Vesuvius boiled the blood of its victims and blew their skulls | Smart News

In 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted, covering hot ashes in the nearby Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and preserving the victims in realistic poses. And as terrible as it can be smothered by the ashes, a new study suggests that choking was not the cause of many deaths.

Archaeologists have discovered that some people have died in a pyroclastic wave, a wave of overheated gas and hot ashes that literally boiled their blood and blown up their skulls, Neel V. Patel reports. Popular science.

The evidence comes from boat houses at Herculaneum, a seaside resort for wealthy Romans about 11 miles from Pompeii. In the 1980s and 1990s, archaeologists began to discover the remains of several hundred people who had huddled in shelters at the water's edge. wait for the eruption. For hours, the volcano, which had not erupted for centuries, threw ashes and pieces of pumice into the air, forcing many to evacuate or take refuge in solid structures. But it seems that a stream of overheated gas has swept the mountain hundreds of kilometers to the hour and blinded the inhabitants of the rooms located at the edge of the water.

The new study, published in the journal PLoS One, presents more evidence that the victims of the boat house were killed by the heat, not suffocating the fall of ashes. George Dvorsky at Gizmodo reports that researchers examined 100 bone and skull specimens using special types of spectrometry capable of detecting very low concentrations of minerals. The team examined strange red and black residues found on the bones, determining that they had unusually high iron concentrations. These types of concentrations occur in two types of situations: when metal objects are subjected to intense heat and when the blood is boiled.

The skulls of the victims also showed signs indicating that they had been subjected to intense heat. In particular, many caps showed signs of explosion and residue. The 400 to 900 degree heat is believed to have boiled the liquid in the victims' heads, causing their skulls to explode and their brain to instantly turn to ashes.

Patel to Popular Science reports that, although death is pretty horrible, it was probably happily fast. As the inhabitants of Herculaneum were closer to the mountains than those of Pompeii, the heat was more intense, said Pier Paolo Petrone, lead author of the study of the University Hospital Federico II in Naples , in Italy. Previous studies have shown that the inhabitants of Pompeii were probably also victims of a "thermal shock". As these victims were further away, the heat was only 200 to 250 degrees and they did not suffer the same types of injuries as those of Herculeneaum. GizmodoDvorsky reports that many ash corpses in Pompeii are wrapped in what archaeologists call the "pugilist" position, probably because the heat has caused the contraction of their muscle fibers. At Herculeneaum, however, the bodies seem more naturalistic, probably because the intense heat reduced their muscles to ashes before they had time to snuggle up.

Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, volcanologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome who did not participate in the study, tells Popular sciencePatel that the paper does not definitely show that the victims of the boat house died of heat. He points out that something else could have killed them, then their blood and brain boiled some time after death. It is even possible that the black and red residue was caused by metal on the body of the victim and further studies are needed.

Whatever the case may be, the work highlights one of the neglected dangers of volcanoes. While many people focus on ash clouds and slow rolling lava, the actual damage comes from Pyroclastic flows of gas and ash unleashed by an eruption. It is estimated that the eruption of Vesuvius (79 AD) was 100,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs launched on Japan at the end of the Second World War.

It's rather scary considering that the modern city of Naples, a city of 3 million people, is about 12 km from Vesuvius, which has a tendency to explode every 2,000 years or so. You do the math.

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