POMPEII, Italy (KMID/KPEJ) – A family frozen in time by the volcanic eruption that hit Pompeii nearly two millennia ago. It's one of the many stories told by observers of the victims of the tragedy that struck the ancient town.
But DNA evidence recently published in Current Biology suggests things were not as they seem.
"What we found is that, in fact, all four of these individuals were male, which disproves this theory that they would be father, mother, and two children. And on top of that, they were, in fact, not biologically related to each other," Alissa Mittnik, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said.
There are also two people locked in a tender embrace who have been long assumed to be sisters, or a mother and daughter.
"Here again, we found that at least one of the individuals was male. And, again, they had no maternal relationship to each other. So, again, disproving this most common narrative that was told about them," Mittnik said.
The team, which includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, relied on genetic material preserved for nearly 2,000 years.
Following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which destroyed the city in 79 A.D., 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.
Researchers also confirmed Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds but primarily descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants, underscoring a broad pattern of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is located about 150 miles from Rome.
The study builds upon research from 2022, when scientists sequenced the genome of a Pompeii victim for the first time and confirmed the possibility of retrieving ancient DNA from the scant human remains that still exist.
“It’s super cool because all that genetic data is going to be published," says Gabriele Scorrano of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a co-author of that research who was not involved in the current study.
Though much remains to be learned, Scorrano said, such genetic brushstrokes are slowly painting a truer picture of how people lived in the distant past.
"It's super important to understand the genetic overview and makeup of this population during the past."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
