Enlarge / Two skeletons found in the ruins of a Pompeii building may have been crushed by wall collapses triggered by earthquakes. (credit: Pompeii Archaeological Park)

Archaeologists have hotly debated the precise cause of death of those who perished in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Did they die of asphyxiation, from the extreme heat, or from a combination of factors? A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science examines the complicating effects of earthquakes that occurred just prior to and concurrently with the eruption. Of most interest was the discovery of two skeletons of people who likely died when their shelter collapsed around them, weakened by the seismic tremors.

As previously reported, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released thermal energy roughly equivalent to 100,000 times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, spewing molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in particular. Archaeologists believed that the vast majority of the victims died of asphyxiation, choking to death on the thick clouds of noxious gas and ash.

However, a 2001 study in Nature, co-authored by University of Naples archaeologist Pierpaolo Petrone, estimated a temperature of 500° Celsius (932° Fahrenheit) for the pyroclastic surge that destroyed Pompeii, sufficient to kill inhabitants in fractions of a second. In 2018, we reported on Petrone's conclusion that inhabitants of Herculaneum may have suffered a similar fate. He observed fracturing in the bones of some 100 excavated skeletons, as well as "cracking and explosion" of the skullcaps, consistent with forensic cases where skulls burst from extreme heat.