Archaeologists Find Chilling Scene During Pompeii Excavation

Archaeologists with the Pompeii Archaeological Park have discovered a home which serves as a snapshot of the ancient civilization’s final moments, the Daily Mail reported.

Within the home along Via del Vesuvio, now known as “the House of Elle and Frisso,” the scientists found the skeletal remains of four people, including an adolescent child. A bed was pushed up against a doorframe in an effort to avoid the volcanic lava from the volcano’s explosion. The child’s body was adorned with a bulla, an amulet which commonly marked the passage from childhood to adulthood and wouldn’t have been removed until the child reached adulthood.

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“Excavating and visiting Pompeii means coming face to face with the beauty of art but also with the precariousness of our lives,” the park’s director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, told the outlet. “In this small, wonderfully decorated house, we found traces of the inhabitants who tried to save themselves, blocking the entrance to a small room with a bed of which we made a cast.”

The home was discovered in 2018, but researchers have only recently finished their inspection. During their analysis, they found a large foyer which led into an atrium featuring an opening in the roof. Researchers posit that this somewhat rare feature may have warned the family to the impending threat of the volcano. Zuchtriegel said it’s clear the family attempted to barricade themselves in the bedroom, but there was no escape.

“They didn’t make it. In the end, the pyroclastic flow arrived, a violent flow of very hot ash that filled here, as elsewhere, every room,” he explained. “The seismic shocks had already caused many buildings to collapse. An inferno that struck this city on August 24, 79 A.D., of which we still find traces today.”

Archaeological Park of Pompeii