When the people of Pompeii died in a shower of hot ash and rock erupted from Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, the volcanic material enveloped them and their city in a pyroclastic shroud.

DNA analysis reveals that some victims of Pompeii they were not biologically related, challenging long-held theories and assumptions about their family roles and identity.

New DNA analysis suggests archaeologists have previously misunderstood the relationships between some victims of the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. which struck Pompeii almost two millennia ago.

For example, the assumption that a well-known group of victims were members of a family, i.e. mother, father and two children – may be far from the truth.

“All four of these individuals were male, which dispels this theory that it was a father, mother and two children. And besides, they weren’t actually biologically related to each other.” says Alisa Mitnick of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Meanwhile, a theory about another iconic image of Pompeii’s victims – two figures ‘locked’ in what was long thought to be a mother embracing her daughter – has also been debunked.

“Here again, we found that at least one of the individuals was male. And, again, they were not maternally related to each other. So, again, the common narrative told about them is disproved.” Mitnick emphasizes to Euronews.

The team, which also includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, relied on genetic material preserved for nearly 2,000 years.

After the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of the Roman city in AD 79, the bodies, buried in mud and ash, eventually decomposed, leaving hollows where they once were. The casts we see today were created from the blanks in the late 1800s.

The researchers focused on 14 casts that underwent restoration, extracting DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains mixed with them. They hoped to determine the sex, parentage and genetic relationships between the victims.

The researchers also confirmed that the citizens of Pompeii came from from different backgrounds, but mostly descended from Eastern Mediterranean migrants – highlighting a broad pattern of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is located approximately 241 kilometers from Rome.

The study builds on research from 2022, when scientists sequenced the genome of a Pompeii victim for the first time and confirmed the possibility of recovering ancient DNA from the few remaining human remains.

“Our DNA-based scientific results simply add insight to previous archaeological and anthropological analysis and make us rethink who these people really were, how they were related to each other, and how they behaved in those final moments of their lives.” Mitnick explained.