Ercolano January 2019
One of the problems of winter tourism is short days. Of course, I wanted to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum BOTH, but there simply was not enough daylight. I had to choose one, so I chose Ercolano because it was smaller, closer to Naples, and overall better reviewed. I was not disappointed.
Ercolano (the Italian is easier to write) was actually the first of these two ancient cities to be discovered. The main issue was that it was buried much deeper so excavation was more difficult. After the discovery of Pompeii, which was at a much shallower depth, excavation at Ercolano nearly stopped entirely. More of Ercolano waits to be uncovered under the modern city, but now funds are mainly focused on keeping up what has been uncovered since exposure to the elements has really taken its toll. The site is small and overlooks the nearby sea. Capri is visible off the coast and Vesuvius looms directly behind the town. The setting is idyllic - I could understand why the Romans wanted villas there.
And let's be very clear - Pompeii was perhaps the Pasadena of its time, but Ercolano - that was the Santa Barbara. Only the filthy rich lived in Ercolano and even after earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, poor excavations, and general plundering - the remains of the home interiors were stunning. I can only imagine what the place would have looked like just before the cataclysm in 79AD. I was impressed and I was happy I went. In early January there were very few visitors as well. Luckily, I was on the heels of a small, private tour group, so I got to peek in some special rooms that were normally locked as I scampered along behind them. Shades Ostia Antica [see: Ostia Antica], I really lucked out seeing things that the casual tourist usually misses.
As Vesuvius started to blow, the rich residents ran down to the stone boat houses for shelter waiting for the Roman navy offshore to come and rescue them. The navy indeed arrived, but they were too frightened to come into port and save the glitterati of Rome. They all perished wearing their jewels and finery. I remember their discovery in the 1980s as the answer to the mystery of what happened to all the residents. In Pompeii people were buried in their tracks; in Ercolano, they all made it as far as the boat houses and perished en masse. How they perished, however, is really the stuff of horror movies.
...numerous skeletons recovered from the waterfront chambers at Herculaneum were covered in mysterious red and black mineral residues. Based on mass spectrometry and microspectroscopy, the team hypothesizes that the residues represent iron from human blood that was exposed to extreme heat.
The so-called boat houses at Herculaneum where approximately 140 skeletons have been found were not excavated until the 1980s, as the massive site was buried underneath 20 meters of volcanic deposits. These skeletons were removed for laboratory analysis, and the bodies that tourists today stop to examine are actually fiberglass reproductions.
... the body postures of the victims at Herculaneum were suggestive of thermal shock rather than suffocation by noxious gases or ash, long thought to be the proximate cause of death for many at Pompeii. ... flexion of body parts -- such as curled toes -- as well as charred bones as evidence of instantaneous death from fulminant shock, in which vital activity ceases within a time-span shorter than conscious reaction time. "Their soft tissues were vaporized,"
... "in the present work, careful inspection of the victims' skeletons revealed cracking and explosion of the skullcap and blackening of the outer and inner table, associated with black exudations from the skull openings and the fractured bone. Such effects appear to be the combined result of direct exposure to heat and an increase in intracranial steam pressure induced by brain ebullition, with skull explosion as the possible outcome."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2018/10/08/mt-vesuvius-eruption-exploded-skulls-and-vaporized-bodies-roman-archaeologists-find/
Yowza! (and ewww). One small mercy is that the people died instantly. but having your body literally explode due to high heat?? I am surprised Hollywood hasn't picked this up as yet another way to die in a disaster film. All that reddish iron residue was blood splattered on everything. What a way to go...
So all those rich Romans died with all their jewelry and whatever precious items they could carry. No, they couldn't take it with them -- because they had literally exploded.
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