New DNA evidence rewrites the stories of Pompeii victims

New DNA evidence from the bodies of Pompeii victims has found many of our assumptions about who they really were have been false, researchers have said.

The ancient city of Pompeii in Italy was buried in a volcanic eruption almost 2000 years ago. Citizens were buried in ash and volcanic material, preserving their last moments for centuries.

Plaster casts made of victims' bodies appeared to show scenes believed to be a mother holding a child and two women embracing as they die - but new research has revealed not all is what it seems.

Alissa Mittnik from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and her team found the person thought to be a mother was actually a man unrelated to the child.

They also used DNA evidence to determine that at least one of the two people locked in an embrace, long assumed to be sisters or a mother and daughter, was a man.

Mittnik said: “We were able to disprove or challenge some of the previous narratives built upon how these individuals were kind of found in relation to each other.

“It opens up different interpretations for who these people might have been.”

The team relied on genetic material preserved for nearly two millennia. After Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the Roman city in 79 A.D., bodies buried in mud and ash eventually decomposed.

The spaces left by the bodies were used to make casts in the late 1800s.

Researchers focused on 14 casts undergoing restoration, extracting DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains that mixed with them. They hoped to determine the sex, ancestry and genetic relationships between the victims.

They discovered several surprises in the so-called "house of the golden bracelet", where the bodies thought to be a mother and child were found.

The adult wore a piece of jewelry, reinforcing the impression that the victim was a woman. Nearby were the bodies of another adult and child thought to be the rest of their family.

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DNA evidence showed the four were male and not related to one another, clearly showing “the story that was long spun around these individuals” was wrong, Mittnik said.

Researchers also confirmed Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds, but mainly descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants - showing patterns of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire.

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 human remains that still exist.

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