Genetic Heritage of Ancient Pompeii Victims Discovered Through Genome Sequencing

Science can now confirm the first-ever genetic heritage of one of the tragic victims. They perished tragically when a volcanic eruption devastated the Italian city of Pompeii roughly 2,000 years ago.

Scientists have just managed to sequence the genome of a man who died in the Pompeiian House of the Craftsman during his mid-life years, revealing the man's genetic profile and how he has been afflicted by tuberculosis within his lifetime.

Destruction of Mount Vesuvius

Considered one of the most devastating volcanic eruptions in the history of man, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 70 CE killed thousands of residents of nearby cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, as well as other settlements.

The victims of this devastating eruption were killed by the intense heat of pyroclastic surges from the volcano tearing through its surroundings, or via suffocation from gas, ash, and pumice that rained down. Previously, it was believed that these manners of death would leave DNA from the victims unviable for analysis because high temperatures can destroy the bone matrix where DNA is stored effectively.

On the other hand, the ash that blanketed the victims of the eruption preserved their fate for almost two millennia and could have acted as shields against environmental factors that induce degradation like oxygen.

Previous attempts to analyze the ancient Pompeiian's DNA used polymerase chain reaction techniques, returning short segments of the victim's DNA, whether human or animal, suggesting that at least some of their genomic information had survived the ravaging of the volcano. Recent advancements in genomic sequencing, hover, have increased the number of information scientists can retrieve from fragments of DNA that previously would have been deemed as too damaged.

Studying the First Genomic Sequence of an Ancient Pompeii Victim

In the recent study published in the journal, Scientific Reports "Bioarchaeological and palaeogenomic portrait of two Pompeians that died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD" Gabriele Scorrano, an archaeologist from the University of Rome, and his colleagues made an attempt to apply new techniques to the remains of two human victims of Mount Vesuvius. The pair were retrieved from one room of a building known as the Casa del Fabbrro, or HOuse of the Craftsman. The first individual was a man roughly between the age of 35-40 at the time of his untimely death, measuring roughly 164.3 centimeters. The second, was a female over 50 years old, measuring 153.1 centimeters; both heights were consistent with the average height of Romans at the time.

Using identical methods, researchers extracted material from both bones and sequenced DNA from the petrous bone of the skull. Interestingly, the genetic material researchers obtained from the bones showed evidence of the presence of DNA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis - a bacteria which causes tuberculosis. A careful study of the man's vertebrae suggests that he was inflicted, during his life, by spinal tuberculosis, a particularly destructive form of tuberculosis, reports ScienceAlert.

Check out more news and information on Archaeology in Science Times.