The DNA of a man between the ages of 35 and 40 and that of a woman in her 50s were sequenced in a landmark breakthrough that could yield previously unseen details of the style of Pompeian life
The two individuals, lying as they died (Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità)
For the first For once in history, scientists have sequenced the genome of a man who died in the ancient city of Pompeii from the catastrophic volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, a disaster that has inspired fear and wonder for nearly 2,000 years, a new study reports.
The unprecedented achievement offers an intimate insight into the life of a man who was between 35 and 40 years old and 1.64 meters tall, when the approach of a cloud of hot volcanic ash probably killed him instantly inside one of the rooms of the Casa del Fabbro (House of the Craftsman) in Pompeii.
While loose strands of human and animal DNA from Pompeii have been sequenced before, researchers led by Gabriele Scorrano, a geogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, now present this“first successfully sequenced Pompeian human genome”, revealing a man with complex ancestry and a possible tuberculosis infection, according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
“Working with Pompeii is absolutely exciting,” Scorrano and Thomaz Pinotti, a doctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen, said in a joint email. “Everything about the city is either surreal or just too good to be true. We know where people lived, what they had in their houses, we even know the nasty things people wrote on the walls; if we know how to swear in Latin, it is because of Pompeii.”
Previous attempts to analyze the DNA of ancient Pompeians used polymerase chain reaction techniques, returning short segments of DNA from human and animal victims, and suggesting that at least some of the genomic information had survived the ravages of the volcano and of time.
However, recent advances in genome sequencing have dramatically increased the amount of information that can be recovered from fragments of DNA that previously would have been too damaged to be viable .
The second individual was afemale, over 50 years old when she died, who was about 1.53 meters tall. Both heights are consistent with Roman averages at the time.
Of these individuals , the researchers extracted DNA from the petrosal bone of the skull, one of the densest bones in the body and therefore among those most likely to retain viable DNA.
Using identical methods, material from both bones was extracted and sequenced. However, only the man’s bone produced enough DNA for reasonable analysis.
The team compared the sample with the genomes of 1,030 ancient and 471 modern individuals from western Eurasia. The results suggest the man was Italian, with most of his DNA consistent with people from central Italy, both ancient and modern.
However, there were some genes that are not seen in Italian people from the mainland, but are found on the island of Sardinia.
This, the researchers say, suggests that there was a high level of genetic diversity throughout the Italian peninsula during the time that man lived.
This makes sense. , given the number of movements of the ancient Romans and the number of slaves they imported from other regions. But the high proportion of genes associated with the Italian population suggests that the man was Italian and not a slave.
It is the first time in history that scientists have managed to sequence the DNA of humans who died in the Pompeii tragedy< p class=”paragraph”>Interestingly, genetic material obtained from his petrous bone showed evidence of the presence of DNA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. A careful study of his vertebrae suggests that he suffered from spinal tuberculosis, a particularly destructive form of the disease.
This is consistent with roughly contemporary written records of Aulus Cornelius Celsus, Galen, Caelius Aurelianus, and Aretaeus of Cappadocia. The rise of an urban lifestyle and subsequent increase in population density during the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of tuberculosis, and it was probably not uncommon.
Neither of these The results are necessarily surprising, but the fact that they were obtained is incredible, and the breakthrough means we may have a new window into the lives of the Pompeians, whose deaths were unbelievably surprising.
“Our study, although limited to one individual, confirms and demonstrates the possibility of applying paleogenomic methods to study human remains from this unique site”, the researchers write in their article .
“Our initial findings provide a basis for further intensive analysis of well-preserved Pompeian individuals. With the support of the enormous amount of archaeological information that was collected in the last century for the city of Pompeii, their paleogenetic analyzes will help us to reconstruct the lifestyle of this fascinating population of the Roman imperial era”, they conclude.