One of the victims of the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Italian city of Pompeii is now known to have a genetic heritage.
The genome of a man who died in the Pompeiian House of the Craftsman in his mid-life years has been deciphered, revealing his genetic profile and the fact that he had been afflicted with Tuberculosis during his lifetime.
One of the most devastating volcanic catastrophes in human history was the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The volcano exploded in 70CE, killing thousands of people in the nearby cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
The victims were either killed by the intense heat of the volcano's eruption, or suffocated by the gases, ash, and pumice that rained down from the sky.
The manner of death was thought to leave the victims unviable for analysis since high temperatures destroy the bone matrix.
The ash that covered the victims and preserved their fate for nearly two millennia could have acted as a shield against environmental factors that cause further degradation, such as oxygen.
Previous attempts to analyze the genes of ancient Pompeiians used polymerase chain reaction techniques, returning short segments of their genes from their victims, and suggesting that at least some of their genes had survived the ravages of the volcano and time.
The amount of information that can be retrieved from fragments of DNA that would have been too damaged to be viable has been greatly increased by recent advances in genome sequencing.
The University of Rome in Italy and their colleagues made an attempt to apply these techniques to the remains of two Vesuvius victims.
The House of the Craftsman is where the pair were found. The first person was a man who was between 35 and 40 years old and was around 5 feet 4 inches tall.
The female who died was over 50 years old and was around 5 feet tall. The heights are in line with Roman averages.
The Notizie degli Scavi di Antichit was published in 1934. fig. 10
The two people died in the House of the Craftsman.
The skull is one of the densest bones in the body, and so the researchers extract DNA from it.
Material was taken from both bones using the same methods. The man's bone yielded enough DNA for a reasonable analysis.
The sample was compared to genomes from more than 1,000 people. The results show that most of the man's genes were from central Italy and that he was an Italian.
Some genes that are not seen in people from the Italian mainland are found on the island of Sardinia.
The researchers think that there was a high level of genetic diversity across the Italian Peninsula when the man lived.
It makes sense since ancient Romans moved around a lot and imported slaves from other regions. The high proportion of genes associated with the Italian population suggests that the man was not a slave.
The genetic material obtained from his petrous bone showed evidence of the presence of the bacterium that causes Tuberculosis. A study of his spine shows that he was afflicted with a particularly destructive form of the disease.
This is consistent with written records from other people. The emergence of an urban lifestyle and the subsequent increased population densities during the Roman Empire likely contributed to the spread of Tuberculosis.
None of these results are surprising, but the fact that they were obtained at all is incredible, and the breakthrough means we may have a new window into the lives of the Pompeiians.
The researchers write in their paper that their study confirms and demonstrates the possibility of applying paleogenomic methods to study human remains from this unique site.
The initial findings give a foundation to promote an intensive analysis of Pompeian individuals. Paleogenetic analyses will help us to reconstruct the lifestyles of the people of the Imperial Roman period, supported by the enormous amount of archaeological information that has been collected in the past century for the city of Pompeii.
The research has been published.
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