Pompei (Italy) (AFP)
The remains of two victims of the 79 AD eruption in Pompeii have been discovered and their bodies can be reconstructed in the moving position they had at the time of their death, the famous Italian archaeological site said in a statement on Saturday. .
The two skeletons were discovered during research about 700 meters northwest of Pompeii, in a large villa on the outskirts of the famous Roman city.
They were in a 2.20 meter wide hallway that gave access to the upper floor of the villa, where archaeologists had detected cavities in the layers of hardened ash.
By running plaster in these crevices, using the famous technique invented by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1867, they were able to reconstruct the bodies in their original position.
Both victims were likely surprised by the eruption as they attempted to flee.
The first, a young man of 1.56 m wearing a short tunic who must have been between 18 and 25 years old, was probably a slave, as suggested by several vertebrae crumpled up due to hard physical labor.
His head tilted back shows his teeth and his skull.
The second victim, on the other hand, has his face turned towards the earth, at a lower level than the rest of the body.
His arms are folded with the hands on the torso, a position similar to those of other victims found in Pompeii.
He is a 1.62 m man, aged 30 to 40, dressed in a tunic and a coat and probably the owner of the young slave found by his side.
Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, is the second most visited site in Italy after the Colosseum in Rome, with nearly four million visitors in 2019. Only a third of the site, which extends currently on 44 hectares not far from Naples, has been unearthed by archaeologists.
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