Herculaneum: A Fate Worse Than Pompeii | Vesuvius Uncovered | Real History

august the 24th 79 a.d began just like any other day in the ancient roman town of herculaneum citizens met in the town square discussed a little italian politics talk business over lavish lunches herculaneum was a booming seaside town at the height of the roman empire [Music] trade was good the future looked bright but the clock was ticking for the citizens of herculaneum they didn't know it but their beautiful town lay in the shadow of an active volcano mount vesuvius the inhabitants had absolutely no idea of the destructive power of the volcano they had no idea of the degree of the danger [Music] in 79 a.d vesuvius burst spectacularly to life the town was buried alive digging deep into the volcanic debris archaeologists are slowly uncovering herculaneum secrets discovering the tunnels of ancient tomb raiders who plundered the site and from remarkable human remains that lay buried for two thousand years they are finally unraveling the mystery of what happened to the people in the town's last few tragic hours [Music] [Music] this is the bay of naples the most unstable volcanic region in the mediterranean vesuvius is at its heart [Music] in 79 a.d it famously wiped out the roman town of pompeii but there was a lesser-known victim herculaneum [Music] only now is this lost town being brought back to life andrew wallace hadrill is head of the herculaneum conservation project his mission to preserve the site's treasures and unravel its unique story compared to pompeii herculaneum is a tiny little town it's only about 4 000 inhabitants which in our terms is only a big village but it had all the all the features of a major city when vesuvius erupted it trapped herculaneum in time in 79 a.d it was at the center of an empire in its prime rome had conquered the entire mediterranean dominions stretched from britain to jerusalem today the site offers a unique window into an ancient world what makes herculaneum special for me is that you have probably a better chance than anywhere else in the ancient world of piecing together an entire ancient society we can talk about their diet we have their houses we can talk about how they lived how they made their money we can see so many different aspects in great detail and then put them all together to make a society [Music] working in areas unseen by the public andrew and a team of dedicated scientists and archaeologists are building a picture of life and death in herculaneum more detailed than they ever could have done working alone [Music] together they are overturning long-held beliefs about how people died in the eruption and discovering the town's demise was spectacular and gruesome even compared to pompeii the way herculaneum was buried means it is also even better preserved than its more famous neighbor but worryingly for the team it's extremely vulnerable when we first came outside we noticed that there was decay and collapse virtually everywhere and we started a site-wide campaign really running around propping up stuff that we thought was in a critical condition before it actually fell to pieces a site that's already been once destroyed by volcanic action is incredibly fragile everything that makes herculaneum precious also makes it fresher cocoon for centuries beneath volcanic debris herculaneum grows more and more unstable as it's uncovered [Music] after years of neglect the team raced to conserve the site before the town's priceless artifacts are lost forever there still are frescoes falling off the walls everywhere mosaic floors were exploding with little mosaic pebbles spread all over the place wooden beams wooden beams are some of the really rare features of this site it's extraordinary to see a wooden beam above a door or wooden shutters outside windows and yet they were crumbling away preserving herculaneum and uncovering its remarkable secrets has never been more pressing but the potential for discoveries is amazing tantalizingly for andrew much of the site still lies perfectly preserved underground only a fraction of the town has been excavated modern italians have been drawn to the mountain and built a city on top of the rest today six hundred and fifty thousand people choose to live precariously in the shadow of vesuvius you find settlements in volcanoes for one specific reason and that's the fact that the soil that volcanoes produce are rich in nutrients minerals it retains water like a sponge so therefore it stands to reason that when they plant their crops they get fantastic food from it and that's why they sit on the side of these volcanoes today miles of vines and greenhouses cover the fertile ground tens of thousands of people ignore the risk of living on an active volcano but the romans had no idea they were in danger you have to bear in mind that volcanology wasn't a subject in those days no one knew when they looked at the rock strata that oh yeah there's been an eruption in this area so people didn't know that vesuvius was actually going to blow the romans didn't even know their mountain was a volcano [Music] most of the time vesuvius lies deceptively dormant but deep below ground the very fabric of the earth is on the move through a weak spot in the earth's crust molten rock called magma seeps into a massive chamber that stretches for miles beneath herculaneum and pompeii in 79 a.d the chamber was full to bursting point they had no idea of the degree of the danger they even had warnings of of the oncoming danger we now know that the earthquake 17 years before the eruption was a precursor to the eruption they couldn't read it like that people were well aware of earthquakes as a source of danger and traditionally they saw them as the result of the wrath of poseidon the wrath of the sea god or something like that by august 79 a.d there were signs vesuvius was heaving to life what happens is the magma is trying to get to the surface it's accommodating this space and you get fractures opening but when you really start to know that something's happening is that in front of that magma there's lots of steam it's very very hot lots of gases so those would have been bent in first pressure is building up and building up until eventually it just snaps vesuvius erupted around 1pm throwing a broiling churning column of gas and ash high into the air now this ash column would have been gigantic i mean if you were down in pompeii even that far back you wouldn't see over the top of it you wouldn't seen around the sides of it it's millions and millions of tons of volcanic debris that's thrown up into the air within minutes the eruption column was 10 miles high the wind carried the deadly cloud east towards pompeii the people in herculaneum would have seen the cloud enveloping their neighbors this is where you get lots of pumices these very very light volcanic rock that get catapulted way up into the air into the stratosphere these days we would describe it as a nuclear mushroom cloud because that's exactly what it's like perhaps the most terrifying thing of being in herculaneum was that you could see the eruption without being covered by it so you could see the column rising above the volcano but it didn't go dark in herculaneum in pompeii day turned to night as the town was swallowed by black volcanic cloud then pumice stones started to fall on the rooftops people fled or hid inside thinking the storm would pass there is evidence all around the town of the panic and confusion of this moment lead archaeologist antonio varoni believes he can see how two artists at work in pompeii reacted to the catastrophe [Music] we are in the house where the painters were working something very dramatic is happening the eruption but they don't know that the painters are still working in here we can see the younger painter who's just ladies plaster the plaster is still fresh in fact you can see falling palmies has left clear marks on the fresh plasters [Music] there is another painter working on this wall it's the picture imaginarius the master painting [Music] we found them here with a work tool the painter's work came to a crashing halt evidently evidently our painter is on a scaffolding and he's holding a pot with lime to keep the paintwork he must have lost his balance and spilled the lime all over the paintings this is probably the only place where we can find the painter at work rather than the finished painting we have found their tools but we haven't found them we hope they run away and survive appropriately outside pumice continued to choke pompei's streets next door to the artists a baker was worried enough to flee his shop and leave his valuable livestock behind it was a life and death decision [Music] this is the stable of a bakery [Music] we can see some wooden sticks that were tied to the color of the animals they would have been whipped to make them push the millstone they have been locked up in the stable by the owners who run for it the owners certainly thought they would have come back afterwards so they locked the door to stop the animals from running away however the animals faced a sad destiny locked up without a way of escape around five o'clock in the afternoon rooftops started to collapse under the weight of the pumice stones it is impossible to imagine the terror in pompeii as their town was slowly entombed but dramatic rare footage from 1944 shows what happened the most recent time vesuvius erupted residents watched helplessly as their homes were destroyed [Music] mass evacuations cleared most people from the nearby towns [Music] they could do nothing as whole villages were engulfed by deadly flows of lava [Music] this lava is not going to kill anyone instantly it moves incredibly slowly around about 100 meters per hour so that means that if you take a football pitch length it'll take over an hour to get to the end of it so you can out walk it you can outrun it it's not a problem vesuvius captivated one minute but could kill the next [Music] in 1944 the volcano could have become more explosive at any moment the people knew they were vulnerable stunned by their own powerlessness they made holy offerings and prayed for their survival their ancestors probably did the same but the people in 1944 were far more fortunate in 79 a.d the force unleashed by the volcano was 50 times more powerful equivalent to hundreds of hiroshima bombs after hurling pumice on pompeii for 12 hours the ancient eruption was about to enter a new even deadlier phase around the bay in herculaneum people were fleeing for their lives [Music] but time was running out their town would not make it through the night [Music] around midnight vesuvius's gigantic eruption column collapsed at the speed of a hurricane molten rock mud and gas known as pyroclastic flow hurtled straight towards herculaneum pyroclastic flows are the most violent events in volcanology so quick and deadly they've only recently been filmed on the caribbean island of montserrat in the 1990s clouds of poisonous superheated gas and ash surged down the volcano when the dust settled it revealed a scene of utter ruin everything in its path was buried in 79 a.d a succession of pyroclastic flows covered herculaneum by around 7 or 8 am cooler flows finally reached as far as pompeii but herculaneum was buried deepest in some parts to the depth of a four-story building the town is eventually buried to the depth of 70 80 feet but that takes probably 12 to 24 hours to achieve pyroclastic surges and flows come down one after another and each adds its own little bit they gather strength they produce more and more material denser material as time passes and in fact long after the city has been destroyed it's still being filled up and filled up so much material was deposited on the town its coastline was pushed back dramatically seaside villas are now hundreds of yards inland pyroclastic flows were the death of herculaneum but they also spectacularly preserved the town just as it was on august 24 79 a.d [Music] today it's possible to walk through the exquisite public baths but for centuries no one knew they were here the suburban baths are probably the most beautiful surviving baths from the roman world they're not as big as the great big baths in rome but they're much better preserved you can be in a room that is ancient from the floor through the walls to the ceiling you're in a complete ancient environment [Music] on a normal day the public baths would have been packed citizens came here to wash and swim businessmen came to entertain clients politicians to do deals but no bodies were ever found here [Music] one of the great surprises about herculaneum was always the great rarity of skeletons at the main level where the houses are there was no pumice fall as there was in pompeii which sent people into a panic sent them scattering in all directions trying to shelter the absence of bodies in herculaneum led to an assumption that everyone had managed to get away in the hours before suffocating pyroclastic flows choked every doorway the burial was so violent and total the romans thought the town was beyond all hope very interestingly there was no attempt in antiquity to build again either herculaneum or pompeii and i think that there was nothing there were no foundations left on which to build there was no point in going back and i think there must also have been a sense of of religious horror a sense that this was a graveyard they shouldn't touch two thousand years later thousands of bodies have been found in the graveyard that is pompeii this is probably the largest single reason why pompeii has caught the world's imagination [Music] tourists are captivated by the ancient tragedy mesmerized by the citizens gruesome fate [Music] the figures they visit seem to have known they were about to die but these are more than just skeletons they are death masks frozen in time [Music] in the 1860s archaeologist giuseppe fiorelli found strange voids in pompei's ash he poured plaster of paris into the holes and the world marveled at the contorted human forms he revealed [Music] corpses had rotted away but their shapes remained [Music] trapped in their homes most of these people suffocated horribly in poisonous gas and ash their terrible deaths have made pompeii and its citizens world famous eclipsing the memory of their neighbors across the bay in herculaneum [Music] herculaneum was of course not forgotten at the time everyone remembered the loss of two cities as a terrifying event but then in the middle ages it was certainly forgotten and by the time you reached the 18th century people were aware that this was the legend of the place but they did not have a clear idea of exactly which city was where herculaneum became a mythical landlocked city of atlantis but it was not lost forever in time it would reveal its secrets today archaeologists search carefully for traces of roman life beneath towering walls of pyroclastic flow it's a massive undertaking the excavations began in earnest in the early 20th century and almost 100 years later they're still making new discoveries no one knows if any bodies still lie buried behind these walls but almost everywhere they have explored archaeologists have discovered a strange labyrinth of tunnels it seemed ancient tomb raiders had got there first when they excavated in the 1930s the whole site was covered with this stuff there's 30 meters of solid rock or or not so much solid as crumbly you can see that it it comes away in my hands and when they first exploded in the 18th century they did it by cutting tunnels and what we're seeing here is very tantalizingly the edges of tunnels cut in the 18th century and here you can see they got this far and then they stopped and they've drawn a blank [Music] at the beginning of the 18th century a farmer had stumbled across herculaneum when digging a well soon after the rulers of southern italy descended on the site known as the bourbons they were a centuries-old european dynasty the bourbon king of naples ordered hordes of men underground to search for artifacts to decorate his palace many died by rockfall and poisonous gas in his quest for exquisite art you can just imagine how awful it was to excavate in these conditions in the 18th century you can see here there's a there's a little uh hole that they've cut to prop up a lamp and the only illumination they've got is these lamps and these dark tunnels going going for yards and yards and yards hundreds of yards under the side and so they get to this point they've cut the ceiling quite nicely and suddenly it comes to a stop there and what happens at this point they go off to the right and it reaches a blank there and then it also turns to the left and it reaches another blank and now they've been going for maybe 20 30 yards without hitting a wall and so they say obviously there's nothing here we've reached the edge of the site we don't know where the city finished from the bourbons to today only a fraction of herculaneum has been uncovered for andrew and the team the tunnels offer a tantalizing glimpse of a roman world beneath a sprawling modern town one of the most fascinating things about herculaneum is to try and guess what still lies underneath we know that there are major public buildings that haven't been discovered yet that ought to be there and are there libraries are there other baths that won't have been robbed by the bourbons that won't have been stripped of all their accoutrements things that can tell us a lot about the daily processes of life within the city it's possible for andrew to see the damage wrought by the bourbons and vesuvius in a tunnel that has only recently been uncovered this is one of the most important buildings in town it would be a dream to excavate it but we can't because right above our heads right up there are modern houses and it's extremely dangerous yeah you've got that at the top of a column shaft here's its bottom and it's the sheer force of the eruption has brought it down like this the row of columns goes on there then it goes on that way what you've got is a shape like a church or like what we call a basilica christian basilica with columns going around the edges and then a big row of columns down the center the basilica was a meeting place and law court where magistrates settled disputes from maps drawn by the bourbons it's possible to reconstruct the imposing building [Music] if we can sort of follow along like the bourbons into the warren is a wonderful fragment of fresco look up here what they did was to hack out anything that they saw that was beautiful because they're interested in in treasures for the palace and so they find a beautiful fresco there they hack it out and they send it up top and then they just backfill it and abandon it see those little bits of wood there that's a trellis um that was in front of a window and it slipped down from above and then if you look along there you're seeing where the tunnel goes right round the back the bourbon's ruthless pursuit of roman art led to spectacular findings but they largely disregarded the culture and environment in which the stunning objects were created [Music] the people who first explored pompeii and herculaneum didn't obviously have the values that we would have today if we're exploring the cities but for their time they were interested in the art they weren't really interested in the context so by today's standards they were not archaeologists [Music] but the bourbons didn't take everything today's archaeologists regularly make extraordinary finds just recently this rare painted head was discovered near the basilica today it's being conserved by dr monica castaldi i received a telephone call saying a painted head was fun and i just said please keep it wet as much as you can put it into a plastic bag don't let it dry objects are used to be in wet climate and then they dry too quickly and they can disintegrate the paint layer could have been damaged [Music] [Music] what's so important about it is that monica was there for it to have a conservator actually involved in the archaeology so many heads must have been found in the past with paint but was simply washed away and that means that we have a fantastic insight into the big mystery of what a coloured statue head was like you can see how wonderfully delicate the paintwork is and you see how it concentrates around the area of the eye it brings it to life because for the ancients the life resides in the eye you can see into the soul through the eye the head is believed to be of an amazon warrior woman a popular mythical figure of the time it probably came from the basilica where many such statues would have stood studying herculaneum's spectacular art in context enables andrew and the team to fully appreciate the colorful world the romans inhabited in herculaneum they have a unique opportunity to build a complete picture of a living breathing town what makes herculaneum very special and unlike pompeii is that organic material is preserved and that everything is preserved to a greater height and that means you get wooden structures you get you get food you get cloth you get cupboards and you also get upper floors over the last two millennia while other roman towns were sacked by invaders herculaneum streets and infrastructure were preserved under 80 feet of volcanic debris giving a rare glimpse of the scale of roman building but it's the 2000 year survival of delicate household objects that gives herculaneum its sense of unique preservation and connects us to daily life in the roman world one of the most unusual things about herculaneum in particular is the preservation of so much wood and wood survives in archaeology only for three main reasons it's been burnt carbonized it's been waterlogged for example upon hadrian's wall you find waterlogged deposits or it's being dried out as you might find say in the desert in egypt but at herculaneum because the pyroclastic flows scorched everything you have staircases ceilings shelves furniture hidden from public view lies some of the most fragile and revealing discoveries in here we have one of the most extraordinary features of the site we have the carbonized wooden furniture and you see rows and rows of this furniture here for instance you've got a bed and you can see the the wooden frame of the bed but also all rounded this beautiful edging work in marquetry it's preserved like this because of the unique way that the site is destroyed an avalanche of hyper-heated pyroclastic flow coming down turns the wood instantly cooks it at this very high temperature and you can see over here how black this chest is you can see the cracks running on it all of the vapor has been driven off then the wood has turned into carbon and like that it can survive most of the furniture is carbonized like that every now and again very very rarely you get real wood non-carbonized wood this is the uh a little door from a cupboard or something and you can see these beautiful details of woodwork around it and this must have been hit by a pyroclastic flow at much lower temperature and it's not just wood all sorts of organic materials survive here for instance you you have a wicker basket perhaps for fishing we don't quite know quite what and here one of the really astonishing finds from the site a roman loaf a roman love divided it into its little slices of bread which actually has the name of the guy who's going to consume it stamped on it you can see an a or a v and an m there and what you did was put your name on so you get the right loaf back out of the oven that a loaf of bread can survive 2 000 years is extraordinary enough but in subterranean herculaneum even more basic details of daily life have been preserved this is the ancient sewer which ran beneath most of the houses [Music] here professor mark robinson has found shards of pots and kitchen waste that show that this was also used for general garbage disposal it's quite a usual practice for their own latrines to be in the kitchen you could do your washing up you could throw your kitchen waste around down the toilet shaft which is much more of a a waste disposal shaft rather than just just a latrine shaft hidden in the dirt is evidence that offers a rare glimpse of roman diet and may even show what some citizens had been eating in herculaneum's final hours the first item here is a partly mineralized cherry stone then onto an apple pip these these things are a group of mineralized grape pips and finally large numbers of peak seeds were present in the samples some of this material could well be from some of the last meals eaten at herculaneum because the deposits that have been sampled are the uppermost layers of the excrement material in the sewer the water that drained into the sewers had reached it via another feat of technology roman engineering was highly developed by 79 a.d a few miles northwest of herculaneum in the modern city of naples an aqueduct still spans a busy street the aqua augusta provided water for all the towns around vesuvius the romans developed a whole science if you like of aqueduct technology that's controlling the gradient controlling water pressure providing reliable masonry structures that would carry the water from the source and track it all the way down to where it was needed the most familiar impression of a roman aqueduct today is a whole series of arches and an arcade carrying the water along the top actually that's something that the romans only usually employed to carry water across lower areas like valleys most aqueducts were actually channels buried into the ground underground channels from the channels the water was filtered and divided at water plants on the edge of each town in the region here the water was divided into three one channel supplied the public baths another fed the private houses of the rich and a third supplied the public fountains that everyone could use [Music] the dividing tower was built on the highest point of the town to control pressure if the pressure got too great the water was forced up pipes to the top of towers at street corners where there was another water tank this reduced the pressure and produced a steady local head of water which then ran down lead pipes into street fountains the system was called constant off-take it flowed the whole time so you have to imagine a town where the public taps are really never turned off there is water flowing through it the whole time providing water for their populations was one of the greatest benefits of being part of the roman world there's no doubt about that and it's a kind of a tragedy that so much of that fell apart after the end of the roman empire it took until the 19th century really before people learnt again the value of providing a reliable public fresh water supply the romans had brought one of the most advanced civilizations the world had ever seen to the slopes of vesuvius by its final period herculaneum was a wonderful place to live there was peace and prosperity on the bay of naples and there were glorious houses looking out over the bay and life must have been very good this was the life destroyed over a few deadly hours in 79 a.d but what really happened to the people of the deserted city it was only 20 years ago that the horrifying truth finally began to emerge a discovery that has reshaped our entire understanding of how herculaneum and its people met their end for a long time it was thought that everyone must have escaped from herculaneum only a few dozen skeletons were found and it wasn't until they started going right down to the level of the ancient sea that a series of arches produced the most dramatic evidence of what happened to the inhabitants of herculaneum [Music] dozens of bodies lying huddled for protection in these arcades [Music] these fragile bones were one of the archaeological finds of the century studying the skeletons bioanthropologist pierre paulo searches for details of the inhabitants final terrifying moments [Music] dr petroni believes the skeletons show signs of a violent reflex reaction to intense heat contorting the bodies in a thermal induced contraction [Music] here we have a good example of a contracted hand in fact all the hands and feet of these people underwent thermal induced contraction induced by the direct effect of the heat on the skin receptors so just in one second we they got this kind of contraction of upper lower limbs in this case an ant and here we have a cast of the food contracted it's a very evident over the contraction of twos [Music] a natural in a normal position of living person [Music] the people in the boat sheds didn't know what hit them the latest scientific work has shown exactly how people died the skeletons show signs of thermal shock a wave of very hot gas at 400 500 degrees centigrade hit them and makes their flesh evaporate and they die instantly it's become clear that anyone who hadn't escaped herculaneum by midnight was vaporized by the first superheated pyroclastic flow that surged down vesuvius pyroclastic flows vary in temperature you can have cold flows and you can have supercharged exceptionally hot flows now you imagine it you're not entirely sure how you would die in one of these things if it's cold you'd suffocate because it's very fluid the ash gets into your throat and effectively you drowned or if they very very hot you become incinerated in the blink of an eye from the skeletons dr petroni believes he can tell how hot the killer flow was in this case we have blackening of the inner part and some very clear fractures which showed that the temperatures of exposure were about 4 500 degrees in this case the intense heat caused brains to boil and skulls to explode so the first effect of it was the contraction of hand and feet because it took just one second and then later we have the effects on the bones on teeth on the skulls explosion of skulls and fractures of the long bones of teeth and then rapid vaporization so all the effects are very sudden but after the death of the people so the people didn't feel anything [Music] hot ash immediately entombed the people keeping their skeletons intact [Music] here a child looks as if it's being comforted by its mother the tiny bones of a fetus found beneath the woman indicate she was seven months pregnant [Music] [Music] it's thought the people of herculaneum fled to the sheds by the sea to seek rescue by boat if there was an attempt to completely evacuate the town it failed [Music] it's clear that they had taken refuge at the very last moment and they've probably got about 10 minutes when the flow starts coming down the mountainside and the best place to take refuge was right down by the shore underneath these great massive concrete vaults they would have given very good protection or protection against anything except a pyroclastic flow though we've already discovered about 300 skeletons there must be more [Music] andrew and the team will probably never know how many more mothers and children still lie buried but they now know that herculaneum suffered a human catastrophe just as tragic as pompeii [Music] it's impossible to look at the tragedy of herculaneum without being moved to look at their awful skeletons and to think of their awful death the irony of working in in herculaneum is that other people's tragedy is our good luck their destruction is also their survival so you can't just be upset by their horrible end because it gives us a fabulous chance to study them studying the secrets of herculaneum's dead gives andrew and the team fresh insight into an old problem the perils of living in reach of a volcano today on the bay of naples the threat from vesuvius is just as acute as it was in 79 a.d volcanologist dr giuseppe mastro lorenzo works with the team and looks for precursors of trouble on the volcano signs that it might be about to erupt again precursors normally last for weeks to months and precursors includes earthquakes which are indicators of something happening unlike in 79 a.d today the italian authorities monitor vesuvius around the clock dr giovanni machidonio is the director of the vesuvian observatory there was an earthquake about at two o'clock this morning this is very small at wake and here we record about let's say 100 200 earthquakes of this kind during one per year so this is a normal activity of the volcano and until this is the activity we are sure that there is nothing that shows us that resource is going to erupt of course if you if we see an increase in seismicity if there are many earthquakes in one day of course this means that the volcano is changing its activity and is going to to towards the crisis officially the authorities do not expect a large eruption anytime soon and they think they will get at least two weeks warning when it does come but dr mastro lorenzo thinks vesuvius might surprise them i don't know when the sewers will erupt again i just know that the volcano like these may change from this state to the critical conditions in a few days the authorities do have a plan to evacuate six hundred thousand people before the next eruption but it might be too little too late present of a question plan has been based on a minor eruption like one occurred in 1631 which is not so big uh like the the 79ed eruption i don't know if the people really thinks an eruption like that may occur in the course of their life but it could the evacuation plan looks inadequate when compared to worst case scenarios based on more ancient eruption in terms of ad79 eruption is that the worst you could get from vesuvius probably not probably not when you look at the record the rock record and you go back through time geological time you see many different large-scale eruptions some of them bigger than the ad-79 eruption only four thousand years ago vesuvius erupted so violently it wiped out most of the bay of naples today this area has over 6 million residents most of them don't have an evacuation plan the modern population like their ancestors in ancient herculaneum are living on a time bomb what makes a volcano extremely dangerous is not its style of activity it's the amount of people that live at the foothills and of course with vesuvius you've got several million people right there in naples itself and the question becomes how fast can you evacuate those people when the volcano starts to escalate despite all the planning today's citizens may be no more prepared to deal with an eruption than their ancient ancestors people have been building right under vesuvius right through history not just the romans but millennia before we know that humans have lived here vesuvius only erupts very rarely and people just can't remember the last time it erupted among the secrets of herculaneum's dead is a warning for the millions still living in the volcano's shadow [Music] escaping an eruption is the only sure way to survive but any last minute attempt to evacuate will be fraught with difficulty even on normal days the roads are jammed [Music] it's difficult to imagine but one day all of this could be buried by vesuvius the lessons from the lost city of herculaneum are too terrifying to ignore

Channel: Real History

Views: 1,180,214

Keywords: World History, US History, History Lessons, pompeii, vesuvius, herculaneum, volcanoes, ancient history, Real History

Id: xnAxW3EugpU

Length: 53min 14sec (3194 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2022