New DNA test of Pompeii victims just shattered long held beliefs

Scientists have just shattered centuries of fantasy surrounding Pompeii with a single study. Eighteen genetics and biology experts from across America and Italy have conducted DNA tests on casts of people who perished in the historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, when Pompeii suffered several days of ash rains, lava flows and earthquakes. Their results, which appeared yesterday in Current Biology, disprove long-held beliefs about the people who experienced this disaster.

Pompeii was discovered in 1599 when the architect Domenico Fontana came across its ruins in the middle of an infrastructure project. Legend has it that Fontana covered up the discovery because he found certain frescoes too explicit. Proper excavations did not begin until 1748. An inscription unearthed in 1763 identified the site.

The ancient city continues to fascinate, thanks to the human stories that still emerge from its remains even today (in addition to the unexpected structures and fascinating murals that the site still provides). In the 19th century, archaeologists began to bring these stories to life and immortalize the victims of the disaster by making casts of their bodies. There are hundreds of these, many containing bio matter. They are often exhibited to illustrate the narratives that well-meaning experts have invented and projected onto them.

A cast from Pompeii’s Villa of Mysteries. Photo: Alissa Mittnik.

Scientists have performed DNA tests on other human and animal remains from Pompeii over the years. But the new study marks the first time anyone has performed such tests on the casts.

“We took samples from 14 plaster casts that were being restored and from which we could easily remove bone samples embedded in the plaster because they had previous damage,” Harvard geneticist Alissa Mittnik, the study’s leader, told me by email. “We were also particularly interested in these individuals because some testable narratives had previously been proposed for their identities and relationships. Ultimately, five of the individuals provided us with usable genomic data.”

The alleged sisters of the house of Cryptoporticus. Photo: Alissa Mittnik.

These five figures included an adult who perished with a child in his lap in the House of the Golden Bracelet. For decades, experts have considered the duo to be a mother and child. However, DNA testing revealed that the adult was a man, not biologically related to the child. Two embracing victims discovered in 1914 were previously believed to be female relatives. Here, DNA testing showed that at least one was a genetic male.

“All Pompeians with genome-wide data consistently derive largely from recent immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean,” the researchers added, “underscoring the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire during this period.”

Casts of Pompeii victims in the so-called House of the Golden Bracelet. Photo: Alissa Mittnik.

The paper noted that these revelations show “how modern assumptions about gendered behavior may not be reliable lenses through which to view data from the past.”

Although Mittnik thought of Daily Mail that some of these erroneous figures might have been servants and slaves, she emphasized that “We do not want to suggest new stories that might also misrepresent the lives of these people.”

“Maybe with technological advances and more scientific analysis,” she said, “we’ll be able to say more.”