[HN Gopher] People returned to live in Pompeii's ruins, archaeol...
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       People returned to live in Pompeii's ruins, archaeologists say
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 89 points
       Date   : 2025-08-07 13:16 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | benwills wrote:
       | For those interested, there's a new set of hour-long videos on
       | the PBS site that has more about the recent Pompeii excavations.
       | 
       | There are four so far. Not sure if there will be more:
       | https://www.pbs.org/show/pompeii-the-new-dig/
        
       | inglor_cz wrote:
       | IIRC the first explosion of 79 AD didn't bury the Pompeii
       | completely. (It _did_ bury Herculaneum, and much deeper so.) It
       | was another explosion around the time of collapse of the Western
       | Roman Empire that finished the job and hid the remaining
       | structures from human view.
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | The 79 eruption buried the first floor. Upper floors (if they
         | existed) were still visible. Over time the upper floors were
         | demolished to scavenge the stones to build other villages in
         | the area. So when the site was "rediscovered " in modern times
         | it was the first floor that could be excavated.
        
       | aurizon wrote:
       | looters would dig holes at known rich villas?
        
       | cloudbonsai wrote:
       | I think I found the source paper (written in Itallian):
       | 
       | https://pompeiisites.org/e-journal-degli-scavi-di-pompei/la-...
       | 
       | So the archaeologists think that, after the destruction of 79
       | A.D., some survivors returned to Pompeii and found their homes
       | half-buried in ash. They tried recover their belongings by
       | digging underground, and some apparently attempted to rebuild
       | their lives in their old homes, because they had nowhere else to
       | go.
       | 
       | While their efforts ultimately proved to be futile, they did
       | leave some historical artifacts behind (e.g. bread oven entirely
       | made of salvaged materials), and the archaeologists recently
       | unearthed them.
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | It's not hard to imagine people mining the ruins for valuables.
        
           | Drunkfoowl wrote:
           | We are doing it right now :).
        
       | rg2004 wrote:
       | How would anyone be able to afford anything if all their
       | possessions were under hardened magma
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | It wasn't magma, it was 4-6m of ash and pumice.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii
        
         | downrightmike wrote:
         | Romans were known to take poor people and make them slaves,
         | that's one solution
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | Volcanic ash is highly productive and at the very least you would
       | think latifundia would be there. If opportunistically you can
       | find an old water cistern and turn it into an oven, why not?
       | 
       | Modern day Indonesian and Philippines and Pac rim Island farmers
       | don't stay away from volcanoes any longer than they have to. Mud
       | flows different. Ash? That's plantable. And tuff forms, you can
       | build with it.
        
         | Intralexical wrote:
         | I find this surprising, because my impression was that complex
         | biology requires pioneer species to spend some time making
         | "fresh" geology from the earth inhabitable first if there isn't
         | already an established ecosystem.
         | 
         | Why is volcanic ash so productive? Is it the result of
         | coincidence? Adaptation? Some resource cycle?
        
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       (page generated 2025-08-10 23:01 UTC)