What was mount vesuvius

Herculaneum was a city of 5, and a favorite summer destination for rich Romans. Named for the mythic hero Hercules , Herculaneum housed opulent villas and grand Roman baths. Gambling artifacts found in Herculaneum and a brothel unearthed in Pompeii attest to the decadent nature of the cities. There were smaller resort communities in the area as well, such as the quiet little town of Stabiae.

At noon on August 24, 79 A. Some 2, people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption. A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained.

This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city. The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead.

Much of what we know about the eruption comes from an account by Pliny the Younger, who was staying west along the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded.

Some bewailed their own fate. Others prayed to die. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was less lucky. Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist, at the time of the eruption was the commander of the Roman fleet in the Bay of Naples. After Vesuvius exploded, he took his boats across the bay to Stabiae, to investigate the eruption and reassure terrified citizens.

After going ashore, he was overcome by toxic gas and died. His letters describing the great eruption of were published by the Royal Society to great acclaim, and encouraged him to continue his work. Violent eruptions in and put an end to the railway.

Today, Vesuvius lies dormant. It last erupted in , and it will erupt again — only nobody knows when. Calke Abbey houses a number of splendid paintings of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius. It is also home to the library of John Gardner Wilkinson, who founded the study of Egyptology. On his way to Egypt for the first time in , Wilkinson climbed Vesuvius to sketch the crater, minutes before it burst back into eruption.

In his eagerness, he ventured too close and was burnt on the arm. He rebuilt Ickworth to house his art collections, but never lived to see it finished. But three centuries after excavations began, experts are still unsure as to what precisely killed the victims of this once bustling metropolis. The second has found a victim in a different portion of the city whose brain appears to have melted before being frozen into glass, as if afflicted by sorcery.

Even if these two tales of biological transmogrification are verified by future research, it does not mean we finally know how these people died. All that can be said is that this may be what happened around the time of their death. Also find out about horses found preserved at Pompeii that appear to have been harnessed to help people flee the disaster.

But endeavoring to solve this puzzle is worthwhile, and not just because it fills in missing chapters of an iconic story.

Plenty of volcanoes worldwide are capable of producing similar outbursts, which means history will keep repeating itself. These are often called pyroclastic flows , but the gassier versions that swamped Herculaneum are named pyroclastic surges.

Many of the victims swept up by the eruption were long thought to have died by asphyxiating on ashes and toxic gases.

In , Petrone and his colleagues reported reddish, iron-rich compounds on the often-cracked bones of several Herculaneum victims. Boiling fluids in the brain would have also created pressure and caused their skulls to explode.

These claims were met with skepticism by some experts , who noted that bodies being cremated at far higher temperatures do not experience vaporization. This debate remains unsettled—but a new study by Petrone and company, published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine , will only add more fuel to the fire.

Cerebral tissues in archaeological discoveries are extremely rare. Even when found, they are often unpreserved, having turned into a soapy mixture of compounds like glycerol and fatty acids. Petrone decided to take a closer look at one particular victim, found in the s inside the Collegium Augustalium , a building dedicated to the cult of Emperor Augustus , who ruled Rome from 63 B.

Unexpectedly, a glassy substance was found inside the cracked skull , which was surprising because the eruption itself produced no glassy volcanic material. No plant or animal sources of these substances were located nearby.

This tissue-turned-glass had to have been created by vitrification, a process wherein a material heats until it liquifies and then very rapidly cools into glass rather than an ordinary solid. Charred wood nearby suggests that the temperatures in the building potentially reached degrees Fahrenheit. Map showing the location of Mount Vesuvius on the west coast of Italy. Map by Geology. Nearby Volcanoes: Etna , Stromboli. Vesuvius is part of the Campanian volcanic arc, a line of volcanoes that formed over a subduction zone created by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates.

This subduction zone stretches the length of the Italian peninsula, and is also the source of other volcanoes like Mount Etna , the Phlegraean Fields Campi Flegrei , Vulcano, and Stromboli. Under Vesuvius, the lower part of the subducting slab has torn and detached from the upper part to form what is called a "slab window.

They were buried by the ashfall. Image: Garden of the Fugitives. The cone known as Mount Vesuvius began growing in the caldera of the Mount Somma volcano, which last erupted about 17, years ago.

Andesite lava creates explosive eruptions on a variety of scales, which makes Vesuvius an especially dangerous and unpredictable volcano. Plinian eruptions huge explosions that create columns of gas, ash and rock which can rise dozens of kilometers into the atmosphere have a much greater reach, and have destroyed entire ancient cities near Vesuvius with huge ashfalls and pyroclastic flows.

Vesuvius is currently quiet, with only minor seismic earthquake activity and outgassing from fumaroles in its summit crater, but more violent activity could resume in the future. Brick columns stand among ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii. A view of Naples at the height of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A Melvin C. Mount Vesuvius has experienced eight major eruptions in the last 17, years. The 79 AD eruption is one of the most well-known ancient eruptions in the world, and may have killed more than 16, people.

Ash, mud and rocks from this eruption buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.