Old Italian

On this day in the year 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Herculaneum and Pompeii under 4 to 6 meters of ash and pumice. In the late 1800's, when Pompeii was excavated, pockets were found in the ash containing bones. One of the archeologists realized the pockets would retain the forms of the people who had been buried there, and devised a way to inject plaster into them to see the shapes of Vesuvius’ victims. No human remains were found in Herculaneum, so for a long time it was thought that the city had been evacuated. But in 1982, when the excavations reached the stone boathouses facing the sea, roughly 300 remains were found. They were huddled in what must have seemed like relative safety, waiting to escape by boat. It sounds ghoulish, but stories like this have always fascinated me. I think I might have liked to be an archeologist, or perhaps a forensic pathologist.