When Vesubio erupted in 79, Avalanches of ash and pumice stone They covered Pompeii, displacing about 15,000 inhabitants and killing at least 1,500 more.
The volcanic remains “spilled all over the earth,” Roman lawyer Plinio the Younger wrote, and They covered the city with darkness “Like the black and light -free rooms.”
In two days, Pompeii had disappeared, leaving little more than a legend until 1738, when The casual discovery of a water channel motivated the first deliberate excavation.
In his travel diary at the end of the 18th century, he trip to Italy, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed that no calamity in history had given greater entertainment to posterity that the eruption that had buried Pompeii.
For academics and Salon archaeologiststhis entertainment included discussing virtually all facets of the disaster.
They still do not agree on the day the Vesuvio erupted, the height of The umbrella -shaped cloud nor the duration and aggressiveness of the explosions.
Two new research projects add firewood to the fire. A report published by the Pompeya Archaeological Park resurrected the belief, previously widely accepted, that Cataclys began to develop on August 24the date proposed by Plinio, who was 17 when he witnessed the event from a country house located on the other side of the Naples Bay.
His letters to the tacit historian, written more than 25 years after the fact, are The only first -hand story that survives and the only documents that offer a precise date.
We no longer have the original letters, only Translations and copies transcriptsthe first of which was carried out in the 5th century.
“Many manuscripts of Pliny letters have reached us with different dates,” said Classicist Daisy Dunn.
His 2019 Plinio Biography, The shadow of the Vesubiois the definitive guide on him and his uncle, the naturalist Plinio the Elder, who died during the eruption. “On August 24 he was chosen as the safest date on the basis of textual evidence,” said Dunn.
When you stick to Plinio, The archaeological park diluted part of the enthusiasm Recent for October 24 as a possible start date of the eruption, a theory that had been promoted by the discovery in 2018 of a graffiti fragment on a wall of the newly excavated garden house on the site.
Garabato in Carbonilla records a date that is translated as October 17 in The modern calendarwhich would indicate that the eruption could have occurred after that date.
The finding, which did not specify the year, seemed to corroborate other clues found in the excavations that pointed to a colder climate than that is usual in August: Non -mature autumn fruits as chestnuts and grenades; Heavy wool clothes found in the bodies; He came in sealed jugs, indicating that the grape harvest was over; and also wood braziers in the houses.
Massimo Osanna, general director of the Park at the time of discovery, was convinced that The graffiti had been scribbated distractedly A week before the explosion.
The archaeological findings in Pompeya reveal their emeblematic sites, such as the balconies alley.“This spectacular finding finally allows us to confidence the disaster,” he said. Dunn seemed unlikely that Plinio had forgotten such a transcendental date; However, he said, “in my opinion, the traditional date of August 24 is too early in the year to be successful. ”
The dating game
The recent change of course of the park, from October to August, was based partly on a forensic analysis of the Pliny letters made by Ped Foss, a classicist from the Depauw University in Indiana. For his 2022 Pliny book and the eruption of Vesubio, Foss studied 79 old manuscripts of hand -copied cards And he drew a map of how textual errors had been aggravated.
He concluded that a simple error of the copyist, committed in the 1420s, by changing an “U” for an “n” had resulted in the date of Incorrect eruption of November 1. The error appeared in the second printed edition of Plinio’s letters, in 1474, and gave rise to more erroneous, misunderstanding and incorrect uses.
In the twentieth century, seven different possibilities circulated: eight, counting on November 9, that Mark Twain proposed when he passed in Innocent abroadhis travel story of 1869.
“The numerous options gave a doubt about what Plinio had really written, but when examining them, I could discard each one from The wrong alternatives”Said Foss.
It also ruled out each of the archaeological alternatives to August 24, some of which, for him, yerote on The basis of evidence and others, for a reasoning defect.
He argued that Granada peels were used to dye, not to eat; that the Romans commonly used braziers to cook, not only to warm up; that wool clothes was the usual team of Roman firefighters; and that agricultural practices and Roman storage allowed the conservation of fruits outside their natural harvest seasons.
Regarding the scribble of the Garden House, on October 12, 2023, researchers hired by the successor of Osanna, Gabriel Zuch-Triegel, left Your own message in Carbonilla on the same wall where the graffiti appeared. Ten months later, on August 24, the written text was still perfectly readable.
“Registration could have been placed on the wall during the month of October of any number of previous years,” said Foss.
And with this, Goodbye to the illusion of being able to date disaster With absolute security.
Chronology of the eruption
Claudio Scarpati, volcanologist from the Federico II University of Naples, is In favor of the traditional date. “In my opinion, the eruption took place in August, on a sunny day,” he said. Scarpati is the main author of two recent studies on catastrophe published in The Journal of the Geological Society.
One of them included A time reconstruction per hour which extended the chronology of the 19 hours previously calculated to 32.
The other revealed A dynamic sequence With 17 “different pyroclastic density currents”, many of them not previously documented.
Pyroclastic currents are hot mixtures of rapid movement of volcanic particles (ashes, pumling and gas stone lava fragments) that flow according to their Density in relation to the environment. Scarpati said that, contrary to popular belief, the Pompeyans were not buried by molten lava or poisoned by gases.
“It did not come washes in Pompeya, and the gas was predominantly vaporized water and, to a lesser extent, carbon dioxide,” he said. “According to our studies, the victims died mainly from the asphyxiation caused by ash inhalation“He added.
To determine the distribution and volume of the layers of ash and pumice stone, the team measured the thickness of the layers on an area of 2,007 square kilometers around Mount Vesubio. The deposits recorded increasingly spectacular explosions and violent of the volcano.
At noon on the first day, Vesuvio began to expel a column of volcanic rock and gas fragments, known as eruption column. The fungus cloud that Plinio observed at 13 was typical of what is now known as Plinian eruption, in honor of its detailed testimony.
Scarpati said that the first currents had fluid to the city of Herculano, west of Vesubio, carrying an intense heat that basically calcined the inhabitants And, in a documented case, he turned the human fabric into glass, a process known as vitrification.
In Pompeya, located south of the volcano, the currents were colder and only the last eight penetrated the city. During the first 17 hours, said Scarpati, Pompeya was covered with pumice lapilli from the column, which fluctuated as A gigantic source With twelve different explosions. At 14, the volcano began throwing pumice stone mixed with gas.
During the next four hours, The roofs began to collapse Under the weight of the pumice Lapilli, which caused some support walls to be crumbled.
After 17 hours, Volcanic debris in Pompeii were up to 2.70 meters thick. A sufficient amount had been expelled at that time to bury Manhattan about 137 meters deep, equivalent to a 45 -story building.
The eruption reached its peak when The column reached 34 kilometers highat approximately 1 in the morning of the second day.
“The column rose while its density was less than the air, like a balloon,” said Scarpati. At dawn, huge amounts of fine ash And pumice stone collapsed the eruptive column, forming pyroclastic currents.
During a brief pause, the Pompeanos presumably tried to flee as they could from the city. Then, shortly after 7 in the morning, the thirteenth and the most lethal occurred: a thick mixture of ashes spilled for nine hours, Spreading death along 26 kilometers of plain and even the Lattari mountains.
Many victims of the volcano were found in the streets of Pompeya buried in this layer.
Around 16, the magma of the volcano duct interacted with the groundwater, which caused it to disintegrate in fine ash. No human remains were found in any of the layers after the 13th, which for Scarpati would indicate that The morning devastation had not left survivors. The eruption ceased at 20.
Paul Cole, volcanologist at the University of Plymouth in England, who did not participate in the project, said: “The work provides a more detailed chronology of the events that occurred 2,000 years ago and also provides new tests of How can the danger caused by these large and explosive eruptions vary even during its course. ”
Discussions around Vesuvio may continue indefinitely, but unlike Plinio’s letters, The geological history of the eruption It seems to have been written in stone.
