BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

DNA and Gender at Pompeii

Genetic evidence sheds new light on Vesuvius’s victims

Just a few of the casts that preserve the final moments of the residents of Pompeii. Credit: Lancevortex, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In 79 CE, the Roman town of Pompeii was covered in volcanic ash, courtesy of Mt. Vesuvius. While the bodies of the dead decomposed long ago, their final poses remained cemented into the pumice and volcanic debris that engulfed the island. Ensuing excavations revealed nearly a thousand individuals whose bodies were cemented into their surroundings. In the late 19th century, archaeologist Giuseppe Florelli devised a system of pouring liquid chalk into the outlines of the bodies, creating casts that could then be studied.

Many of these casts, some in intimate embraces, have become the subject of narratives surrounding the ancient city. These narratives, however, are often more speculation than fact. For example, two such individuals have been assumed to be a mother holding her child, simply because one wears a golden bracelet. Another pair was believed to be sisters though, again, based on no specific evidence. However, in both cases, the intimacy of the poses suggested to many that these were related women whose final moments were preserved in the ash.

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However, a genetic analysis of DNA from preserved bone fragments found in the casts and recently published in the journal Current Biology has quashed these assumptions. To everyone’s surprise, of the five individuals studied (including the ones discussed above), none are definitively female and none show any biological relationship to each other. Adoption was a common Roman practice, and family was not always defined by blood, but there is no biological evidence these five individuals were related.

Furthermore, at least one of the pairs was discovered to be two men. Intimate relationships between men were not unusual in the Roman world. The genetic analysis revealed not only the sex of the individuals but their ethnicities as well. All five were descendants of eastern Mediterranean immigrants. Their ancestors may have originated in Anatolia or the Levant. This was already hypothesized based on the archaeological evidence found at Pompeii (including jewelry and cultic objects), but such origins are now confirmed through DNA evidence. Michael Anderson, a professor at San Francisco State University, commented to the Jerusalem Post, saying the DNA evidence “helps to topple the European ‘ownership’ of the so-called ‘classical world.’”

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