Italian researchers found human remains crushed by collapsing structures in the ancient Roman city.

In 79 A.D., the Roman city of Pompeii in central Italy was obliterated by the catastrophic eruption of Mountain Vesuvius, but new evidence reveals that powerful earthquakes also played a crucial role in the tragedy.

It was Roman statesman Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Younger, a teenager at the time, who provided the only surviving eyewitness accounts of the disaster through letters to the Roman historian Tacitus. His detailed descriptions have been vital for understanding the event both by his contemporaries and by researchers today.

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During the first day, Vesuvius erupted explosively, sending volcanic material nearly 20 miles into the sky. Pumice lapilli - a type of lightweight volcanic rock - rained down on Pompeii for 18 hours, accumulating up to nine feet in depth, causing many roofs to collapse and resulting in some deaths.

Most of the estimated 2,000 deaths, however, occurred on the second day when the summit of Vesuvius collapsed. This event unleashed a pyroclastic flow - a fast-moving surge of hot rock and ash - that engulfed Pompeii, killing residents almost instantly.

The city turned into a mass cemetery in 15 minutes.

But Pliny's accounts also mentioned violent earthquakes accompanying the eruption, which modern science was able to confirm recently with hard evidence. Previously, it was difficult to distinguish between damage caused by the volcanic eruption and that caused by earthquakes. Recent discoveries by Italian scientists have provided compelling proof of deaths from an earthquake-induced building collapse.

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According to a new study published in Frontiers in Earth Science, there was a critical third phase of destruction - a powerful earthquake hitting just before the pyroclastic flow. This earthquake, with a magnitude possibly as high as 5.8, struck overnight and at dawn, coinciding with Pliny’s descriptions.

Archaeologists discovered two skeletons beneath a collapsed wall, with injuries indicative of earthquake trauma rather than volcanic heat or asphyxiation. The men, both in their 50s, suffered severe compression fractures, typical of those seen in modern earthquake victims.

The wall that killed these men showed signs of horizontal displacement due to seismic activity, not the toppling typical of a pyroclastic flow (pictured above). Covered by pumice lapilli, the wall fell while lightweight rocks were still raining down.

This new evidence suggests that many Pompeii residents who survived the initial phase of the eruption were trapped by collapsing buildings during the subsequent earthquake, reducing their chances of escaping before the deadly pyroclastic flow arrived.

The combined forces of the volcanic eruption and the powerful earthquakes created a perfect storm of destruction, sealing the fate of Pompeii’s inhabitants and reshaping our understanding of this ancient catastrophe.

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