The city of Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city with an estimated population of 11,000 people. Pompeii was located near modern Naples, along with other ancient cities like Herculaneum. Multiple other villas in the surrounding areas were mostly destroyed and buried under 13 to 20 ft. of ash and ruble in the massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. In 63 A.D. Pompeii was shaken by a very severe earthquake and many buildings were destroyed. During the next 16 years occasional minor quakes occurred but nothing very severe. Finally, on August 24, there were several shocks, followed immediately by the eruption of Vesuvius.
Researchers believe that the city of Pompeii was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci or Oscans. The city was growing and advanced, it had a complex water system, an amphitheater, gymnasium and a port. The ashes had acted as a shield which preserved the city’s remains. Underneath all that dust, Pompeii was almost exactly as it had been 2,000 years before. Its buildings were intact, skeletons were frozen right where they’d fallen. Many deaths happened before the rocks and stone had chances to kill you, the thick smoke and fumes made it hard for you to breathe. Inhaling the thick dust and smoke was almost certain death. Everyday objects and household goods littered the streets, later archaeologist’s even uncovered jars of preserved fruit and loaves of old bread.
The excellent state of preservation has given a valuable insight into the Roman world and may actually be the richest archaeological site in the world in terms of the volume of data available to scholars. The restoration and cleaning of Pompeii has been going on for almost three centuries, scholars and tourists remain just as fascinated by the city’s ruins and archeological finds as they were in the 18th century. The eruption killed the city's inhabitants and buried it under tons of ash. Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman Army, who tried to rescue citizens. The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre. The objects that lay beneath the city have been well-preserved for centuries because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide a very detailed insight into the life of a city during the time.
During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids between the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died. The tremendous Vesuvius volcano did not form overnight, of course. The mountain is hundreds of thousands of years old and had been erupting for many generations. Vesuvius was a Stratovolcano, which means that it is built up a multiple layers of ash, hardened rock, and magma. Even after a massive earthquake struck the Campania region in 63 A.D. an earthquake that, scientists now understand, offered a warning rumble of the disaster to come. Many people still flocked to the shores of the Bay of Naples. Pompeii grew more crowded every year. Pompeii supported between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants at the time of its destruction.
Vesuvius was a name of the volcano in frequent use by the authors of the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. Vesuvius is a distinctive "humpbacked" mountain, resembling a large cone. Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The History of the ancient city of Pompeii is great, and unfortunate. It was great because of the things we were able to learn about Volcanoes and pyroclastic surges. Thousands of people were lost but everything was almost left intact, which was the biggest surprise to me of them all. Citizens of Pompeii had no knowledge of Volcanoes nor they even have a word for them then, everything that took place was the first of its time. Without the discovery of Pompeii we would have unanswered questions regarding volcanoes along with questions about multiple Roman cities.
