And I'm not sure why a regular soldier would have had so much money on him.
00:13:05To find out more, I need to see his remains.
00:13:09So I'm travelling to the other side of Italy,
00:13:11to the ancient city of Chieti.
00:13:16Many of the victims of Vesuvius are being analysed here in a specialist facility,
00:13:21and I've been invited in to see the work.
00:13:23And I am genuinely honoured and excited,
00:13:27because what's being discovered here is, frankly,
00:13:30remarkable, and I'm delighted to be here.
00:13:34And completely unique.
00:13:38The soldier's remains offer us a lot more detail about him.
00:13:43The first thing I want to know is how old he was.
00:13:46And we can tell from his skeleton that he was a man in his early 40s.
00:13:52But there's more.
00:13:53It also tells us that he was above average height for the time,
00:13:57around 5 foot 7 inches,
00:13:59and that he lived a violent life.
00:14:05Professor Luigi Capasso has a series of trauma injuries to show me.
00:14:10For example, the bone of the foot.
00:14:13There's a cut so deep that it's gone through to the bone.
00:14:18That would have given him a limp, surely,
00:14:20if you have something like this on your foot?
00:14:23Yes.
00:14:25There's another injury on his ribs,
00:14:27but the worst is to his face.
00:14:30The mechanism of trauma is that.
00:14:34Like a blow?
00:14:35A blow.
00:14:36Yes.
00:14:37But perhaps also with some instrument.
00:14:40So possibly with some kind of weapon or a stone in battle.
00:14:46The blow appears to have knocked three of his front teeth out.
00:14:51But the bone around the missing teeth has regrown,
00:14:54so that tells us that this was an old wound.
00:14:57So if he's lost his tooth at the top,
00:14:59and he's had damage to his lower jaw as well,
00:15:02I mean, does that mean that his speech would have been affected?
00:15:06Would he have spoken with a slight lisp, do you think?
00:15:09Probably with difficult.
00:15:11Some sound, for example, T, D.
00:15:15This is very difficult without the anterior teeth.
00:15:19Probably.
00:15:21Really?
00:15:21So he might have spoken with a bit of a whistle.
00:15:24Gosh, so he's got a limp and a, you know, a slightly kind of whistly voice.
00:15:29I mean, it's so touching to hear about this from this man,
00:15:33because we know that he died in terrible trauma,
00:15:36but these details that you know from his life,
00:15:39it's almost like he's trying to tell us from beyond the grave
00:15:42about what he was actually like when he lived.
00:15:45Exactly.
00:15:48So the evidence of his violent life fits with him being a soldier.
00:15:53Someone who'd certainly been in the wars.
00:15:56But he died in his early 40s,
00:15:58which in Roman times would make him a military veteran.
00:16:02So what kind of status would he have achieved by then?
00:16:05One of his belongings offers a pretty big clue.
00:16:09Now, I'm really fascinated by his sword,
00:16:13because if you have a look at this, this is a replica, obviously,
00:16:16but this is a standard issue sword for a Roman legionary.
00:16:20It's called a gladius,
00:16:22and it would have been used for stabbing in close combat in battle.
00:16:25And it is a serious bit of kit.
00:16:28But just have a look at the sword that would have belonged to our soldier.
00:16:35I mean, it's much, much higher grade.
00:16:38So have a look.
00:16:39The handle and the pommel are made of ivory, not of wood.
00:16:43The scabbard is beautifully decorated in gold and silver.
00:16:47And the whole thing was hung from this incredibly ornate belt.
00:16:54It all points to our soldier having some kind of high status.
00:16:59So maybe he was in an elite regiment,
00:17:02possibly even the emperor's own praetorian guard.
00:17:06We know that praetorians could often be paid almost double
00:17:09that of a normal legionary.
00:17:11And just think of the money that was left with our soldier.
00:17:15It's all beginning to add up,
00:17:17because somebody could not have afforded a serious bit of elite kit like this,
00:17:22unless they had a lot of ready cash.
00:17:27But all of this raises another question.
00:17:30If he was a praetorian guard, a real possibility,
00:17:34as personal guard to the emperor, you'd think he'd be stationed in Rome.
00:17:39So what on earth was he doing all the way out here, over 120 miles away?
00:17:44Well, intriguingly, the Bay of Naples is just the place
00:17:48that a praetorian naval officer would have hung out.
00:17:53Because there was a praetorian fleet always at the emperor's command.
00:17:59This could also explain our soldier's carpentry tools.
00:18:04Just look at this.
00:18:06It's a soldier using an adze,
00:18:08exactly like the one our soldier had to work.
00:18:11And I think what that means is that he could have been
00:18:14a kind of ship's carpenter engineer,
00:18:18in the Roman army, a role of high status.
00:18:23But exactly where was his base?
00:18:26And how would he have got from there to Herculaneum, where his body was found?
00:18:32I'm travelling to the other end of the Bay of Naples,
00:18:34to a place called Mycenaeum, to see if I can find out.
00:18:39So this is actually a natural harbour.
00:18:41It's a perfect place for boats to be maintained
00:18:44and where the Roman fleet could shelter from sea winds.
00:18:49Big enough for around 50 warships and 10,000 men.
00:18:53The largest fleet in the Roman Empire.
00:18:58So you should try to imagine this area absolutely thick with boats of the Roman.
00:19:03So you should try to imagine this area absolutely thick with boats of the Roman navy.
00:19:09And at this point, the Roman military was really the engine that drove the imperial machine.
00:19:14So if you were a Roman soldier, you were a big part of the idea that was Rome.
00:19:21But where's the evidence that this world famous prestigious force was actually here?
00:19:27We have access to somewhere incredible, which helps prove they were.
00:19:3410,000 men need plenty of fresh water.
00:19:41This is a bit of a hidden gem.
00:19:48Nearly 2,000 years after our soldier was here,
00:19:52there's still evidence for a large military presence underground.
00:20:00This place feels a bit like an underworld cathedral, but it's actually a massive cistern.
00:20:07A water tank built by the Roman army used to store fresh water,
00:20:12brought here by those iconic Roman aqueducts.
00:20:16This could hold close on 13,000 square cubic meters of water,
00:20:21some of which was brought from 100 kilometers away.
00:20:26The water held in here would have kept our soldier
00:20:29and thousands of other thirsty military personnel alive.
00:20:34It is a triumph of Roman engineering, but more than that,
00:20:38it's proof that the Romans wants to be masters not just of all that they surveyed,
00:20:42but of nature itself.
00:20:46And it's evidence that the fleet, and probably our soldier,
00:20:50were based right here on the Cape of Mycenaeum.
00:20:55So, what would our soldier's experience have been like in the run-up to the eruption?
00:21:01Well, we've got a good lead thanks to this man,
00:21:05Gaius Plinius Secundus Pliny the Elder.
00:21:08Plinius Secundus Pliny the Elder,
00:21:12the admiral of the fleet, which could make him our soldier's boss.
00:21:18Pliny lived here near the naval base on the Cape of Mycenaeum.
00:21:23So, that's cool. So, this is the view that the Plinis would have had.
00:21:27That's Vesuvius, obviously, over there, and Pompeii is to the right,
00:21:31and then Herculaneum is down in front of me,
00:21:33just between the foothills of the volcano and the sea.
00:21:36Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger,
00:21:39was staying with him when Vesuvius erupted,
00:21:42and he recorded events from the vantage point
00:21:45that our soldier, if garrisoned here, would have had.
00:21:51For several days, there'd been tremors in the earth,
00:21:54but not particularly alarming, as they are frequent in the region.
00:21:59From his seemingly safe haven across the bay from Vesuvius,
00:22:03our soldier must have had no real idea of the hell that would hit him.
00:22:11So, what was actually happening underneath the ground the day before the eruption?
00:22:16Professor Chris Jackson studies volcanoes, ancient and modern,
00:22:20and I've asked him to break it down for me.
00:22:24What's happening? Geologically, what's actually going on?
00:22:28If you look down in here, you can see this area of origin,
00:22:31and this is magma or mush, and this is semi-molten or fully-molten rock.
00:22:35And this is sitting just underneath the main volcano itself.
00:22:38Now, leading up to the eruption, we can see here
00:22:41the magma is rising into Vesuvius,
00:22:44and as it's rising up, it's pressurised and it's breaking the rocks,
00:22:47and it's the breaking of those rocks, the snapping of this strata in here,
00:22:51that leads to those small earthquakes.
00:22:53It must have been petrifying, and they have no idea what's coming.
00:22:56No idea yet.
00:23:02The day before the eruption,
00:23:03these earthquakes must have impacted those left behind in Pompeii,
00:23:07home to our little boy.
00:23:13These buildings might be silent now, but their walls talked,
00:23:18giving us an idea of what normal might have felt like for him.
00:23:24If you want to hear the voices of Pompeii,
00:23:26then you can come to this place, the Forum.
00:23:31In this building, we know exactly what people said
00:23:35because they left these walls covered in graffiti.
00:23:40Just listen to what they said.
00:23:43Lovers are like bees in that they live a honeyed life.
00:23:48We've wet the bed, host. I confess we've done wrong.
00:23:51If you want to know why, there wasn't a chamber pot.
00:23:55A small problem gets larger if you ignore it.
00:24:02The graffiti are a fascinating reminder of more normal times,
00:24:07but surely our young boy and the soldier must have been preoccupied
00:24:12by the weird events happening around them
00:24:14as they turned in for the night for the very last time.
00:24:19As the sun set, those remaining in the shadow of Vesuvius
00:24:23hoped for a better day tomorrow,
00:24:26including a young woman planning a new future
00:24:30and a slave after another gruelling day.
00:24:34None of them could have known what was in store.
00:24:5079 AD, an autumn dawn in the Bay of Naples
00:24:55after a night shattered by earthquakes.
00:25:00In a few hours' time, Mount Vesuvius will erupt.
00:25:05As day broke, deep inside the volcano, the pressure was building.
00:25:12Most of the human remains we know of
00:25:14are being uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum,
00:25:18but the majority of people at this time lived and worked out in the countryside.
00:25:23Of course, finding the victims of Vesuvius
00:25:26out in vast swathes of countryside is much harder.
00:25:30Ancient villas and farms could be buried anywhere there under layers of ash.
00:25:34So where do you start?
00:25:36Well, in 2017, one buried villa became a crime scene.
00:25:44Italian police were alerted to an archaeological robbery.
00:25:48About half a mile outside Pompeii,
00:25:51looters had discovered the location of a Roman villa,
00:25:54Cavite Giuliana, and dug a network of tunnels to get to its treasures.
00:26:00So, before the thieves could take any more,
00:26:03an emergency excavation was ordered to rescue remaining artefacts.
00:26:08Once they started digging, they discovered something intriguing.
00:26:13A large cavernous pit.
00:26:16The pit was also intriguing.
00:26:18A large cavity in the hardened ash, just like those in Pompeii.
00:26:24As with the Pompeii bodies, they used it to create an accurate plaster cast.
00:26:30Except this one wasn't a human.
00:26:35As the hardened ash was chipped away, this shape was revealed.
00:26:40A plaster cast of a horse or a mule.
00:26:46Proved it was a horse.
00:26:48And a large one by ancient standards.
00:26:52So this must have been an ancient thoroughbred.
00:26:55Whoever owned this stable was part of the Roman elite.
00:27:01After six months of hard digging, the whole flaw of a stable was revealed.
00:27:08There were two other horses.
00:27:10One that had been fitted with an elaborate military harness and saddle.
00:27:16These horses are an incredible find.
00:27:20But they also beg a question.
00:27:22Because if one was saddled up and ready to go, then where was its rider?
00:27:30They found no sign of anyone in the stables.
00:27:35Then, in 2020, archaeologists started to excavate a passageway under the villa.
00:27:41And they discovered human bodies.
00:27:46Locating an underground cavity, they recorded the process.
00:27:50As human remains were extracted for investigation.
00:27:56Once the bones had been removed and empty space was left,
00:27:59where a body would have been in 79 AD.
00:28:04They then poured plaster into the cavity.
00:28:08Carefully removing the surrounding ash,
00:28:10they were able to reveal the new plaster casts of two human victims.
00:28:16Never seen before.
00:28:20It was a remarkable discovery.
00:28:23From the bones, we've been able to establish these were two males.
00:28:27One in his early 20s and one in his 30s.
00:28:31The man in his 20s is the next person I'm investigating.
00:28:36Archaeologist Dr. Sophie Hay is helping me take a closer look at his remains.
00:28:43His spine, slightly compacted.
00:28:46So it kind of suggests that he was involved in manual labour.
00:28:50Possibly a slave.
00:28:52Obviously, spinal injuries aren't, you know, limited to slaves.
00:28:56But I think, you know, this one kind of does show at such an early age.
00:29:00And then the other gentleman is a bit older.
00:29:03It's been suggested that he's the master because he was wearing a finer tunic
00:29:08with a big sort of heavy mantle, a woollen mantle over the top.
00:29:13So they're obviously, you know, they've been trapped.
00:29:15But we know, there's this odd thing that we know that there's a horse
00:29:18who's saddled up and ready to go.
00:29:20So, you know, is there a chance that they were going to try to escape on that horse, do you think?
00:29:24Well, it certainly looks like that.
00:29:28And there's another remarkable discovery.
00:29:31A Roman chariot found under a portico.
00:29:36Basically, we're seeing it from the back.
00:29:38So here is the two wheels on either side, which have got iron trimming.
00:29:44So you could hear it coming, clattering down the paved roads.
00:29:49And then the central plaque in bronze with three reliefs on it.
00:29:53And this sort of brown, gunky stuff is all the remains of the volcanic eruption material.
00:30:00Which is holding everything in place, in place of the wood that is now decomposed.
00:30:04I know it's been described as a Lamborghini,
00:30:06but I think of it more as a sort of white Rolls Royce with ribbons,
00:30:09because the decorations on this give us a bit of a hint as to what it was used for.
00:30:15And they're all about love.
00:30:17They are.
00:30:17Yes, there's sort of quite a heavy erotic feel to them.
00:30:21Hot action going on there.
00:30:24It does feel like it's probably being prepared to be ready for a storm.
00:30:29Ready for some kind of marriage.
00:30:30Yes.
00:30:31There were garlands on the side.
00:30:34It's definitely not a utilitarian type vehicle.
00:30:37This is a sort of very special occasion.
00:30:39You probably don't use this every day to get from A to B.
00:30:44This chariot is intriguing,
00:30:46but I want to find out more about the young man we believe could have been a slave.
00:30:52What might he have been doing on the morning of the eruption?
00:30:56Well, we do have a few clues.
00:31:00Based on the vast vats of wine and agricultural buildings discovered at Civita Giuliana,
00:31:07we know that this was a working farm.
00:31:10Now, at this time, estates could generate really industrial amounts of produce,
00:31:15so for any slave, this would have been back-breaking work.
00:31:22Evidence for wine exported from Pompeii has been found right across the Roman Empire.
00:31:28It was big, big business, and any slave here would have been worked hard.
00:31:36It's no surprise he had a bad back, even in his 20s.
00:31:46Early in the morning of the eruption, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius,
00:31:50the bedrock under the vineyards was heating up.
00:31:53Water, held in the rock, was turning into steam.
00:32:00Any moment, something was going to give.
00:32:07In Herculaneum, the discovery of our soldier on the beach was extraordinary.
00:32:13Piecing together the evidence, we've now been able to link him
00:32:16to Rome's Praetorian fleet as a soldier and ship's carpenter.
00:32:23But nearby, archaeologists uncovered something even more astonishing,
00:32:27which finally explains Herculaneum's biggest mystery.
00:32:32What happened to the town's missing population?
00:32:37They uncovered a series of vaulted chambers, and what they found inside was truly shocking.
00:32:47Hundreds of skeletons.
00:32:50There are 286 people here, many of them hugging each other for protection.
00:32:59Archaeologists had found some of the missing victims of Herculaneum,
00:33:03apparently sheltering from the eruption as they waited to escape by sea.
00:33:09Today, these vaulted chambers house replicas of the original skeletons,
00:33:14laid out exactly as they were.
00:33:20All of the remains have been removed for conservation and research.
00:33:25Like our soldier, most are kept in the University Museum of Chieti
00:33:29in the care of Professor Luigi Capasso.
00:33:34I want to piece together the story of one of the most remarkable, a young woman.
00:33:41This is a young female, 20 years.
00:33:45On her skull, there's a curious dark lump like nothing I've ever seen before.
00:33:51We have a black mass on the skull.
00:33:56What is this?
00:33:58Well, this is metal.
00:34:00We discovered that through radiographic analysis that this is iron.
00:34:08I mean, is it some kind of hair ornament, or is it something else?
00:34:14Yes, a hair ornament, exactly this.
00:34:21It seems that our young woman was wearing some kind of iron comb that preserved her hair.
00:34:29Just so I've got this right, so the metal comb, the iron comb on her hair,
00:34:33has been melted onto her skull with this intense heat,
00:34:37and that's trapped her hair underneath, which is then mineralised somehow.
00:34:42So her fossilised hair is still there?
00:34:46Yes.
00:34:46Can you tell what her hairstyle was?
00:34:48Can you tell how she chose to dress her hair that morning?
00:34:52Yes, we can see this.
00:34:54Two millennia after, we can see exactly the way in which this hair was assembled.
00:35:04Miraculously, the iron has preserved enough hair to see her hairstyle.
00:35:10Plaited in a way fashionable for higher-class Roman women.
00:35:14That's just incredible, because it was so, I know, for the Roman women,
00:35:18it was so important what your hairstyle was like, because it said what class you were,
00:35:23how wealthy you were, you know, just kind of how you wanted to appear to the world.
00:35:28That's incredible.
00:35:32Further microscopic investigations revealed another intimate surprise.
00:35:38A lice egg.
00:35:40The lesions on the skull tell us our young woman had a really nasty case of nits.
00:35:47So she's scratching there because it's sort of driving her mad.
00:35:51Yes, exactly this.
00:35:54But there is something else that Luigi's discovered.
00:35:57Something even more shocking.
00:36:00A baby?
00:36:06I mean, it's incredible.
00:36:08It's so sad, but it's amazing that the bones have survived.
00:36:14It's clear the woman was pregnant at the time she died.
00:36:18And these are the bones of her unborn baby girl.
00:36:22Can you tell how old the baby was?
00:36:25So she could have given birth very, very soon.
00:36:30Yes, one month.
00:36:33I feel very honored that you've shared it with me.
00:36:37Honestly, this is incredible.
00:36:39And I'm so happy to see that you have shared it with me.
00:36:42And I'm so happy that you're sharing it with me.
00:36:45And you know, I've seen it on TV.
00:36:48I'm not a big fan of TV.
00:36:49I'm more of a fan of the big screen.
00:36:52Honestly, this is incredible to see.
00:36:55Truly, truly unique in the world.
00:37:01So, our young woman had a posh hairdo,
00:37:04she had lice, and she was eight months pregnant.
00:37:08I'm going to find out more about her life
00:37:11and try to discover why, on the day of the eruption,
00:37:14she ended up at the harbour.
00:37:2379 AD.
00:37:25Nine o'clock in the morning
00:37:27on the day of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
00:37:30For four days now,
00:37:32the region's been hit by increasing earth tremors.
00:37:41The seaside town of Herculaneum must have shut up shop
00:37:45with regular life put on hold as the tremors worsened.
00:37:49But what was this place like in normal times?
00:37:53Prior to the earthquakes,
00:37:55our pregnant woman might well have been out on these streets,
00:37:59preparing for the arrival of her baby.
00:38:03Which could have involved a lot of shopping,
00:38:06and Herculaneum was certainly rammed with shops.
00:38:11There was everything from perfume and ironmongery
00:38:14to all sorts of Mediterranean delicacies.
00:38:19So imagine these streets absolutely buzzing,
00:38:22packed with people and produce,
00:38:25a bit more like this downtown street in Naples.
00:38:28So I am channelling my inner ancient Roman
00:38:31and going in search of some of the supplies
00:38:34they recommended for pregnancy.
00:38:38There was plenty of Roman medical advice around
00:38:41that our pregnant woman might have been aware of.
00:38:44Some of it sensible, some of it pretty outwear.
00:38:49For morning sickness, oh my goodness, I needed help with that,
00:38:53a day's fast was recommended,
00:38:55followed by a rubdown with olive oil, which sounds lovely,
00:38:58and then very easily digestible food,
00:39:01so boiled eggs and a can of porridge and water
00:39:04with no wine allowed.
00:39:06Ciao! Ciao!
00:39:10If she'd hoped for a boy baby,
00:39:12then she might follow the advice of Pliny the Elder himself.
00:39:16To eat, er...
00:39:29Clearly a bit less cool for them these days.
00:39:36We know that our pregnant woman was going to have a daughter,
00:39:40so maybe cockerel's testicles weren't on her list.
00:39:47But one less controversial item has miraculously survived
00:39:52here in Herculaneum.
00:39:55What you're looking at is a 2,000-year-old crib for a baby.
00:40:01It's made of wood and it survived
00:40:04because the heat here was so ferocious,
00:40:07it flash-burnt anything that was made of wood.
00:40:10And there's actually been a chemical reaction,
00:40:13so it's carbonised,
00:40:15the minerals have actually physically changed their chemical compound,
00:40:19so you can see it's got this kind of sheen on it.
00:40:23So this crib has survived,
00:40:25and this would be exactly the kind of thing
00:40:28our poor young pregnant woman would have thought that she'd have needed.
00:40:34MUSIC
00:40:40Ten o'clock in the morning on the day of the eruption.
00:40:44In Pompeii, in the beautiful house where our little boy was found,
00:40:49he faced the day, dressed as usual.
00:40:54And fascinating new research reveals the details of exactly what he wore.
00:41:01The little boy's cast has just been 3D scanned,
00:41:04so we can tell really precisely what he was wearing on that morning.
00:41:08And it's this very short tunic that finishes well above the knee.
00:41:12But then look at it from another angle.
00:41:15We can tell that the cloth has been tied up on his left-hand shoulder.
00:41:19But look at his back, it's got rucked up,
00:41:23and as a mum, you know, you just want to tug it down and help him out.
00:41:28Remarkably, we now also know what his tunic was made of.
00:41:32The material's been analysed microscopically,
00:41:35and we know that it's made of linen.
00:41:38This is actually a fragment of material from Pompeii.
00:41:42You can see it's all been handmade.
00:41:44You can see the kind of weft and the warp there.
00:41:47Linen was really common in Pompeii.
00:41:49It was worn by well-to-do people,
00:41:51because it was a material that allowed your skin to breathe and to keep you cool.
00:41:56So we know that that little boy got dressed this morning as he always would have done,
00:42:01not knowing that it was going to be his last day alive.
00:42:07Whatever the plans were for his day, suddenly everything changed.
00:42:13Around 11 o'clock in the morning, there was the hiss of an explosion,
00:42:18and a cloud of ash appeared above Mount Vesuvius.
00:42:22Chris has been studying the evidence.
00:42:25There's actually a relatively small eruption.
00:42:28A blast of ash comes out.
00:42:30Before the big one?
00:42:31Before the big one, yeah.
00:42:33That's interesting, because you don't...
00:42:35I mean, well, with the records that we've got that survived,
00:42:37you don't hear about that. Nobody's writing about it.
00:42:39No, so exactly.
00:42:40This is one of the times when the geological record comes to our aid,
00:42:43because what we find here, east of Vesuvius,
00:42:46are ash deposits associated with that smaller initial eruption.
00:42:50But I mean, my goodness, if that's happening,
00:42:52there's no way the people in Pompeii and Herculaneum
00:42:55aren't going to notice that something's going on.
00:42:58It would have been a very, very worrying time.
00:43:04Just imagine the shock.
00:43:06Vesuvius hadn't shown any sign of activity for hundreds of years.
00:43:10Most people thought it was a mountain.
00:43:12Now that mountain had exploded.
00:43:23EXPLOSION
00:43:28The explosion would have triggered chaos and panic
00:43:31for all those we're following.
00:43:33The streets would have been filled with people
00:43:35pushing and shoving and panicking,
00:43:37while some thought the best strategy
00:43:39was to hunker down and try to brave it out.
00:43:45The soldier, the young woman, the little boy and the slave all stayed.
00:43:51It was a fatal mistake.
00:43:53The first explosion was only the starting gun.
00:43:57Then, close to noon, Vesuvius erupted.
00:44:08The top of the volcano's been blown off.
00:44:10It's actually fragmenting and forming pumice
00:44:12and we can see these bits flying out of the volcano here.
00:44:15I tell you, actually, what's really clear from this as well
00:44:18is that Aquilinum is closer,
00:44:20but it seems that Pompeii is getting the main hit.
00:44:23Exactly. Because of the atmospheric conditions,
00:44:25the wind direction at the time of the eruption,
00:44:28as we fly up into the clouds, you can imagine
00:44:30the whole of the sun would have been blotted out
00:44:33by this column of ash which rose up
00:44:35to about ten miles into the atmosphere.
00:44:38I mean, so these poor, poor people,
00:44:40so it's pretty much pitch black,
00:44:42they've got, even if the pumice is quite light,
00:44:44they're still being pelted with millions of rocks of pumice
00:44:48and they're desperately working out how to try to escape.
00:44:51Yeah, you either decide to escape
00:44:53or you actually decide to stay inside your house.
00:44:56Have you been next to a volcano when it's erupted, Chris?
00:45:00I have been.
00:45:01And what does it sound like?
00:45:03It sounds like nothing I've ever heard before in my entire life.
00:45:06It's just a loud booming noise,
00:45:08so almost like heavy artillery being let off.
00:45:11It must have felt like the end of the world.
00:45:14And for those in the volcano's path,
00:45:17it was now a desperate race to save themselves and their loved ones.
00:45:26At around noon on an autumn day in 79 AD,
00:45:30there was a deafening roar as Mount Vesuvius erupted.
00:45:36Ejecting millions of tonnes of volcanic debris into the atmosphere.
00:45:42One of the victims, whose story I'm following,
00:45:44seems to have been a soldier in the Praetorian Fleet.
00:45:50I'm standing on the headland right above ancient Mycenae,
00:45:53just across the bay from Vesuvius,
00:45:55where the fleet and around 10,000 troops,
00:45:58almost certainly including our soldier, were based.
00:46:01From here, he could have had a full apocalyptic view of the eruption.
00:46:07It looks rather like an umbrella pine,
00:46:09for it rises right up on a kind of trunk
00:46:12and then splits off into branches.
00:46:14Some bits are white, others are blotched and murky,
00:46:17depending on how much ash has been carried in its blast.
00:46:24I mean, can you imagine the fear they must have felt?
00:46:28But, seen from Herculaneum in the shadow of the volcano,
00:46:32the cloud of debris must have been truly terrifying.
00:46:45Just think of our young pregnant woman,
00:46:47desperately trying to protect herself and her unborn child.
00:46:51All that could have been on her mind,
00:46:53was that she needed to get out or take cover.
00:46:59She, and nearly everyone else in the town, had the same idea.
00:47:03We know that they headed for the docks,
00:47:05which offered the possibility of escape.
00:47:10Can you imagine the wave of relief
00:47:13that our young pregnant woman felt once she'd made it down here?
00:47:16Because these days, it's hard to imagine
00:47:19what our young pregnant woman felt once she'd made it down here,
00:47:22because these things are a bit like a bomb shelter
00:47:25and built with incredibly thick walls and roof.
00:47:28So, maybe, just maybe, she relaxed for one moment,
00:47:32thinking that at last she was safe.
00:47:37Initially, she was,
00:47:39because high-altitude winds were blowing the cloud of pumice and ash
00:47:44away from her town, Herculaneum, and towards Pompeii.
00:47:48But there was at least one person in Herculaneum
00:47:51who didn't follow the crowds down to the docks.
00:47:54And he's the last of the people whose story I want to uncover.
00:47:59He was discovered by archaeologists in rather mysterious circumstances.
00:48:06This is the Augustalium, a kind of state-recognised members' club.
00:48:10This one was founded in honour of the Emperor Augustus Caesar.
00:48:15It was for very influential people in the town,
00:48:17but what makes this special is that the members here
00:48:20were mainly freedmen, so men who'd formerly been slaves.
00:48:28At the centre of this pillared hall stands a shrine.
00:48:37This is a shrine to Hercules,
00:48:40the kind of action-man superhero of the ancient worlds,
00:48:44and he was really important to Herculaneum.
00:48:46The story went that he'd actually founded the city and given it its name.
00:48:52But there's something around here I have got to show you.
00:48:57The real secret here is that it's also the final resting place
00:49:01of another victim of Vesuvius.
00:49:07Honestly, I am so lucky, gracias, gracias, Sandra,
00:49:11to get access in here, because people are never normally allowed in.
00:49:14So just get a sense of where we are.
00:49:16So the shrine's to my right there,
00:49:18and this is this slightly strange, mysterious room
00:49:22with bars on the windows, and there's something remarkable inside.
00:49:33OK, so just so you can understand what you're looking at,
00:49:37this in the corner of the room is a bed,
00:49:40and this is the original wood around the edge.
00:49:43But in the middle, there are the remains of a body,
00:49:47and we know this was a man.
00:49:50There are just enough remains to make out that he laid here.
00:49:55Who is this man, though? It's all slightly odd.
00:49:58It doesn't quite add up, because this is a pretty posh room,
00:50:01but you've got bars on the window there.
00:50:04So maybe he was some kind of a caretaker.
00:50:07This could have been a treasury for the club.
00:50:14As the eruption began, he may have heard commotion in the street outside
00:50:18as people rushed past in panic to the docks.
00:50:23He certainly chose not to go down with the other people at the port,
00:50:27so maybe he just felt it was his duty to stay.
00:50:35At this point in Herculaneum,
00:50:37only a light dusting of ash was falling on the streets outside,
00:50:41so he may have felt protected.
00:50:46Pretty likely, watching the eruption from the other side of the bay,
00:50:50was our soldier and the rest of the fleet.
00:50:53And it's at this point that we think he enters the story,
00:50:57as the Praetorian fleet was launched to take part
00:51:00in one of the most daring rescue missions of the ancient world.
00:51:05The evidence of his belongings suggests our soldier
00:51:08was a specialist military carpenter in the fleet
00:51:11and that he carried his tools ready for any repairs that might be needed.
00:51:18Around mid-afternoon, he'd have set off with the fleet
00:51:21across the Bay of Naples,
00:51:23but already the boat was being bombarded with pumice and ash
00:51:27and burning rock, so he might have had to use his carpentry skills.
00:51:31Now, pumice actually floats in the water
00:51:34and it forms these kind of thick shoals like rafts
00:51:37that wind up against the hull of the boats.
00:51:39For the sailors, it must have been terrifying.
00:51:45The ships were around 40 metres long,
00:51:48but even with over 200 oarsmen, they only travelled at eight knots,
00:51:53taking three and a half hours to reach the other side of the bay,
00:51:56so it was probably late in the afternoon by the time they got there.
00:52:01And conditions were deteriorating rapidly.
00:52:07Minute by minute, the pumice fall was getting heavier
00:52:10and the visibility would have been getting worse and worse.
00:52:13By the time they approached the coast, it was almost as dark as night.
00:52:21But how could a massive warship dock at a tiny seaside town like Herculaneum?
00:52:27A clue's been found on the beach.
00:52:32Close to where the soldier was discovered,
00:52:34archaeologists found this.
00:52:38It's a boat that capsized and then was thrown up onto the beach.
00:52:42Now, we know it's not just an ordinary fishing boat
00:52:45because this is an official naval design,
00:52:48so it feels pretty certain to me
00:52:50that this is a boat employed on that rescue mission.
00:52:58Boats like this could have been launched from the large warships
00:53:02and given his special set of skills,
00:53:04our soldier was perfectly placed to aid the rescue mission.
00:53:08He may have been on the beach itself helping with the evacuation
00:53:12as our pregnant woman desperately waited in line.
00:53:19In Pompeii, the fall of volcanic debris
00:53:22was much more severe than it was in Herculaneum.
00:53:26The ash cloud was being blown in Pompeii's direction.
00:53:31Rocks and pumice rained down relentlessly,
00:53:34clogging the roads and smashing in roofs.
00:53:39At the villa of Cavite Giuliana, half a mile outside Pompeii,
00:53:44were the slave I've been investigating and another man.
00:53:48Evidence from the villa's stables
00:53:50suggests they'd saddled up a horse ready to escape.
00:53:54But with no let-up in the bombardment,
00:53:56the horses must have been wild with panic.
00:54:01The position of the men's corpses suggests
00:54:03they'd sought shelter in a basement passageway,
00:54:06deciding to wait here for the bombardment to end.
00:54:10A decision that was to prove fatal,
00:54:13because things now took a turn for the worse.
00:54:20So around 8pm in the evening, things really, really kick off
00:54:23and we actually have this acceleration in material
00:54:26coming out of the volcano.
00:54:28And at this point, this column of ash
00:54:30is reaching about 20 miles up into the atmosphere.
00:54:3320 miles? Yeah. 20 miles!
00:54:36I mean, that's just so terrible.
00:54:38Yeah, all of this material is raining down upon Pompeii.
00:54:44As night fell, Vesuvius continued to spew out vast quantities of rock.
00:54:51In Pompeii, our little boy was hunkered down
00:54:54inside of one of the town's grandest houses.
00:54:58The adult woman was found with a lot of cat on her,
00:55:01surely waiting for the chance to make a break for it.
00:55:07As Vesuvius erupted, the family must have been speechless with terror.
00:55:11I mean, material is coming out of the volcano
00:55:13at around 500 miles an hour,
00:55:15but we don't know why they didn't leave.
00:55:18Were they trying to save the beauty in their home
00:55:20or were they just desperately trying to find somewhere to shelter?
00:55:29We know from the positions of their remains
00:55:31that as time drew on,
00:55:33the little boy and other victims sought safety in a stairwell.
00:55:39The eruption had started around noon
00:55:41and kept spewing out pumice and scalding ash
00:55:45through the night and into the early hours of the next day.
00:55:48Pompeii and the surrounding countryside
00:55:50were now covered in three metres of volcanic debris.
00:55:54Then, at around four o'clock in the morning,
00:55:57the assault stopped.
00:56:01But this signalled the beginning of a new and deadly phenomenon.
00:56:05This huge column of ash had built up in the atmosphere
00:56:09and now it starts to collapse because it can't be supported anymore
00:56:12by material coming out of the volcano
00:56:14and that generates something called a pyroclastic flow.
00:56:17So it's basically that collapsing down the side of the mountain.
00:56:21So as it collapses down, the ash, the rocks,
00:56:23the gases are all brought with it
00:56:25and they are travelling very, very quickly,
00:56:27so several tens of miles an hour,
00:56:29maybe even a few hundred miles an hour,
00:56:31and it's hot, several hundreds of degrees Celsius.
00:56:36A few minutes after the column of ash collapsed,
00:56:39a mighty pyroclastic flow barrelled down the side of the mountain,
00:56:44straight towards Herculaneum and our soldier,
00:56:47our pregnant woman and our caretaker.
00:56:56EXPLOSION
00:56:59The eruption of Mount Vesuvius had begun at around 11am
00:57:04on an autumn day in 79AD.
00:57:08Finally, at around 4am the next day, it seemed to have stopped.
00:57:14But this was just the beginning of the deadliest phase.
00:57:18The 20-mile-high column of volcanic debris
00:57:21had actually collapsed under its own weight,
00:57:24triggering hot, dense gas, ash and rocks
00:57:27to cascade down the sides of the volcano at high speed.
00:57:31A pyroclastic surge.
00:57:35A few minutes after the bombardment from the sky stopped,
00:57:39the first surge piled down a river valley
00:57:42at 50 miles an hour towards the seaside town of Herculaneum.
00:57:48In the front line was a man, possibly a resident caretaker,
00:57:53seeking refuge in his room.
00:57:56All that we know about him is that in those final moments
00:57:59he chose to throw himself down and lie with his face buried into the bed.
00:58:04Maybe praying to Hercules,
00:58:06maybe just desperately trying to get some refuge from that hot gas and ash.
00:58:12In an instant, this building was engulfed
00:58:15as volcanic debris poured in through the windows.
00:58:19We know it became hotter than an oven.
00:58:23What little remains of this man's body
00:58:26reveals just how intense the heat was.
00:58:29This is his femur of his leg,
00:58:32and most of his body material has vaporised,
00:58:35but the fat has left this kind of stain in the ash and rocks.
00:58:41He's lying face down,
00:58:44and we know that he suffered extraordinary heat.
00:58:48There was a kind of heat shockwave here of around 520 degrees centigrade,
00:58:54and what that did is it actually exploded his skull.
00:59:01Death would have been virtually instant.
00:59:11The pyroclastic flow raced on down through the town
00:59:15to the docks where the inhabitants of the city were still trying to escape.
00:59:19One of the people down here on this beach was our soldier.
00:59:23Now, we don't know what he saw or heard,
00:59:26but we do know that the force of the pyroclastic flow
00:59:30smashed him to the ground, burning his flesh right off.
00:59:36The sea vaporised.
00:59:39His exposed bones were scorched by the scalding ash.
00:59:43Black marks show where the bones were hit directly by flying, burning debris.
00:59:50There was nothing he could have done to save himself.
00:59:56Nearby in one of these chambers,
00:59:58our young woman might have felt the heat of the pyroclastic flow
01:00:02just seconds before burning ash and gas poured through the doors.
01:00:09The walls of the chambers shielded the intense heat,
01:00:13so instead of stripping her flesh, she would have baked.
01:00:18Breathing the hot mixture of gases into her lungs
01:00:22would have killed her by asphyxiation in just two breaths.
01:00:29Herculaneum was covered in around three metres of hot ash,
01:00:34but this was just the first wave.
01:00:37In an hour, a second surge hit the town,
01:00:40burying it in a further two metres of ash.
01:00:44The pyroclastic flows, they just keep coming.
01:00:46Yeah, they continue.
01:00:48There was a third flow here which almost reached Pompeii.
01:00:51So that's interesting.
01:00:53So the Civita Giuliana is just here in the countryside,
01:00:55so that's going to be what took out those two men and the horses.
01:00:58Exactly.
01:01:01Major new research by Italian volcanologists
01:01:04and the British Geological Survey
01:01:06reveals more details about the flow than ever before.
01:01:10We now know that as it approached Pompeii,
01:01:13it slowed and cooled dramatically.
01:01:17We're talking about temperatures of probably around about 100 degrees Celsius.
01:01:21But even so, does that mean it's worse for them?
01:01:24Does that mean it's going to take people slightly longer to die?
01:01:27It means you're not incinerated,
01:01:29but if you're being hit by a fast-moving flow
01:01:32containing gas which is 100 degrees Celsius,
01:01:34it's going to kill you more slowly.
01:01:36So the estimates here are that some of the people
01:01:39could have taken about 15 minutes to die.
01:01:41Awful.
01:01:44In Villa Civita Giuliana, on the outskirts of Pompeii,
01:01:48our slave and another man had left a horse saddled up in the stables,
01:01:52ready to escape,
01:01:54and they sheltered in a passageway in the house.
01:01:57Around 6.30am, without warning,
01:02:01they were overwhelmed by gas and ash
01:02:04swirling at around 100 degrees.
01:02:08After many minutes, they died.
01:02:12The heat was ferocious, but nothing like it was in Herculaneum.
01:02:17So here, body tissue could survive long enough for ash to fall on it
01:02:22and form a kind of casing,
01:02:24which is why centuries later archaeologists have been able to make casts like this.
01:02:32One revealing detail that we have is the posture of the older man.
01:02:36He was holding his fists in front of him,
01:02:39a position often called the boxer's pose,
01:02:42the body's automatic response to heat stress.
01:02:47Pompeii itself had actually survived until now.
01:02:53But around 7.30am to 8.00am,
01:02:57three devastating pyroclastic surges,
01:03:00one after the other, buried the town,
01:03:04killing all who remained.
01:03:07The family of our little boy was found sheltering in the stairwell.
01:03:11He was a metre or so away, somehow separated.
01:03:15We now know that in temperatures of 100 degrees,
01:03:19these victims of Pompeii would have endured
01:03:23close on 15 minutes of boiling hot ash
01:03:27before they finally died.
01:03:31It seems our family group suffered the same terrible fate as those two men.
01:03:36The mother with the little child's brother or sister on her lap,
01:03:41but our little boy died alone.
01:03:49The sixth and final pyroclastic flow still had enough energy in it
01:03:53to come hurtling across the water here,
01:03:56and Pliny the Younger described what he saw.
01:03:59I looked around. A dense cloud was spreading across the earth like a flood.
01:04:04Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless light,
01:04:07but as though a lamp had been extinguished.
01:04:10You could hear the screams of women, the cries of children
01:04:14and the shouts of men, all calling out for their families,
01:04:17desperately trying to recognise them by their voices.
01:04:25The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD
01:04:29expended the energy of 100,000 atomic bombs.
01:04:34Since then, it's erupted several times
01:04:37and is now monitored 24 hours a day by sensors around the crater.
01:04:44Over two million people, including the whole population of Naples,
01:04:49live within Vesuvius's range.
01:04:53Fortunately for them, they can rely on scientists
01:04:56to identify the danger signs of an eruption.
01:05:00Back in 79 AD, the only people who survived
01:05:04were those who had an instinct to get out before Vesuvius exploded.
01:05:10But there were plenty of those who did.
01:05:16Our poor victims suffered desperate ends.
01:05:21But theirs isn't the only story.
01:05:24Most people from Pompeii and Herculaneum actually managed to escape,
01:05:29and many of them ended up here in central Naples
01:05:32in what was the ancient city of Neapolis.
01:05:35Now, we know that because we have their names
01:05:38in written records and on stone inscriptions,
01:05:41and many of those families lived here for generations.
01:05:46So it could just be that the descendants of the survivors of Vesuvius
01:05:52are still walking these streets.
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