Anew analysis of a man killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius suggests that he was most likely an elite Roman soldier sent on an unsuccessful mission to rescue refugees from the natural disaster.
As Claudio Lavanga reports for NBC News, the man’s skeleton was one of about 300 found at a beach in the ancient town of Herculaneum in the 1980s. Like neighboring Pompeii, Herculaneum was a popular seaside destination for ancient Romans. Both cities were destroyed by Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 A.D.
“When I arrived at Herculaneum in 2017, I realized that a lot of research went into the skeletons, but nobody thought of analyzing the tools found next to it,” Francesco Sirano, director of the archaeological site at Herculaneum, tells NBC News. “So my team and I took a closer look, and what we found was astonishing.”
