WEBVTT - Lessons of Vesuvius, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:13.640 I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:15.760 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.240 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back following up our 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.919 last episode about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in seventy nine. 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:25.120 You know, Robert, this is something that I have wanted 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:27.440 to do an episode about for a long time. I 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.080 think it was mainly just because I love those letters 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:32.160 of Plenties and I wanted to read them and talk 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.159 about them. But there was a reason that we just 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.640 recently decided, Okay, it's time to do Vesuvius, And it 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:40.600 was because of a new study I read about that 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.159 set the lava of my heart flowing anew. And so 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:46.760 here we are because a lot of the really great 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.839 and shocking research about Vesuvius is like basically, what happened 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:55.000 to people's bodies when when the volcano erupted? Oh absolutely, 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.080 I mentioned in the first episode, how I how much, 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.920 how clearly I remember looking through at only Geographic when 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.280 I was a child and and seeing these images of 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:09.240 the remains of uh In Pompeii and Herculaneum uh one 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.360 in particular, I remember, was a photograph of this one 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:16.360 bit of human remains that are referred to as ring 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:20.319 Lady because it is the skeleton and you see, uh, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:23.880 these these rings there, and it's just like the skeleton 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:28.520 emerging from the you know, half half revealed in the 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.400 in the ash and soil, and it was just very haunting. 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.920 It's this idea of this place just buried and frozen 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:38.080 in time. I'm looking at this image. Does she have 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.080 rings on her fingers but also bigger rings down around 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:43.440 her like her elbow? Yes, I believe so. And I 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.600 think another photo included in our notes is rather small, 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:49.320 but I believe they are serpents too, their like, you know, 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.200 precious metal serpents. Uh. So you know that all these 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:55.960 little details like that, you know, always were just very 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:59.160 intriguing me. Such a dramatic moment in history, and then 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:01.440 to have so much of it preserved, Yeah, in some 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.080 cases preserved in a shockingly pristine way, but in other 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:09.000 cases transformed in an even more shocking way. So this 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.880 new study that that I was reading about was by 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.440 pure Paolo Petrona, published in the New England Journal of 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:20.360 Medicine just this month or just last month in January. Actually, 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.519 so Patroni was the lead author, but there were a 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:24.560 bunch of authors named on it. And I'm not going 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:26.320 to say the name of the study because that might 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.520 spoil a little bit about what happened. But basically, there 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:31.960 have been a lot of modern analyzes trying to understand 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:34.359 exactly what happened to the bodies of the victims of 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.520 Vesuvius in settlements like Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's like some 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.120 of them the ones people were most familiar with, or 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:46.280 when essentially the like the the the ashes that formed 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.840 around body have been used as a kind of mold, 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.720 you know, pour a substance down in there, let it uh, 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.040 you know, harden, and then when you bring it back out, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.799 you have this this picture of these these humans from 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.880 any nine see at the basically the moment of death. Yeah, 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.280 And in a lot of cases, these people died under 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:09.760 circumstances so extreme that it's difficult to imagine exactly how 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.639 it would play out on our soft, fluid filled bodies. Um. 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.920 This particular study concerns one such case, which got a 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.760 good right up in the New York Times by Jennifer Pinkowski. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.320 So this study looked at one specific body exhumed from 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.079 the buried ruins of Herculaneum, and this was a man 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:29.640 who was believed to have been in his mid twenties, 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:32.760 and he was found lying on a wooden bed in 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.000 the colleg Gum august Stallium, which was a building on 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.920 the main street of the town away from the waterfront. 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.720 And the man's ash entombed remains were discovered sometime in 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.240 the nineteen sixties, but more recently researchers were able to 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:52.120 extract a strange object from inside the dead man's head. 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:58.200 And it is a warped, black, shiny fragment of glassy material. 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.680 What is it? Well, I mean, if if one worked 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:03.280 it to guess, you might think, well, this must be 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:07.640 a piece of you know, volcanic shrapnel, something that you know, 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.240 flying through the air and become it gets embedded in 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:12.480 the skull, right sure. And when I was looking at 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.480 images of the fragment, I was thinking exactly along those lines, 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:18.120 because it reminded me a bit of the appearance of 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.719 tech tits, which are these gravel sized pieces of natural 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.760 glass that are formed from terrestrial material, including things like sand, 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:31.640 which get rapidly superheated to the melting point during meteorite impacts. So, 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.840 like you know, a meteor hits the surface, it kicks 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:36.640 up a lot of stuff is some of it quickly 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:40.599 melts and turns into glass. And natural impact glass is amazing. 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:42.200 I think we talked about it a bit in our 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.159 episode about the Kabba Um but but yeah, just to 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.919 imagine that, like an object falling from space hits the 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.760 surface of the Earth, throws up this big explosion of debris, 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:53.919 and some of that debris gets so hot from the 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.400 impact it turns into a shower of glass. So anyway, 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.760 the images of this object extract it from the man's 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.120 head look kind of like tech tits or kind of 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.159 like obsidian. But it also has this crazy complicated shape 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:11.000 and texture with these sharp hooks and crags and little 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:15.240 rounded divots as if created by frozen bubbles. And so anyway, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.800 the authors of this study believe the evidence tells us 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:23.600 what the glassy material is. It's vitrified brain tissue, human 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.720 brain turned into glass. Hence the name of the study. 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.400 Heat induced brain vitrification from the vesuvious eruption in CE 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.719 seventy nine uh and is summarized in Pinkowski's article. According 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.160 to pure Paolo Patrona, who is a forensic anthropologist at 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.080 the University Federico, the second of Naples and the first 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.120 author on the study, again, the man's brain quote turned 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.640 to glass as a result of high heat from the 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:52.159 pyroclastic flow, and the victim's skull exploded. Now, this is 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.599 not actually the first case of research indicating that heat 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:59.680 from the volcanic eruption caused people's heads to explode. That 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.080 that's the thing that had been established by some previous 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:06.720 research right. In fact, one of the older episodes of 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.200 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, I think titled stuff that 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.960 will literally blow your mind. Well, that's one of the 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:15.200 things we mentioned as being something that could actually make 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:19.760 your your head pop, would be becoming caught in say 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.719 a pyroclastic flow like this. Yeah, not not to be 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.000 too grim, but I mean I think of the comparison 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.760 to like when we've discussed our problems microwaving butter, where 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.960 there's like too much vapor formation, very rapidly rapid temperature 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.800 change like that. Yeah. So, to quote some text from 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.960 the study itself, and this was quoted secondarily from the 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:43.080 BBC quote the detection of glassy material from the victim's head, 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.680 of proteins expressed in the human brain, and if fatty 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.880 acids found in human hair indicates the thermally induced preservation 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:55.600 of vitrified human brain tissue. So first you'd have extreme 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.919 radiant heat which would pretty much instantly ignite fat in 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:02.200 the body and vapor rise fluid content and body tissues. 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:05.360 What kind of heat are we talking about? Well, analysis 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:09.440 of the charred wood nearby shows temperatures right around the 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.560 man probably reached to something like five hundred and twenty 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:16.640 degrees celsius, which is over nine hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit, 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.680 which I believe is hotter than the average surface temperature 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.160 on the planet Venus. Uh. So we're we're in extreme 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.720 territory here and uh And though I should say that 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.800 not all experts are convinced that the black glass is 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.560 truly the man's brain, because Pinkowski Uh in her article 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.880 for The Times, also quote somebody named Christina Kilgrove, who 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.400 is a bioarchaeologist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.480 who's done firsthand research on Vesuvius and of the brain 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:48.000 to glass study. She says, quote, while their analysis is intriguing. 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.320 I do not think they've proved its human brain material, 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.160 nor nor have they ruled out other origins. The fatty 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.880 acids they identified are typical of vegetable or animal fat 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.880 or hair. So apparently, you know, once you start achieving 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:05.679 temperatures that potentially turn all kinds of organic material into glass, 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.240 you create some room for confusion. Maybe this is some 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.840 kind of other organic material that terrified, right, And and 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.040 then again this is like these are special circumstances to 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:20.080 create this these forensic remains, so it's difficult to compare 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.680 these to other cases. Now, that's not the only study 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:25.920 to come out recently about grim death scenes in these towns. 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:28.080 There was another one I was looking at that was 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.720 revising some earlier research about how some people had died 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:35.680 when their their remains were found within these stone houses 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.640 that were along the shores at Herculaneum that were sort 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:41.400 of known as the boat houses, to appear that people 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.400 died crowded inside. I think they had probably crowded into 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.400 the buildings for shelter. The buildings got closed up and 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.920 then got superheated, and the question was how did the 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.080 people die inside? And again it's a very grim scene. 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.319 But it looks like it's sort of turned. The buildings 0:08:56.400 --> 0:09:00.000 provided some insulation from the flow of what was happening outside. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.800 I'd but just gradually heated up and sort of worked 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.800 like an oven. It's kind of horrible to imagine. Oh yeah, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.760 so yeah, they they managed to avoid like instant cooking, 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.559 but instead got slightly more gradual cooking. Now his luck 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.360 would habit there was. There was another very recent bit 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:20.160 of news concerning the eruption of the Suvious. In January, 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:22.480 a number of news sources ran a story about the 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:28.040 possible discovery of Plenty the Elder's skull. What yes, um 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:30.560 in one of the better red ups that the one 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:33.400 I was looking at, in fact, was Katherine J. Woo's 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.280 This two thousand year old skull may belong to Plenty 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.280 of the Elder, published on smithsonian dot Com. Okay, what's 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.320 the case here? Alright, So this, this latest wrinkle in 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:47.400 the story comes via Italian researchers regarding one of some 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:51.440 seventy skeletons buried together in the aftermath of the eruption. 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:54.839 So this particular body that they're looking at, or really 0:09:54.920 --> 0:10:00.000 particularly particularly we're dealing with a skull and job on uh. 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.040 They were found to have the body that it's associated with, 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.560 found to have heavy or heavily ornamented short sword in 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.880 its possession, and jewels, all of this becoming of a 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:15.280 person of means. Perhaps they speculate a high ranking naval officer. Now, 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.560 these remains were unearthed about a hundred years ago, and 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:24.959 engineer Gennero Mathrone theorized that this might be Plenty Uh, 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.680 but there was no way to really explore this any further. Um. 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:30.760 You know, it's just kind of circumstance, like, hey, we 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.959 found a this this body looks like it was somebody 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:37.880 of of means. The most famous person of means to 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:41.319 have we know died uh in the eruption of Vesuvius 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:43.480 is of course Plenty of the elder. So he's thought, 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.000 I think this might be him. So fast forward to 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:50.080 the twenty one century and the skull and the jaw 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:52.720 are now in the possession of Rome's Museum of the 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:57.120 History of the Art of Medicine, and using DNA sequencing technology, 0:10:57.160 --> 0:10:59.520 researchers found that it was the skull of Quote, a 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:01.960 man who could trace some of his lineage to Italy 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.480 and who likely died in his forties or fifties. Now 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.160 Plenty would have been fifty six, so it's possible. The jaw, 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.600 on the other hand, turned out to be from a 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.000 different individual of North African heritage. Okay, so it wasn't 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.480 even from the same head as to the rest of 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.640 the skull. So all of this is still very uncertain. 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.000 This is not a this is not They're not really 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:26.880 hitting it out of the park with this one. I 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:31.839 think you can fairly say, yes, it sounds possible that 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.720 this particular skull could have belonged to Plenty of the 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:40.240 elder But narrowing it down to just a you know, 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.000 a man who could trace some of his lineage to 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.480 Italy and who likely died in his forties or fifties, 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.720 I mean, obviously they're going to be other individuals in 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:51.880 that category that died with the eruption of Vesuvius. Yeah, 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.400 this is interesting, but yeah, I'm I'm far from convinced. 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:58.080 So again to go over to the evidence, he would 0:11:58.080 --> 0:11:59.960 have been in the right age bracket, but a lot 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.280 of people would have been. He would have been an 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.680 Italian man, but a lot of people there would have been, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.240 and he had some he had some possessions indicating that 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.880 he was rich, like an ornamented sword and jewels. But again, 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.240 so the argument is like, well, this was the kind 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:18.320 of stuff that you might expect to find upon a 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.480 naval officer, to to find upon you know, somebody like 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.600 Plenty of the Elder. But that's about as far as 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.000 we can really go with it. Yeah, uh yeah. This 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.319 reminds me of other cases where we've talked about on 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.600 the show before where people kind of like, you're so 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.240 eager to take one fact or character or place from 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.640 a historical narrative and try to connect it with physical 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.160 artifacts on on often a very tenuous basis. Like I 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.760 remember in our episode about Lot's Wife where we discussed 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.480 the Dead Sea region and the tendency to take a 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.480 rock or salt formation, and people would say, that's a 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:57.320 Lot's wife, um, and like even so, even if you 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.320 were someone who believed the you know, destruction of Ottoman 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.520 Gomora story as as history, and believe the whole Lot's 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.160 of Wife thing, why would you expect an individual rock 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:08.960 you come across to actually be her? Right? Yeah, The 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.800 idea is of course endlessly attractive to be able to 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:14.439 have this physical proof of Plenty of the Elder and 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.600 individual who factors so heavily into this particular historical narrative. 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.480 But also it is just such an uh an important 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:25.160 figure in the you know, the historical writings. Yeah, I 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:27.760 think it speaks to a kind of human tendency of 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.160 like the characters we know from literary sources, whether it's 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:34.480 history or mythology. They're like friends and you know, the 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:36.200 same way that you walk through a crowd and you 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.400 yearn to recognize people. You know, you see somebody and like, oh, 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.320 is that Jeff, No it's not him, but your your 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.760 brain went there for a second, is that plenty Skull? Oh? 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.840 Wait what it might be somebody else, But still it 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.840 feels it feels special for a second there, Yeah, it does. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.440 So I guess i'd say the evidence here not even 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.120 close to decisive, But if you want to imagine maybe 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.120 it's plenty Skull, I guess there's no harm in that, 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:00.000 right and now. And on the same hand, I don't 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.080 to criticize this more recent research because because clearly they 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.079 were they were following up on this much earlier speculation 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:08.800 where this goes like I think it's plenty and they said, well, 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.880 let's let's apply some science to this. Let's what we 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.520 can we can discern from the bone of the skull itself, 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:18.760 and yeah, this is what they figured out. Yeah, you 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:22.240 can find out more that's either consistent or not consistent 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.200 with what somebody has already claimed. Yeah, and if they 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.080 had found that it was, you know, the skull of 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.480 a of a woman in her eighties, then it probably 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:31.600 wouldn't have been Plenty, right, Or if the the the 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.200 entire like the skull and the job bone had both 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:37.080 turned out to have North African origin, that would have 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.880 also been a firmer. No, So instead we just have 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.440 a lingering maybe. All right, on that note, we're going 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.720 to take the possible skull of Plenty of the elder 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:48.240 and we're gonna place it up on the shelf, and 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.040 we're going to drink coffee from it. Yes, and we're 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:53.760 going to take a quick break, but we will be 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.400 right back and we will continue to discuss the lessons 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:03.120 of Vesuvius. Alright, we're back. So there are all these 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.880 genres of things that archaeologists have uncovered at at the 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.800 settlements that were ruined by the eruption of Vesuvius, especially 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.600 like Pompeii and Herculaneum, and there's no way for us 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:16.400 to talk about all of the discoveries. A lot of 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.080 them are just things about, like, you know, everyday Roman life, 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.040 you know, the way the houses are preserved, things about 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.880 how the kitchens would have run, and stuff like that, 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.800 because you have all the stuff still in there. Yeah. 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.080 One of the things about the past that and then 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.160 we've touched on this plenty of times before, is you know, 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:36.880 it's the everyday stuff that is not always preserved in 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:40.320 say the history books or and you know, religious art 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:42.920 or what have you. And and that's often the most 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:46.200 interesting thing, like how did the common people live? How 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:48.800 what did people eat? What did they drink? Well, how 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.960 healthy were they? But like the common information like that 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.320 is not the kind of stuff that is usually thought 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.120 notable to be recorded by historians of the time because 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.080 common life is not interesting to them at least because 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.680 it's common, might be interesting to us for which it 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.360 is unusual and unknown. Instead, the things that historians are 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.160 likely to record are the unusual events, you know, the 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.160 wars and everything like that. Yeah, yeah, the the the 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:18.200 the dramatic moments, etcetera. So or and indeed, with the 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.800 with Vesuvius and its eruption, like you know, that's we 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.640 have this wonderful account that survived and provides all these 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.360 these details about the this, the unnatural horror that fall, 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.080 the falls, the cities that exist in the area surrounding 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.600 the Volcanic mountain. But you know, Plenty is not taking 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:37.120 a lot of time to talk about what he ate 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.640 for breakfast that morning, right, so I think he does 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.080 say his uncle had a light luncheon. You don't say 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.600 what it was. But one of the amazing genres of 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.280 things that archaeologists have uncovered at Pompeii that is definitely 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.920 worth looking up if you haven't seen it, is this 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.360 some of the surviving original artwork, which in some cases 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:01.520 is preserved in a strikingly vivid and colorful way. Oh yes, yeah, 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:05.400 these are definitely worth looking up. And some of them 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:07.639 are you know, it's it's one of these things where 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:10.960 it makes you really think about trying and put yourself 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:13.040 in the shoes of the of these people who lived 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.840 in and so there are things that make perfect sense, like, yeah, 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.800 of course you'd want to live in a uh in 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.000 a in a space that is uh you know, has 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.159 rich decoration. But then you ask, well, why this painting, 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.919 why this particular fresco et cetera. Well, I'm thinking if 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.680 it happened to my house and future archaeologists were digging 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:33.480 it up, they'd be like, what does it mean that 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:36.040 he had a poster for the film Attack of the 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.800 Crab Monsters on his wall. Clearly he thought it was 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:43.160 a great film, or he he realized that giant psychic 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.199 crabs were holy creatures and were to be venerated in 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.479 the home as a kind of a household god. They 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:52.159 might think this is a religious artifact. But so one 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:54.280 of the fresco is that I wanted to talk about 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.800 was something I was just reading about from a site 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.880 called Reggio five Reggio v. Uh assume that means five 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:05.080 and not just the letter V, which is still under excavation. 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.520 And this is a well preserved fresco that appears to 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:11.400 have been in the basement of a large building, underneath 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.200 the stairwell. I don't know if that contributed to how 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:17.119 well it was preserved. It might have, might have, But 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:22.000 it depicts the end of a fight between two gladiators 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.280 of fighter types that we can actually identify based on 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.080 their weapons in their armor in the painting. So one 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.280 is of a type known as the Murmillo, and the 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.680 other is a of a type known as the three 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.320 X or the Thracian. So I was looking these up 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.280 in a book called Gladiators at Pompeii by Luciana Jacobelli 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.640 from two thousand three, and she writes of the mrmalo 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.800 that had so the name of the mrmalo type fighter 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.560 originally comes from a marine fish, the murma, which had 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.520 an image of this fish was drawn on this type 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.600 of fighter's helmet. So this fighter would have a very 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.560 scary looking helmet actually. So it's got a visor that 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.240 closed is over the face, and it's got kind of 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.960 a chain pattern, like chain link pattern across the visor um. 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:09.120 And then of course it depicts this fish. And then 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.920 the gladiator to fight bare chested or sometimes we're something 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.600 known as the subla gaculum uh. And then he'd have 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:20.560 his right arm protected by something called a manica, which 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.280 I've seen depicted as like a kind of a sleeve 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.280 of padding laced up around the right arm, which was 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.440 the sword arm. So you'd hold your short sword called 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:31.840 a gladius in the right arm with that laced up 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.480 with this padding. And then in the other hand you 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.640 would have a rectangular shield called a screwed them that's 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:40.439 about one meter high. And as we've discussed in the 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.360 past talking about gladiators on the show Roaming Gladiatorial Combat. 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.400 You know, it's not unfair to compare it to the 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.640 film adaptation of The Running Man. You know, it's there's 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:56.400 theatrics here, there's mythic symbology involved here. Uh so it's 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.720 a it's it's not merely there's there's a mix of 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.920 a function but also just mythic form and entertainment. Yes, 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.520 and there's another element of it that comes in, which 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:11.479 is just like ethnic representations, like the Romans would have 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.879 some fighter types that were supposed to represent sort of 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:19.560 like exotic foreign types of warriors who the fighters might 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.359 not necessarily actually be from those regions. But say the 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.840 other fighter in this not the Mrmala, but the Thracian, 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:27.280 you know, so that's like a type of person. And 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.560 so this is supposed to be modeled after the idea 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:31.439 of a Thracian warrior. I'm well, I'm not sure if 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.919 it would actually in any accurate way represent what the 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.040 Thracians were Like. Yeah, I mean this is actually something 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:41.320 you see reflected even in some I think contemporary examples, 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.879 but definitely in twentieth century examples of professional wrestling, yes, 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.520 where various. And this is something you would see in 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:51.439 different parts in pretty much everywhere that pro wrestling was 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:56.520 slash is popular. So talking about Mexico, Japan, the United States, uh, 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:00.440 those three anyway, you would often see depictions of other 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:05.520 nationalities UH in different enemy roles. And of course you 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:09.760 see all manner of you know, xenophobia and UH and 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:14.640 racial stereotypes, the cultural stereotypes embodied in those forms. Yes, 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:16.760 and you know a funny thing that I was reading 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.399 about with the Roman gladiators that like sometimes gladiator types 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:25.000 would go out of style as as certain ethnic groups 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:29.680 were more comprehensively incorporated into the empire. So like earlier 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:31.720 on you would have a type of fighter that was 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.640 basically the gallic fighter, you know, like this is our 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:37.399 this is our parody of the UH, I don't know 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:38.960 what you want to call it, you know, their parody 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.680 or their understanding of like the the ethnic Gaul as 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.400 a warrior as Gaul. Then goal today modern like France 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.160 basically became a more fully incorporated part of the Roman Empire. 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:53.399 That type of fighter fell out of fashion and was 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:58.119 replaced by representations of ethnic groups that were still more 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.680