Pompeii DNA evidence suggests victims not as they seemed

7 November 2024, 18:14 | Updated: 7 November 2024, 19:32

Some of the victims buried in Pompeii following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been wrongly identified, new evidence suggests.

Researchers used DNA testing on 14 casts of victims found in the ruins of the Roman city destroyed in 79 AD.

Using DNA taken from fragmented skeletal remains, they concluded an adult holding a child and wearing a golden bracelet, long thought to have been a mother, was actually a man unrelated to the child.

It was one of several surprises in what had become known as "the house of the golden bracelet".

Nearby were the bodies of another adult and child thought to be the rest of their nuclear family.

But DNA evidence showed all four were male and not related to one another.

Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany said it shows "the story that was long spun around these individuals" was wrong.

Ms Mittnik said: "We were able to disprove or challenge some of the previous narratives built upon how these individuals were kind of found in relation to each other.

"It opens up different interpretations for who these people might have been."

Another discovery was that at least one of two people locked in an embrace, long assumed to be sisters or a mother and daughter, was a man.

Researchers also found Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds but mainly descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants, illustrating how much people moved around and the multi-cultural dynamic of the Roman Empire.

Following the disaster, bodies buried in mud and ash eventually decomposed, leaving spaces where they used to be.

Casts were created from the voids in the late 1800s.

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Researchers focused on 14 casts undergoing restoration, and by using genetic material preserved for nearly two millennia, hoped to determine the sex, ancestry and genetic relationships between the victims.

The team, which also includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, published its research on Thursday in the journal Current Biology.