The city of Pompeii—buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE—has been intensively studied for decades. The sudden tragedy transformed it into a glimpse of life during the Roman Imperial Age, frozen in time, which has yielded novel insights into the architecture, customs, and language of the era. But one goal has remained out of reach: sequencing the whole genome of any Pompeian. Scientists have been attempting to do so for years in the hopes of learning more about the population who once lived there, for example, where they came from, or what diseases they suffered from.
Now, thanks to improved genomic technologies and interdisciplinary collaboration, a diverse group of researchers has finally achieved the feat. They announce today (May 26) in Scientific Reports the bioarchaeological and genomic analyses of two adults (a man and a woman) found at a Pompeii building named Casa del Fabbro, translated as ...
