I Will Never Again Destroy Your Land With an Earthquake.

Mountain Vesuvius, a volcano nearly the Bay of Naples in Italy, has erupted more than 50 times. Its most famous eruption took place in the twelvemonth 79 A.D., when the volcano cached the ancient Roman city of Pompeii nether a thick carpet of volcanic ash. The dust "poured across the land" like a flood, 1 witness wrote, and shrouded the metropolis in "a darkness…similar the blackness of closed and unlighted rooms." Ii g people died, and the city was abandoned for nigh as many years. When a group of explorers rediscovered the site in 1748, they were surprised to find that–underneath a thick layer of dust and debris–Pompeii was more often than not intact. The buildings, artifacts and skeletons left backside in the cached city have taught us a smashing deal about everyday life in the aboriginal world.

Life in Pompeii

Greek settlers fabricated the town part of the Hellenistic sphere in the 8th century B.C. An independently-minded town, Pompeii fell nether the influence of Rome in the 2nd century B.C. and eventually the Bay of Naples became an attraction for wealthy vacationers from Rome who relished the Campania coastline.

By the turn of the beginning century A.D., the town of Pompeii, located most five miles from the mountain, was a flourishing resort for Rome's almost distinguished citizens. Elegant houses and elaborate villas lined the paved streets. Tourists, townspeople and slaves bustled in and out of small factories and artisans' shops, taverns and cafes, and brothels and bathhouses. People gathered in the 20,000-seat arena and lounged in the open up-air squares and marketplaces. On the eve of that fateful eruption in 79 A.D., scholars gauge that there were about 12,000 people living in Pompeii and almost equally many in the surrounding region.

Mount Vesuvius

The Vesuvius volcano did not form overnight, of grade. Vesuvius volcano is part of the Campanian volcanic arc that stretches along the convergence of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates on the Italian peninsula and had been erupting for thousands of years. In about 1780 B.C., for example, an unusually violent eruption (known today every bit the "Avellino eruption") shot millions of tons of superheated lava, ash and rocks about 22 miles into the sky. That prehistoric ending destroyed almost every hamlet, house and farm within xv miles of the mountain.

Villagers around the volcano had long learned to live with their volatile surroundings. Fifty-fifty afterwards a massive convulsion struck the Campania region in 63 A.D.–a convulse that, scientists at present sympathise, offered a alert rumble of the disaster to come–people notwithstanding flocked to the shores of the Bay of Naples. Pompeii grew more than crowded every yr.

79 A.D.

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Sixteen years afterward that telltale earthquake, in either August or October 79 A.D. (more than recent evidence suggests the eruption took identify in October), Mount Vesuvius erupted again. The nail sent a plume of ashes, pumice and other rocks, and scorching-hot volcanic gases then high into the sky that people could see information technology for hundreds of miles around. (The writer Pliny the Younger, who watched the eruption from across the bay, compared this "deject of unusual size and appearance" to a pino tree that "rose to a great height on a sort of body and then carve up off into branches"; today, geologists refer to this type of volcano as a "Plinean eruption.")

As information technology cooled, this tower of debris drifted to world: showtime the fine-grained ash, so the lightweight chunks of pumice and other rocks. It was terrifying–"I believed I was perishing with the earth," Pliny wrote, "and the world with me"–only non yet lethal: About Pompeiians had enough of time to flee.

For those who stayed behind, yet, conditions before long grew worse. As more and more ash roughshod, it clogged the air, making it hard to breathe. Buildings collapsed. And so, a "pyroclastic surge"–a 100-miles-per-60 minutes surge of superheated poison gas and pulverized stone–poured downward the side of the mount and swallowed everything and everyone in its path.

By the time the Vesuvius eruption sputtered to an end the next mean solar day, Pompeii was buried under millions of tons of volcanic ash. About 2,000 Pompeiians were dead, but the eruption killed as many every bit 16,000 people overall. Some people drifted back to town in search of lost relatives or holding, but in that location was non much left to find. Pompeii, forth with the neighboring boondocks of Herculaneum and a number of villas in the area, was abandoned for centuries.

Rediscovering Pompeii

Pompeii remained mostly untouched until 1748, when a group of explorers looking for ancient artifacts arrived in Campania and began to dig. They found that the ashes had acted every bit a marvelous preservative: Underneath all that dust, Pompeii was nigh exactly as it had been almost 2,000 years earlier. Its buildings were intact. Skeletons were frozen correct where they'd fallen. Everyday objects and household appurtenances littered the streets. Later archaeologists even uncovered jars of preserved fruit and loaves of bread!

Many scholars say that the excavation of Pompeii played a major role in the neo-Classical revival of the 18th century. Europe's wealthiest and nearly fashionable families displayed fine art and reproductions of objects from the ruins, and drawings of Pompeii'due south buildings helped shape the architectural trends of the era. For example, wealthy British families often congenital "Etruscan rooms" that mimicked those in Pompeiian villas.

Today, the digging of Pompeii has been going on for most 3 centuries, and scholars and tourists remain but as fascinated by the urban center's eerie ruins as they were in the 18th century.

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/pompeii

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