One of the plaster casts of bodies in Pompeii / Photo: Archeological Park of Pompeii
The latest DNA research in Pompeii, published in Current Biology, challenges previous interpretations about people who died as a result of the eruption of Vesuvius. DNA analysis revealed that many traditional assumptions about gender and family relationships were wrong.
For example, a character thought to be a mother with a child turned out to be an adult male unrelated to the child. Another example is a couple lying next to each other, previously considered sister or mother and daughter – as it turns out, one of the people was a man.
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