The Discovery That Rewrote Pompeii

Yeah, I feel like every time I'm in this room, it looks a little bit nicer. It's a little better. The year is 2018, and you are sitting on the floor of a partly excavated room in the legendary city of Pompeii. Through the ancient walls, you can faintly hear your dig mates playing Havana on a Bluetooth speaker. You are part of a dig led by archaeologist Massimo Osana, and you are working at a site called Reggio V, a previously unexcavated section of the ancient city. The ruins that you are working in were once a residential home that had been undergoing a renovation at the time of Vesuvius' cataclysmic eruption. As you work, you come across a graffiti tag scrawled across an unfinished wall. This is not unusual for Pompeii, which is filled with ancient graffiti, but as you stop to translate it, you stop dead, because what this graffiti says shouldn't even be possible. Not too confident in your Latin translation capabilities, you call your colleagues from the other room. As they gather around you, squinting at the faint markings on the wall, a murmur spreads as they read it for themselves. Sure enough, this graffiti bears a date. A date nearly two months after the city of Pompeii was supposed to have been destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The implications of this discovery were massive, and supported what many archaeologists had been speculating for years, that the widely accepted eruption date for Mount Vesuvius, dating back to eyewitness accounts 2,000 years ago, is wrong. Howdy friends, my name is Milo Rossi, and today we'll be exploring the clues left behind in the ruins of Pompeii that suggest that the city was not destroyed until two months after previously thought. Pompeii is an archaeological site that is so infamous it needs absolutely no introduction. If you watching this video are anything like me, you had a massive Pompeii phase at some point in your life. It's a fascinating site, capturing everything from the banality of everyday Roman life to the horrific demise of the inhabitants that once called these cities home. Needless to say, I could talk about Pompeii for hours. But to avoid scope creep, today I'm going to just be focusing on one topic. Wow, scope creep, Milo, that's not a thing that you do ever. I mean, what kind of scope creep moron would fill the entire summer with making a three-part series that ends up being almost seven hours long? Certainly not me. So the subject that we're going to be exploring today is the evidence that suggests that the long-accepted date for the eruption of Vesuvius is wrong, and that everything you know is a lie. Okay, that's overselling it a little bit, but bear with me, I promise, it's interesting. The big smoking gun in this story is obviously this graffiti. But to give this subject its due diligence, we're going to be digging even further into the evidence in the ruins themselves. So to get this thing started, let's talk about the widely accepted date for the eruption of Vesuvius. And that is, of course, the 24th of August, 79 CE. I'd be willing to bet that every single time you have heard a date given to the eruption of Vesuvius, it has been the exact same one. August 24th, 79 CE. This date has been repeated in textbooks and websites and documentaries, and admittedly with fairly good reason. That's because this August 24th date comes from the only surviving primary source of the eruption of Vesuvius. That is, a first-hand account of a guy that actually watched it happen. The alleged author of this August 24th date is Pliny the Younger. His letters, written 20 years after the eruption to the Roman historian Tacitus, have become an invaluable resource in learning about the destruction of Pompeii. On the day of the eruption, Pliny the Younger was in the Roman port city of Mycenaeum, a settlement on a peninsula on the north end of the Bay of Naples. Pliny the Younger was there with his uncle, confusingly named Pliny the Elder. I feel like it would make more sense if that was like his dad, but I don't know, I guess his uncle works too. Whatever. Pliny the Elder was the admiral of the Roman navy based out of Mycenaeum. And from this location, both of the Plinys and all of the other people of this town had a clear line of sight across the bay to the eruption of Vesuvius. After the eruption began, Pliny the Elder actually rallied the Roman navy to do a rescue mission to the small town of Stabiae. It was a heroic act for an admiral to take, and many of the men on this rescue mission, including Pliny the Elder himself, paid the ultimate price, with Pliny the Elder allegedly asphyxiating on noxious gas on the beach while trying to rescue people from the town. Back across the bay in Mycenaeum, Pliny the Younger watched the chaos unfold. In his letters, he describes the catastrophe that he witnessed. The stampede of people evacuating, how roofs and buildings were crushed under the immense weight of an ashfall, and how panicked citizens were struck down by debris as they fled the chaos. Pliny the Younger even recorded the shape of the eruption, describing it like an umbrella pine, pretty similar to what we would today refer to as a mushroom cloud. This is the very first written account of this type of eruption, and because of this, in the modern world of volcanology, they have been dubbed a Plinian eruption in his honor. But the most important piece of information to this story from these letters is that Pliny the Younger gives us a date, claiming that the eruption began on August 24th, 79 CE, at around one o'clock in the afternoon. But the ruins of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the lesser-known settlements of Stabiae and Boscariale are littered with fragmentary evidence that suggests that this date is incorrect, and the relics of everyday life frozen in time offer us tantalizing clues to the true date of the eruption. So before we get into the forensics, let's talk about the most overwhelming piece of evidence, and that is, of course, the Reggio V graffiti. Undoubtedly, the smoking gun in the Pompeii date debate was this graffiti uncovered in a residential home in 2018. The tag says this. I'm not going to try and read it. I haven't taken Latin since high school, and I think I failed it at least once, so I don't think it would be reasonable to say that I'd be any better at speaking it now. But thankfully, there's people that do speak Latin, and they were able to translate it for us. Preceded by a date, this innocuous tag reads simply, he indulged in food excessively, most likely left behind by a worker who, you know, ate too much lunch on the day that he was supposed to be renovating this room. While the tag itself is certainly pretty funny, the most important part of this is the date at the beginning. It reads, 16 days before the calends of November. In the Roman calendar, the calends is the first day of every month, meaning that this graffiti was written around 16 days before November 1st, which in our modern calendar translates to October 17th. For those of you following along at home, you'll notice that that is not in August. In fact, it is notably not in August, being nearly two months after the widely accepted August 24th date. Okay, so let's think a little critically here. We can't in good faith just take this one piece of evidence and go, this totally changes the paradigm of mainstream history. I hear some of you at home asking a very good question. How do we actually know that this graffiti is from this year? Couldn't this tag be from the previous October or the one before that? That right there is a great question. Good on you. To answer that, let's have a little look at some of the archaeological context around this discovery. Like I said, this room is in the process of being renovated. It had incomplete floors and unpainted and unfinished plaster walls. Now normally, renovations are supposed to move rather quickly, or something. All that is to say a room being renovated is in flux. If this graffiti was found in a finished room, it could be much older. But graffiti found in a room that is actively under construction is pretty concurrent. Our next clue comes from the fact that the graffiti is written with charcoal dust. It's absolutely a great writing aid, but it's very fragile. It wipes off easily and likely would have deteriorated in just a couple months if it was just left exposed to the elements. So due to both the active construction context it was found in and this sort of ephemeral material it was written in, it's reasonable to suggest that the graffiti was buried very shortly after being written. Since there's no debate at all that the eruption occurred in 79 CE, it is more than likely that this piece of graffiti is referring to October 17th of 79 CE. Now this is pretty convincing, but again, we can't just take this one piece of evidence and go, yeah, that just, we're out here destroying the dogmas of big academia. Archaeology is like, who ******* knows what's out there? Because you haven't searched everything. Yeah, I'm a third eye open free thinker. I'm willing to take one piece of evidence that I really like and disregard a mountain of evidence that I don't. One of the things that's fascinating is just even with conventional archaeology, the dates keep getting pushed further and further. Come to think of it, how do we know that this graffiti doesn't date to October 12th of 10,000 BCE, implying that this city was buried from the Younger Dryas impact? Wow, that was actually kind of fun. If this fails, I could just do that for a living. That was easy. This single piece of information isn't enough to prove anything on its own, but with it is an implication that will give us a clue as to where to look next. And that implication is, of course, the stunning revelation that August is not October. This may come as a shock to you, so sit down, but August and October are very different from one another. I know, I know, I warned you. You can't say I didn't warn you. As obvious as that may seem, understanding the differences between these two months and seasons is crucial for us to understand where we even need to look next to find more evidence to support this claim. Writing on a wall is great, but it's not nearly enough. We need physical evidence of a season frozen in time. Milo, what the hell are you talking about? Isn't archaeology supposed to be about bones and treasure hunting? Why are you talking about seasons? But stick with me, I promise. It's interesting. You and I together will figure out what October is. I think the best way to illustrate my point here is by showing you guys something that I've never shared with you before, and that is the fact that I can bend space-time. I want you to picture a place, a place that you're very familiar with. Maybe it's your hometown, or where you live now, or where your university was. Somewhere that you know at all times in the year like the back of your hand. Now I want you to imagine what that place is like in August. Boom! You're there. Ugh, yeah, all in a day's work. I know the first time can make your head spin a little bit, but once you get up off the ground, try and find some like Advil or something. Okay, so now that you're in your place in August, I want you to think of the things that you can see and smell and hear. I've spent my entire life in northern and central New England, so I'm going to go there now. Oh no, I forgot! New England hasn't invented Advil yet! I could probably tell that it was August without even opening my eyes. August would be dry and hot. The air would be fragrant with the smell of drying grass. I'd hear things like late summer crickets and people sneezing from all of the goldenrod. If I opened my eyes, I'd see people in shorts and t-shirts. There'd be vacationers, people with luggage and kids piled into cars going on vacation to their homes in mid-coast Maine and the Cape. If I were to walk into a store, I might see ice cream in a pile of watermelons. And the cashier working the counter might be a high school kid working a summer job before school resumes. I'm sure that you may even see or smell or sense some of these same things in whatever your place is. Okay, we're going to bend space-time one more time, so grab a bucket or take one of your shoes off. Now I want you to imagine your exact same place, but in October. And let's go there now. Like August, I could probably tell it was October without opening my eyes. October would be chilly and dry. Unless, of course, we got unlucky with a hurricane. The air would smell crisp with dry leaves, and I would hear the sounds of them rattling on the trees. Opening my eyes, I'd see that the leaves have all changed color. And there'd be less people out, and they'd be wearing things like knit sweaters and hats. Vacationers would be leaf-peepers, mostly without kids, or hunters going up north to take advantage of the early game season. And the homes of the wealthy vacationers on the Cape and Bar Harbor and Martha's Vineyard would all be shuttered up for the season. If I were to walk back into the same store in the place of ice cream, I may now find apple cider doughnuts, and instead of watermelons, a pile of pumpkins. And the kid who was working the register in the summer, along with the leaf-peepers kid, would all be back at school. Okay, we're going to teleport one more time back to here and now. Does all this talk of changing leaves and apple cider doughnuts have you yearning for a quintessential New England fall? Me too. Hi, my name's Milo Rossi, and I'm allergic to apples. My inability to participate in this quintessential New England fall tradition has left me angry and jaded, and searching for dopamine in other ways. Which is why this fall, I've decided to go on tour. You heard that correctly. The only thing more fun than watching me do this bullshit on your screen is watching me do this bullshit in person. This inaugural tour kicks off on October 15th, and we'll visit 10 different locations throughout the Northeast. All the way from Massachusetts down to Maryland. Specific locations are on screen if you want to see them. Look, I'm a Northeasterner, so of course my first tour has to be in the Northeast, all right? The rest of you can wait, or come out here and watch me do my song and dance on my home turf. Milo, I can't believe you'd go to Boston first. When are you doing the Azerbaijan tour? So Milo, what are you actually going to be doing? Great question. Each one of these locations will host multiple events with both talks and trivia nights. The talks, hosted at universities and event spaces, will give you a chance to hear me read you the Riot Act about conspiracy theories and the importance of science communication, as well as meet-and-greet tickets if you want to, you know, take a photo or sign my face or something. You probably can't do that. Maybe I can sign your face, though. I'll have to ask my manager. But Milo, what about the trivia nights? I'm getting to that. Give me a second. If you're the kind of guy or gal that wants to flex your intellectual and trivia muscles, well, I got the opportunity for you. The trivia nights will be 21-plus events held in breweries, where you can create teams of one through six, and I will emcee a trivia night where I'm gonna just grill you with a bunch of bullshit, win some prizes, make new friends, drink some beer. There'll also be a very special stop at the Vance & Leathers factory in Fall River, Massachusetts. You may know them as the sponsors of the Dark Roots tour and the designers of my beautiful riding suit. Here, we're looking to do some factory tours and a sort of different talk, as well as, without giving too much away, if you're a big fan of this jacket design, you should try and make it to this. All of the stops from talks to trivia will be stacked with some exclusive merch for this event, as well as meet-and-greet and signing opportunities. Again, your face, potentially. Can't make any promises on that one. If you bring me a skin-safe marker, I'll see what I can do. If this sounds like something that you're interested in, you're in luck because tickets are on sale now, and the link to that is in the description. Now, I have a hunch that these venues are gonna fill up pretty quickly, so, uh, don't wait on this. Oh, and we also have a specific merch design for each location. These were also done by my wonderful partner, and you guys do not want to know how much time she spent doing this, but the t-shirts with these custom designs for each location are on sale now. We will not be stocking these at each event to avoid making way more product than we actually need, so for whatever location you plan on joining for, you can get the t-shirt for that now, and that way you'll be ready to rep the collars when you walk through the door. Oh, and another fun little one sort of connected to the tour is on October 2nd, I am going to be back in Ohio, where I will be doing a fundraising event for the Newark Ceremonial Earthworks with none other than the Dr. Brad Lepper. There'll be a meet-and-greet and some Q&As with him and I and some other stuff like that, so if you live closer to Ohio than to the Northeast and still want to do something fun, link to that is in the description as well. Anyway, thank you all very much for listening. Again, tickets are on sale now, and I am so goddamn excited, really. I cannot believe I'm actually doing a tour. That's kind of surreal to me, but I'm really stoked, and I cannot wait to actually see some of you there in a little bit less than a month, I guess. Wow, that's crazy. Okay, awesome. Let's get right back into it. I resent you. I think I hurt my arm doing that. It looks like I'm gonna have to cancel the tour. This exercise seems a little bit ridiculous. Milo, are you tripping on something? What the hell does this have to do with archaeology? Well, the answer is obviously yes, and it has a lot to do with archaeology, because this exercise gives us the ability to look at the little things that have way more information than any pile of gold. We've identified differences between seasonal plants and foods and outfits and customs, but all of these things rely on your senses in that moment. The smell of dry leaves, the taste of watermelon, the sight of a bunch of pasty white people crammed into a minivan. They require you actually being there in order to sense them. Now, most archaeologists can't bend space-time. I'm just the exception that proves the rule. So being able to sense things that are very obvious to people in the moment at an archaeological site is completely out of the question. But each one of these things leaves a trace behind. Dry leaves and pollen can be sampled in a core from a lake bed. Seasonal fruits, like watermelons, can leave behind seeds or, in a high-heat environment, become carbonized. And the absence or presence of tourists can determine the seasons as reliably as migratory birds. So this is where I want you to lock in. Graffiti with a date on it? That's the easy stuff. You aren't gonna find graffiti with a convenient date on it at every archaeological site. We're gonna have to think outside the box because archaeology is a field that relies on gleaning as much information as possible from fragmentary evidence. So I want you to start thinking not just like an archaeologist, but like a detective. So with the difference in seasons understood, let's have a look at what it's actually like in Pompeii. We just made the groundbreaking discovery that places have different weather at different times of the year. I used New England as an example. You used your hometown of Dubuque, Iowa. I hope that got someone. Yeah, I see you sitting on your couch there. I know, I can see you. I can see you right through the screen. I'd say I'm in your walls, but I'm not. You couldn't pay me to be in Dubuque, Iowa. But Pompeii is nothing like either of these places. It's obviously a Mediterranean climate, which is pretty different from what most of us temperate folk are used to. It's located in central southern Italy near the Bay of Naples. And why don't you look at this? It's a climate graph. We can see that while August is one of the driest months, October is one of the wettest, with August having less than an inch of rain, and October sometimes having more than five inches. August is also the hottest month, averaging around 77 degrees Fahrenheit. And October is a little bit more chilly, averaging about 65 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn't really snow much in this part of the world, and so life is sort of divided into the cooler wetter season and the hotter drier season. And these seasons dictated the lives of the people in Pompeii in many ways. But let's start with the most obvious, and that is, of course, food. We love our seasonal food today. In the summer, we got watermelon and ice cream. In the fall, we got coffee flavored like pumpkin, and cookies flavored like pumpkin, and candles flavored like pumpkin. Many seasonal foods that we consume today are vestiges of a time when those foods were actually in season. Shockingly, it is not normal to be able to walk into a grocery store at any time of the year and have access to any fresh fruit and vegetables that you could possibly imagine. Before globalization and big agriculture, people only had access to whatever food was either in season or could be stored. And this was, of course, the case with the people of Pompeii. These ruins boast immaculately preserved ancient foods, famously things like intact loaves of bread and even delicate eggshells. The food products themselves have become carbonized. That is, they were exposed to the immense heat of a pyroclastic flow that turned the natural material into like a giant bread-shaped charcoal briquette. Through this process, food in Pompeii has been preserved in market stalls and food vendors and residential homes, giving us a fascinating glimpse at the culinary world of the average Roman citizen. But these piles of carbonized food also hold clues to when the eruption actually took place. Among the carbonized bread, eggs, and oyster shells, archaeologists have found baskets of carbonized walnuts and chestnuts. The walnuts retained their shape really well. It's almost kind of haunting to look at. But the interesting thing about the presence of this food is that both of these nuts are harvested in the late fall, September into October. But I hear you reasonably say nuts can be stored. So it's reasonable to think that these could just be a harvest from another season. So to further support this line of evidence, we need to look at something that is perishable, like fresh fruit. The ruins of Pompeii also yielded the remains of pomegranates, not dried or processed, just full, ripe pomegranates. These also ripen in late September all the way through October, and obviously have a shorter shelf life than things like nuts. The presence of fresh pomegranates at Pompeii indicate that the eruption could not have taken place before the harvest season when there would have been no fresh pomegranates, and that it couldn't have taken place much after the harvest season where there would also be no fresh pomegranates. A similar piece of supporting evidence comes from the classic Italian staple, wine. Oh my God, I'm not drinking anything. What is wrong with me? It's 4.23 p.m. It's five o'clock somewhere. It's five o'clock in like the coast of Nova Scotia or something like that. I think there is no more appropriate drink to have when making a video about Pompeii than a wine from Argentina. Beautiful. You know, how much fiberglass is acceptable to drink with your wine? Is my cat out there again? Hi, Schmincke. Oh, you want to come on camera. That's what it is. It's so messy in here. I can't let you just run around. Gigantic Schmincke. Observe. Oh my God, you're huge. She's a giant kitty. Oh my God, it's so hard to be you. Look at how big this cat's gotten. It's like a huge baby guy. I love you. Thanks for coming to visit me at work. Bring your daughter to work day. Say bye, Schmincke. Anyway, like the market stalls, Pompeii's wineries were also frozen in the middle of a work day. These wineries have corked amphora full of fresh wine. While you could argue that these jars are wine from a different season, the wineries also have the presence of pomace. Not to be confused with pumice, the things falling from the sky at the time. Pomace is the fruit mash left over from squeezing grapes. This indicates that the grape season had just ended at the time of the eruption. While wine grape harvest can start as early as August, it runs all the way through October. And the quantity of stored wine, as well as the mountain of processed pomace, indicates that the wine season was beginning to come to a close. All indications that further support a fall date. These are just a few of the food examples from Pompeii. There's way, way, way more. Things like fresh dates and figs, which are also harvested in the fall. As well as legumes like lentils and beans and chickpeas. Food that's allowed to dry on the vine before being harvested and stored for the winter season. In my opinion, the food is even more convincing than the graffiti is. Because the graffiti could be a fluke, a misunderstanding, a mistranslation, a red herring of some kind. But the presence of seasonal fruits and vegetables is a rock solid piece of evidence. Because for a majority of the year, it would have been literally impossible for these things to have existed in this city. This brings us to our next line of evidence. The fact that these seasonal fruits and vegetables were harvested and meticulously laid out indicates to us that humans were also going through their own seasonal change. And through the immaculately preserved remnants of their final moments, the people of Pompeii offer us further clues to when this disaster truly took place. As we discussed while I was bending space time, people have their own seasonal cycles. We talked about things like beach goers and leaf peepers. And how our diets and customs and clothing all changes with the seasons. Unsurprisingly, the people of Pompeii were no different. And if we take a moment to look, we'll see that the ruined streets of Pompeii are littered with evidence that the residents were beginning to transition into the colder months. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum mostly had working economies. But being beautiful seaside towns, they also had a tourist economy just like modern seaside towns do today. Excavations in this area have yielded the ruins of some of the most luxurious vacation villas in the entirety of the Roman Empire. Many of them owned by Rome's elites who would travel down here for vacation in the summers. Some of these villas include the House of the Fawn, the Villa of Mysteries, and the Villa of the Papyri. The latter of which served as the inspiration for the Getty Villa Museum in California. While absolutely spectacular, many of these villas were empty at the time of the eruption. Most of them lack any sort of personal effects. And some even had personal items like furniture gathered together and neatly stored in one room. A few of these vacation homes were also undergoing renovation at the time of the eruption. A process that the owners would probably only want to happen when they weren't actually there. Along with this, most of the villas are more or less devoid of any bodies. All lines of evidence that reasonably suggest that the eruption took place after the summer tourist season had ended and the owners of these vacation homes had returned to Rome. But the year-rounders that remained in these cities also show signs of the seasons changing. Some of the buildings have yielded ornate metal braziers. Big bowls that could be moved from room to room, filled with charcoal, and set on fire as sort of like a giant space heater. We saw a moment ago how hot it gets in the summer in this region, so it's safe to say that there would be absolutely no need for these in August. The evidence of cold weather is even supported by the remains of the residents themselves. The bodies from Pompeii are some of the most recognizable in the world of archaeology. Because these victims were buried under ash when their natural material decayed or was burned away, it left behind a cavity in the rock. Cavities which could then be filled with plaster in order to get not just bones, but a full cast of a person in their final moments. It's both really fascinating and really harrowing because it's a lot more intimate than most remains we see in the world of archaeology. While these casts preserve haunting things like closed eyes and open mouths, for the context of this story, it also preserved clothing. Despite the heat that would ultimately be their demise, many of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption are found wearing warm clothes. Just one of these examples is two men found at the Villa di Sevita Giuliana. Their casts show that both of them wore wool tunics and one of them wore a heavy wool mantle or sort of overcoat on top of that. There are also many groups of people in Pompeii and Herculaneum found huddled together. While this is largely due to them probably gathering together in their panicked final moments, it's also hypothesized that some of these people who became trapped didn't have warm clothes and were huddled together for warmth as the sky was blocked out. While all of these lines of reasoning point towards a fall date, there is one final piece of evidence hidden in plain sight, and that is the simple and ubiquitous fact that Pompeii is covered in ash. The thing that makes Pompeii so spectacular is not just that it was destroyed by a volcano, but that it was completely buried. Amazingly, it was by a complete stroke of bad luck that Pompeii was even buried at all. The eruption itself took place over the course of about two days. The initial eruption on day one began at around noon, and it sent up a superheated column of pumice and ash 10 to 20 miles into the sky. Because of how hot it was, this column remained buoyant in the atmosphere. Downwind of the eruption, ash and pumice began to rain down at a rate of around six inches an hour. During the stage of the eruption, around 80% of the residents of Pompeii were able to escape, but those that stayed behind for whatever reason slowly became trapped as the ash began to reach 10 feet deep. The first casualties in Pompeii were not from superheated pyroclastic flows. They were from buildings collapsing on those sheltering within In the early morning of the second day, the ash fall had begun to slow. Survivors may have taken this as a sign that the horror was over and began to poke their heads outside, but the cause was that the superheated column of ash had begun to cool, and as it cooled, it lost its buoyancy in the atmosphere and began to collapse back down on itself. It is this material that collapsed out of a superheated column that became the pyroclastic flows. Between 5 and 6 a.m. on the second day, the first flows of superheated ash and gas roared down Vesuvius' slopes, with the first of these flows stopping just outside the city's walls. But an hour later, a second, much larger flow ripped through the city. This flow was believed to have moved around 70 miles an hour and reached temperatures of 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Those lucky enough to be caught outside when this flow hit would have been killed instantly. But those inside, like the huddled skeletons found in the boathouses of Herculaneum, were not as lucky, either being suffocated by poison gas or baked to death as their hiding places turned into ovens. By the time the third and largest pyroclastic flow swept through the streets of Pompeii, everyone who had remained in the city was already dead. As the column cooled over the next two days, the area was swept with more pyroclastic flows and a rain of ash and pumice. When all was said and done, the city of Pompeii was buried beneath 15 and 20 feet of volcanic debris, and the coastal city of Herculaneum beneath nearly 70. With the slopes of Vesuvius and the land to the south becoming an ash desert. But the fact that these cities are even buried at all is the final piece of this puzzle. On the first day of the eruption, the cities south of Vesuvius were buried under a rain of volcanic ash and pumice. In the city of Herculaneum, to the immediate west, this ashfall was much less of a factor, with this city being buried more or less all at once by the collapsing volcanic column on the second day. This pattern indicates that there was a southeasternly prevailing wind on the day of the eruption, a wind pattern more commonly seen during the cooler fall months. And the most bitter irony of all of this is that if the eruption actually took place in August, the cities of Pompeii, Oplontis, and Stabiae may have actually been spared the ashfall, as the prevailing winds in August blow from west to east and would have sent the ashfall over sparsely populated farmland. The pyroclastic flow would have still wreaked havoc on these settlements, likely wiping them off the map. But if the eruption had actually taken place in August, it's more than likely the wind would have been blowing in a different direction and allowed the citizens much more time to escape. Here we can see that something as simple as where the ash is can give us clues to the climate, season, and weather of the exact day of the eruption. So with all of this information that we've gathered, let's talk about what it means and how it was even possible to get this date wrong. We have discussed a lot. Graffiti, clothing, weather, everything. But with all of this, we've compiled compelling supporting evidence to challenge the August date. But I have to ask, how was it even wrong in the first place? I mean, it comes from like a first-hand account after all. Shouldn't that be pretty reliable? Like I said earlier, Pliny the Younger's account was written almost 20 years after the eruption. Now, I don't doubt that he wrote the wrong date when he was writing this. This was probably an immensely traumatizing event. So I'm sure it was burned into his mind. So I think it's much more likely that this incorrect date comes from it going through multiple translations. We obviously no longer have Pliny the Younger's original writings. Instead, we have all the information we do from various translations of his work. Many of these dating back to the medieval period record the date as being the ninth day before the calends of September or the 24th of August. But there's other translations from the Renaissance period that give a date in November or simply don't give a date at all. And this is where we need to be discerning. First-hand accounts are some of the most valuable resources we have as historians. But it's always worth taking them with a grain of salt, especially when they've been translated for hundreds to thousands of years. Because given enough iterations and languages, translations can turn into a game of broken telephone. So while much of the information in Pliny the Younger's texts can be corroborated with archaeological evidence, the August date simply cannot be. So if we are to weigh this new compelling evidence versus the word of one person that has been translated for almost 2,000 years, we are left with a striking implication. That the eruption that destroyed the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and their surrounding communities took place on a cool, crisp October day in the year 79 CE. So now, finally, why does this matter? I don't blame you if you look at this and think that this tiny change is more or less inconsequential. What does it matter if it happened Does that really change much of anything? I think that this story is important for a few reasons. Firstly, and most simply, it can inform us on interpreting future sites. Paleoecology and climatology are crucial elements of understanding archaeological context. And studying disasters, weather patterns, and climate can help shed a lot of light on ancient sites, as well as inform the crises we deal with today. Another reason why this is important is it's a great exercise in thinking critically and thinking like a scientist. It highlights that through scientific research, We don't have to just accept a claim at face value, we can actually research it. And that hard evidence is much more important than just someone's word. It also illustrates that ancient texts are not always the most immaculate source of information. All of us are a bit guilty of treating ancient texts like scripture, sometimes quite literally, and we have to find a balance between just taking their word for it and the evidence right in front of us. Like I said, a lot can be lost in translation. There's that great joke about, you know, archaeologists trying to interpret the English language, you know, hundreds or thousands of years from now, and how on paper they'd probably interpret horseplay and pony play as meaning the same thing, even though they most definitely do not. What I'm getting at is that nuance is often lost through translation, so it's important that we take them with a grain of salt. This story is also an excellent opportunity to share how archaeology is often like a forensics case, and that the true wealth of an archaeological dig is very rarely from jewels or gold. The most important discoveries to be made are from piles of ash and ancient seeds and the clothing on long-forgotten remains. While all of these are reasons that this story matters, I believe that there is one reason that eclipses all of them, and that is that it tries to honor the true story of this event. It is very easy for us to look at these plaster casts like they're some kind of artifact, a sculpture or reproduction that someone made, nameless, faceless shapes that sort of spark a morbid curiosity in us. But the reality is that every single one of these plaster casts was a person exactly like you and I. They had families and they had dreams. They drank wine and ate dates and wrote their names on the wall. They laughed and cried and felt joy and boredom and disappointment and every feeling in between. Today, all that we have of those dreams and aspirations and memories of entire lives are hunks of plaster and brains turned to glass. As romantic as the story of Pompeii is today, the reality is that these people's final moments were horrifying. It is impossible to imagine the fear that they felt as they saw hell rip through the sky on a clear October morning, or the acceptance that they reached in their final moments as suffocating, scorching death thundered down the mountainside. Today, their final moments are told only by bones, some encased in plaster, frozen in time. Some of them are in groups, huddled together for shelter. Others of them are families, men and women protecting their children, doors barricaded with furniture in a futile attempt to protect the only thing that's important. There are a few that are in pairs, friends, lovers, strangers brought together by the end of the world, or a master and servant made united and equal in the face of death. And finally, some by themselves, someone's friend, someone's child, someone's love, someone who spent their final moments on this earth alone as the world caved in. Looking at the rough face in a cast or the hollow sockets of a skull makes it hard to see the people that they were. They may have spoken a different language or held different beliefs and were born at a different time, but they were us. Archaeology is filled with facts about lost civilizations and figures of bones and burials. And while to a degree, science needs to leave emotion at the door to remain objective, when the gloves are off and the paper is published, it's important to remember that each fact and figure concerned the lives of real people. I tell these stories not just because they're interesting, but because I believe that we, the living, have a responsibility to tell the stories of the dead as honestly as possible. That those with a voice have an obligation to speak for those with none. And if we can find empathy for the faces and minds that once filled these hollow skulls with light so many years ago, we may begin to find the same empathy for the people that we share the world with today. That by giving a voice to lives thousands of years ago, we may also begin to find a voice for lives as precious as yours and mine today that are viewed as less than. So when you look at these final moments preserved in plaster, or a burial from a site on the other side of the world, or the systems today that dwell on our differences to desensitize us to their atrocities, while lives like yours and mine are reduced to numbers, statistics, and casualties, remember that our differences are trivial and our similarities run as deep as the blood that pulses through our veins. And that no matter who we are and the differences that we choose to dwell on, we will all spend eternity the exact same way, with hollow eye sockets and the worms as our chambermaids. Oh, man. Heavy outro on a Milo Rossi video, you know what that means. Finish your drink. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you all very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, I'd greatly appreciate if you left an interaction on it. Likes, comments, subscriptions, etc. help these videos do better in the algorithm, and that allows me to continue making free educational content right here online. It doesn't cost you a cent, and it helps educational content get promoted in the algorithm that's dominated by the dumbest things imaginable. If you're not done doing your dishes or folding your laundry, why let the binge stop here? I got plenty more videos like this that you should totally check out. I'd also like to give a massive thank you to my editorial team. I literally could not do this without you guys. You beautiful people out there may see me in front of a camera, but the only reason these videos look a-a-a... iota as good as they actually do is because I have a wonderful and creative team who are capable of creating this. So make sure to give them a big round of applause as well. They're the real MVPs here. Lastly, I'd like to give a huge thank you to my patrons over on Patreon. Patrons get early ad-free access to all of my videos, and all of your names will be in the credits of this video as a small token of my appreciation. If you'd like to become a patron, the link to that is in the description of this video. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you all so very much for watching. Remember to stay curious, stay inquisitive, and most importantly, remember that your blood is pumping now. And that is the greatest gift of all. I can't think of anything better than that. I think that's as good as it's gonna get. And now we get the music. Boo-da-da, boo-da-da, boo-da-da. I can't sing that, it's copyright. I'm kidding, it's not copyright. I should probably copyright it, though. It is my music. Should I even say that in a video? Can someone else, like, copyright my own music for me and then I'd have to, like, hunt them down and kill them? That would be unfortunate. I'd hate to have to do that. Wow, that was a video. Here I was thinking that I could do that quickly. I did a read-through of that script and it took me, like, 40 minutes. And then I did it live and it took me two hours and 20. So it goes to show how many times I re-say the same thing over and over and over and over again. Well, I don't know. Run some funny things here. I have nothing else to say. You've got some stuff you took out of the video. Just put it here. See ya. New meta, SJ. Having a timer running so I can see how long this is taking me. This is either going to be really useful or bite me in the ass. Through the ancient walls, you can faintly hear the sounds of your digmates playing. What were the top songs in 2018? God's Plan, Drake. Okay, maybe not that. Massimo? It's probably Massimo. Mamma Mia. I don't know how to pronounce this word. Sure enough. The graffiti. Sure enough. This graffiti. Sure enough. Whoa, got dark. What the ****? I really need ******* curtains in here. There's like the worst lighting you can imagine. That's okay. You guys got this editing team. You're talented. Why am I getting a phone call from my dad? Uh, Mini Minute Man Studios. May I take your order? Hello? All right. Peace out, brother. Bye-bye. Wow, Milo. That renovation's going so slowly. That call was about house paint. You wouldn't paint a house. I haven't, that's for sure. One, one, and one. I'm so thirsty. I'm a schminky. My name is a schminky schmink.