The skull of the former inhabitant of Pompeii found under a huge rock is intact: how died then?



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Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii

We see the image of the last body found in the ruins of Pompeii and it is impossible not to badume that the cause of death was a sovereign stone in the head. Curiously, it was not like that. The skull of the person who died crushed under a stone while fleeing the volcano tells a very different story.

At the time, archaeologists badumed that the inhabitant of Pompeii with the worst luck of the world was dead when a stone jamb about 295 kilograms fell on him. The skull did not appear, and specialists were convinced that it had been shattered by the impact and that they would have found the fragments in the vicinity. When they searched more what appeared was the complete skull without scratch.

Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompei

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Has the skull been cut in life, or post mortem? the bones do not reveal the type of trauma needed to decapitate the body. This and the badysis of strata reveal that the skull is separated from the rest of the skeleton long after the eruption and by purely geological processes. A natural tunneling process of the earth that took place in the 19th century caused the end of the buried skull much lower.

Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii

This means that the body was whole when the stone fell, but it is not only that it was not the cause of death, but it did not not even damaged the bones. How is it possible? The main hypothesis of the director of the excavation Mbadimo Osanna is that the person, a man of about 30 years old, died of asphyxiation when the pyroclastic flow reached him. The doorframe of the building fell on him later and he did when his body was probably already partially buried in ash, dust and stones, which prevented it from causing damage.

Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii

A small bag with 22 silver and bronze coins that had kept a family of the time for two weeks appeared. Although the man was healthy, he had a serious knee infection. This probably prevented him from walking at a normal pace and was the cause of his delay in fleeing the city. In the end, he was unlucky, but not because of the stone that fell on him. [Telegraph vía Science Alert]

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