Gabr Collins Current Event

Pompeii Victims' Bodies Revealed in Scans

Author: Rossella Lorenzi

Publication Date: October 8, 2015

Publisher: Discovery

About 2,000 years ago Mount.Vesuvius erupted killing about 2,000 people in Pompeii. Pompeii was hidden under 8-9 feet of ash. Giuseppe Fiorelli and his team found that the bodies were covered in layers of ash and pumice, so they filled the hollow bodies with plaster making a plaster casts of the bodies they found. Stabia and Herculaneum started CT scanning the plaster casts of the 86 bodies created by Fiorelli. Of all the bodies, they found a boy who was about 4 years old. He was next to two adults(Male and Female) who were most likely his parents, and there was a baby on his mother's lap. CT scans could tell what his clothing was that he was wearing and specific spots of his skeleton. Many people died from head injuries because they were trying to escape but debris from buildings falling over. Humans in the town of Pompeii had about perfect teeth. Some had cavities but most of them were excellent. They also ate a lot of vegetables and fruit and almost no sugar. Fiorelli’s scanned about 30 men, woman, a boar and a dog.   

I was scrolling through the options and I saw “Pompeii Victims’ bodies revealed in Scans” and I thought that article was interesting so that's how I got this topic. I thought the part where they found a boar and a dog was pretty cool. Also, I thought that how they filled the body's cavities with paster making plaster casts was really interesting. In the article I learned a lot about Pompeii and the Volcanic eruption. First of all, that it happened about 2,000 years ago and about 2,000 people died in Pompeii. Also, how Giuseppe Fiorelli and his team added plaster into the body’s cavities. The article is related to what we are studying because it has to do with bodies and how the ash made a layer over the bodies.I want to know if they have found more bodies or animals using the CT scanning, and can they use the CT scanning for something else?

Works Cited

“Pompeii Victims’ Bodies Revealed in Scans.” Discovery News. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2016. <http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/pompeii-victims-bodies-revealed-in-scans-photos-151008.htm>.