SEEN ELSEWHERE – The genetic analysis to which certain casts have been subjected has overturned traditional interpretations.
By Elena Dusi (La Repubblica)
À Pompeiieverything has to be rewritten. The person found with a large gold bracelet on his wrist and a child in his arms, for example, is not, contrary to traditional interpretation, a mother fleeing with her child. The two others huddled beside them are not father and brother. And the two bodies entwined in the cryptoportico house do not belong to two sisters, despite what we’ve always thought.
Analysis of DNA extracted from the bones of fourteen Pompeii casts reveals that in those moments of terror in 79 A.D., when Vesuvius spewed ash and lapillus, earthquakes shook the city and winds whipped it with burning gases, interpretations around presumed kinship links were also consumed.
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Pompeii, a special year
The man with the gold bracelet and the child in his arms are both male and unrelated. Whoever…
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