Lessons of Vesuvius, Part 2

about them. But there was a reason that we just recently decided, Okay, it's time to do Vesuvius, And it was because of a new study I read about that set the lava of my heart flowing anew. And so here we are because a lot of the really great and shocking research about Vesuvius is like basically, what happened

to people's bodies when when the volcano erupted? Oh absolutely, I mentioned in the first episode, how I how much, how clearly I remember looking through at only Geographic when I was a child and and seeing these images of the remains of uh In Pompeii and Herculaneum uh one in particular, I remember, was a photograph of this one bit of human remains that are referred to as ring Lady because it is the skeleton and you see, uh, these these rings there, and it's just like the skeleton

emerging from the you know, half half revealed in the in the ash and soil, and it was just very haunting. It's this idea of this place just buried and frozen in time. I'm looking at this image. Does she have rings on her fingers but also bigger rings down around her like her elbow? Yes, I believe so. And I think another photo included in our notes is rather small, but I believe they are serpents too, their like, you know,

precious metal serpents. Uh. So you know that all these little details like that, you know, always were just very intriguing me. Such a dramatic moment in history, and then to have so much of it preserved, Yeah, in some cases preserved in a shockingly pristine way, but in other cases transformed in an even more shocking way. So this new study that that I was reading about was by pure Paolo Petrona, published in the New England Journal of

Medicine just this month or just last month in January. Actually, so Patroni was the lead author, but there were a bunch of authors named on it. And I'm not going to say the name of the study because that might spoil a little bit about what happened. But basically, there have been a lot of modern analyzes trying to understand exactly what happened to the bodies of the victims of

Vesuvius in settlements like Pompeii and Herculaneum. It's like some of them the ones people were most familiar with, or when essentially the like the the the ashes that formed around body have been used as a kind of mold, you know, pour a substance down in there, let it uh, you know, harden, and then when you bring it back out, you have this this picture of these these humans from

any nine see at the basically the moment of death. Yeah, And in a lot of cases, these people died under circumstances so extreme that it's difficult to imagine exactly how it would play out on our soft, fluid filled bodies. Um. This particular study concerns one such case, which got a good right up in the New York Times by Jennifer Pinkowski.

So this study looked at one specific body exhumed from the buried ruins of Herculaneum, and this was a man who was believed to have been in his mid twenties, and he was found lying on a wooden bed in the colleg Gum august Stallium, which was a building on the main street of the town away from the waterfront. And the man's ash entombed remains were discovered sometime in the nineteen sixties, but more recently researchers were able to extract a strange object from inside the dead man's head.

And it is a warped, black, shiny fragment of glassy material. What is it? Well, I mean, if if one worked it to guess, you might think, well, this must be a piece of you know, volcanic shrapnel, something that you know, flying through the air and become it gets embedded in

the skull, right sure. And when I was looking at images of the fragment, I was thinking exactly along those lines, because it reminded me a bit of the appearance of tech tits, which are these gravel sized pieces of natural glass that are formed from terrestrial material, including things like sand, which get rapidly superheated to the melting point during meteorite impacts. So, like you know, a meteor hits the surface, it kicks up a lot of stuff is some of it quickly

melts and turns into glass. And natural impact glass is amazing. I think we talked about it a bit in our episode about the Kabba Um but but yeah, just to imagine that, like an object falling from space hits the surface of the Earth, throws up this big explosion of debris, and some of that debris gets so hot from the impact it turns into a shower of glass. So anyway, the images of this object extract it from the man's head look kind of like tech tits or kind of

like obsidian. But it also has this crazy complicated shape and texture with these sharp hooks and crags and little rounded divots as if created by frozen bubbles. And so anyway, the authors of this study believe the evidence tells us what the glassy material is. It's vitrified brain tissue, human brain turned into glass. Hence the name of the study. Heat induced brain vitrification from the vesuvious eruption in CE

seventy nine uh and is summarized in Pinkowski's article. According to pure Paolo Patrona, who is a forensic anthropologist at the University Federico, the second of Naples and the first author on the study, again, the man's brain quote turned to glass as a result of high heat from the pyroclastic flow, and the victim's skull exploded. Now, this is not actually the first case of research indicating that heat

from the volcanic eruption caused people's heads to explode. That that's the thing that had been established by some previous research right. In fact, one of the older episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, I think titled stuff that will literally blow your mind. Well, that's one of the things we mentioned as being something that could actually make your your head pop, would be becoming caught in say

a pyroclastic flow like this. Yeah, not not to be too grim, but I mean I think of the comparison to like when we've discussed our problems microwaving butter, where there's like too much vapor formation, very rapidly rapid temperature

change like that. Yeah. So, to quote some text from the study itself, and this was quoted secondarily from the BBC quote the detection of glassy material from the victim's head, of proteins expressed in the human brain, and if fatty acids found in human hair indicates the thermally induced preservation of vitrified human brain tissue. So first you'd have extreme radiant heat which would pretty much instantly ignite fat in the body and vapor rise fluid content and body tissues.

What kind of heat are we talking about? Well, analysis of the charred wood nearby shows temperatures right around the man probably reached to something like five hundred and twenty degrees celsius, which is over nine hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit, which I believe is hotter than the average surface temperature

on the planet Venus. Uh. So we're we're in extreme territory here and uh And though I should say that not all experts are convinced that the black glass is truly the man's brain, because Pinkowski Uh in her article for The Times, also quote somebody named Christina Kilgrove, who is a bioarchaeologist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who's done firsthand research on Vesuvius and of the brain to glass study. She says, quote, while their analysis is intriguing.

I do not think they've proved its human brain material, nor nor have they ruled out other origins. The fatty acids they identified are typical of vegetable or animal fat or hair. So apparently, you know, once you start achieving temperatures that potentially turn all kinds of organic material into glass,

you create some room for confusion. Maybe this is some kind of other organic material that terrified, right, And and then again this is like these are special circumstances to create this these forensic remains, so it's difficult to compare these to other cases. Now, that's not the only study to come out recently about grim death scenes in these towns.

There was another one I was looking at that was revising some earlier research about how some people had died when their their remains were found within these stone houses that were along the shores at Herculaneum that were sort of known as the boat houses, to appear that people died crowded inside. I think they had probably crowded into the buildings for shelter. The buildings got closed up and then got superheated, and the question was how did the

people die inside? And again it's a very grim scene. But it looks like it's sort of turned. The buildings provided some insulation from the flow of what was happening outside. I'd but just gradually heated up and sort of worked like an oven. It's kind of horrible to imagine. Oh yeah, so yeah, they they managed to avoid like instant cooking, but instead got slightly more gradual cooking. Now his luck would habit there was. There was another very recent bit

of news concerning the eruption of the Suvious. In January, a number of news sources ran a story about the possible discovery of Plenty the Elder's skull. What yes, um in one of the better red ups that the one I was looking at, in fact, was Katherine J. Woo's This two thousand year old skull may belong to Plenty of the Elder, published on smithsonian dot Com. Okay, what's

the case here? Alright, So this, this latest wrinkle in the story comes via Italian researchers regarding one of some seventy skeletons buried together in the aftermath of the eruption. So this particular body that they're looking at, or really particularly particularly we're dealing with a skull and job on uh. They were found to have the body that it's associated with, found to have heavy or heavily ornamented short sword in its possession, and jewels, all of this becoming of a

person of means. Perhaps they speculate a high ranking naval officer. Now, these remains were unearthed about a hundred years ago, and engineer Gennero Mathrone theorized that this might be Plenty Uh, but there was no way to really explore this any further. Um. You know, it's just kind of circumstance, like, hey, we found a this this body looks like it was somebody of of means. The most famous person of means to have we know died uh in the eruption of Vesuvius

is of course Plenty of the elder. So he's thought, I think this might be him. So fast forward to the twenty one century and the skull and the jaw are now in the possession of Rome's Museum of the History of the Art of Medicine, and using DNA sequencing technology, researchers found that it was the skull of Quote, a man who could trace some of his lineage to Italy and who likely died in his forties or fifties. Now

Plenty would have been fifty six, so it's possible. The jaw, on the other hand, turned out to be from a different individual of North African heritage. Okay, so it wasn't even from the same head as to the rest of the skull. So all of this is still very uncertain. This is not a this is not They're not really

hitting it out of the park with this one. I think you can fairly say, yes, it sounds possible that this particular skull could have belonged to Plenty of the elder But narrowing it down to just a you know, a man who could trace some of his lineage to Italy and who likely died in his forties or fifties, I mean, obviously they're going to be other individuals in that category that died with the eruption of Vesuvius. Yeah, this is interesting, but yeah, I'm I'm far from convinced.

So again to go over to the evidence, he would have been in the right age bracket, but a lot of people would have been. He would have been an Italian man, but a lot of people there would have been, and he had some he had some possessions indicating that he was rich, like an ornamented sword and jewels. But again, so the argument is like, well, this was the kind of stuff that you might expect to find upon a naval officer, to to find upon you know, somebody like

Plenty of the Elder. But that's about as far as we can really go with it. Yeah, uh yeah. This reminds me of other cases where we've talked about on the show before where people kind of like, you're so eager to take one fact or character or place from a historical narrative and try to connect it with physical

artifacts on on often a very tenuous basis. Like I remember in our episode about Lot's Wife where we discussed the Dead Sea region and the tendency to take a rock or salt formation, and people would say, that's a Lot's wife, um, and like even so, even if you were someone who believed the you know, destruction of Ottoman Gomora story as as history, and believe the whole Lot's of Wife thing, why would you expect an individual rock

you come across to actually be her? Right? Yeah, The idea is of course endlessly attractive to be able to have this physical proof of Plenty of the Elder and individual who factors so heavily into this particular historical narrative. But also it is just such an uh an important figure in the you know, the historical writings. Yeah, I think it speaks to a kind of human tendency of like the characters we know from literary sources, whether it's

history or mythology. They're like friends and you know, the same way that you walk through a crowd and you yearn to recognize people. You know, you see somebody and like, oh, is that Jeff, No it's not him, but your your brain went there for a second, is that plenty Skull? Oh? Wait what it might be somebody else, But still it feels it feels special for a second there, Yeah, it does.

So I guess i'd say the evidence here not even close to decisive, But if you want to imagine maybe it's plenty Skull, I guess there's no harm in that, right and now. And on the same hand, I don't to criticize this more recent research because because clearly they were they were following up on this much earlier speculation where this goes like I think it's plenty and they said, well, let's let's apply some science to this. Let's what we can we can discern from the bone of the skull itself,

and yeah, this is what they figured out. Yeah, you can find out more that's either consistent or not consistent with what somebody has already claimed. Yeah, and if they had found that it was, you know, the skull of a of a woman in her eighties, then it probably wouldn't have been Plenty, right, Or if the the the entire like the skull and the job bone had both turned out to have North African origin, that would have also been a firmer. No, So instead we just have

a lingering maybe. All right, on that note, we're going to take the possible skull of Plenty of the elder and we're gonna place it up on the shelf, and we're going to drink coffee from it. Yes, and we're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back and we will continue to discuss the lessons

of Vesuvius. Alright, we're back. So there are all these genres of things that archaeologists have uncovered at at the settlements that were ruined by the eruption of Vesuvius, especially like Pompeii and Herculaneum, and there's no way for us to talk about all of the discoveries. A lot of them are just things about, like, you know, everyday Roman life, you know, the way the houses are preserved, things about how the kitchens would have run, and stuff like that,

because you have all the stuff still in there. Yeah. One of the things about the past that and then we've touched on this plenty of times before, is you know, it's the everyday stuff that is not always preserved in say the history books or and you know, religious art or what have you. And and that's often the most interesting thing, like how did the common people live? How what did people eat? What did they drink? Well, how

healthy were they? But like the common information like that is not the kind of stuff that is usually thought notable to be recorded by historians of the time because common life is not interesting to them at least because it's common, might be interesting to us for which it is unusual and unknown. Instead, the things that historians are likely to record are the unusual events, you know, the wars and everything like that. Yeah, yeah, the the the

the dramatic moments, etcetera. So or and indeed, with the with Vesuvius and its eruption, like you know, that's we have this wonderful account that survived and provides all these these details about the this, the unnatural horror that fall, the falls, the cities that exist in the area surrounding the Volcanic mountain. But you know, Plenty is not taking a lot of time to talk about what he ate for breakfast that morning, right, so I think he does

say his uncle had a light luncheon. You don't say what it was. But one of the amazing genres of things that archaeologists have uncovered at Pompeii that is definitely worth looking up if you haven't seen it, is this some of the surviving original artwork, which in some cases is preserved in a strikingly vivid and colorful way. Oh yes, yeah,

these are definitely worth looking up. And some of them are you know, it's it's one of these things where it makes you really think about trying and put yourself in the shoes of the of these people who lived in and so there are things that make perfect sense, like, yeah, of course you'd want to live in a uh in a in a space that is uh you know, has rich decoration. But then you ask, well, why this painting,

why this particular fresco et cetera. Well, I'm thinking if it happened to my house and future archaeologists were digging it up, they'd be like, what does it mean that he had a poster for the film Attack of the Crab Monsters on his wall. Clearly he thought it was a great film, or he he realized that giant psychic crabs were holy creatures and were to be venerated in the home as a kind of a household god. They

might think this is a religious artifact. But so one of the fresco is that I wanted to talk about was something I was just reading about from a site called Reggio five Reggio v. Uh assume that means five and not just the letter V, which is still under excavation. And this is a well preserved fresco that appears to have been in the basement of a large building, underneath the stairwell. I don't know if that contributed to how

well it was preserved. It might have, might have, But it depicts the end of a fight between two gladiators of fighter types that we can actually identify based on their weapons in their armor in the painting. So one is of a type known as the Murmillo, and the other is a of a type known as the three

X or the Thracian. So I was looking these up in a book called Gladiators at Pompeii by Luciana Jacobelli from two thousand three, and she writes of the mrmalo that had so the name of the mrmalo type fighter originally comes from a marine fish, the murma, which had an image of this fish was drawn on this type of fighter's helmet. So this fighter would have a very

scary looking helmet actually. So it's got a visor that closed is over the face, and it's got kind of a chain pattern, like chain link pattern across the visor um. And then of course it depicts this fish. And then the gladiator to fight bare chested or sometimes we're something known as the subla gaculum uh. And then he'd have his right arm protected by something called a manica, which I've seen depicted as like a kind of a sleeve of padding laced up around the right arm, which was

the sword arm. So you'd hold your short sword called a gladius in the right arm with that laced up with this padding. And then in the other hand you would have a rectangular shield called a screwed them that's about one meter high. And as we've discussed in the past talking about gladiators on the show Roaming Gladiatorial Combat. You know, it's not unfair to compare it to the film adaptation of The Running Man. You know, it's there's

theatrics here, there's mythic symbology involved here. Uh so it's a it's it's not merely there's there's a mix of a function but also just mythic form and entertainment. Yes, and there's another element of it that comes in, which is just like ethnic representations, like the Romans would have some fighter types that were supposed to represent sort of like exotic foreign types of warriors who the fighters might

not necessarily actually be from those regions. But say the other fighter in this not the Mrmala, but the Thracian, you know, so that's like a type of person. And so this is supposed to be modeled after the idea of a Thracian warrior. I'm well, I'm not sure if it would actually in any accurate way represent what the

Thracians were Like. Yeah, I mean this is actually something you see reflected even in some I think contemporary examples, but definitely in twentieth century examples of professional wrestling, yes, where various. And this is something you would see in different parts in pretty much everywhere that pro wrestling was slash is popular. So talking about Mexico, Japan, the United States, uh, those three anyway, you would often see depictions of other

nationalities UH in different enemy roles. And of course you see all manner of you know, xenophobia and UH and racial stereotypes, the cultural stereotypes embodied in those forms. Yes, and you know a funny thing that I was reading about with the Roman gladiators that like sometimes gladiator types would go out of style as as certain ethnic groups

were more comprehensively incorporated into the empire. So like earlier on you would have a type of fighter that was basically the gallic fighter, you know, like this is our this is our parody of the UH, I don't know what you want to call it, you know, their parody or their understanding of like the the ethnic Gaul as a warrior as Gaul. Then goal today modern like France basically became a more fully incorporated part of the Roman Empire.

That type of fighter fell out of fashion and was replaced by representations of ethnic groups that were still more considered outsiders or there's Yeah, it's a it's an interesting way to think about the you know, that space where where sport and war meet, and and they meet more directly in gladiatorial combat obviously, but you see this in other types of sporting entertainment out there, even like full on team sports. Uh. You know, there's this idea that uh,

instead of two nations going to war, they go to game. Uh. And that you know, that's ultimately part of the spirit of even the Olympics, which are again often uh you know, held up as an example of nations coming together in peace and uh. And I think certainly certainly fulfills that that need for the international community. And yet at the same time, it is about my country and your country going head to head and we're going to see which one has the has the right stuff to to emerge

victorious at the end. Yeah. But at least in the case of the Olympics, it's like people actually from the original countries coming together to compete. It would be a different thing if you were just like wherever somebody actually came from, you had them depicting a person from a certain country, and then in that you would see more of a parallel in say twentieth century American professional wrestling. Yeah. So jacob Elli writes about this other type, that the

second type in the Fresco, the Thracian quote. The Thracians armor included a small, strongly convex squarish shield known as a parmula a manica. Again this is an arm bands like this like padding laced up around the sword arm uh and two high leggings, often decorated up to the knee. The weapon most typical of this gladiator was a short sword, either curved or angled, called a ska, so like you

have a little kind of curved scimitar thing. And she writes that even the helmet was unusual, usually be decorated with this tall decorated crest. So in the Fresco, it's a battle scene, and it's at the end of the battle, and the Mermalo fighter stands victorious, holding his sword in his right hand and holding his shield high in his left, and the Thracian is bent over badly wounded, bleeding from wounds on his wrist, in his chest. He's disarmed, his

shield is lying on the ground. Next to him, and he's making a sign with his left hand, and it's not clear exactly what that is, but some historians and archaeologists think that he's possibly appealing to the audience for mercy with this sign, and we don't know if the fight would have ended with mercy or execution. That's interesting because then it then also not not only you're wondering about what he's depicted in the art, but then why

is it depicted, Like why is this image celebrated? Are we celebrating the presumably the valiant warrior that has fallen and is is appealing for for mercy, like saying, Hey, I put up a good fight, didn't you? And and maybe the people looking at the art can be like, yeah, even if you lose, if you put up a good fight,

there's there's grace and honor in that. Or is it about the other guy, like yeah, defeat the other of combating at all costs, and maybe they'll beg for mercy, but you still want right is the purpose us of the artwork to be like look at this thration loser? Uh? Yeah? And according it gets even more interesting because, according to Massimo Osana, director general of Pompei's Archaeological Park. This building was probably both a tavern and a brothel that was

frequented by local gladiators. So Reggio five is very near to another side that's believed to have been a barracks for the fighters, So the gladiators would have had their barracks nearby. They would go for I guess recreation at this tavern and brothel. And inside the tavern and brothel where the gladiators go, there are scenes on the walls of gladiators killing each other, And it's like, is that what they would have wanted to see? Is that what they just had to put up with? Yeah? Like who

who decorated this space? I don't. It's so interesting trying to understand what would motivate people to to decorate buildings in certain ways in the ancient world. You like, you can't again the same thing we were talking about, like, like, how would a future civilization understand the spirit with which I hang up a Poe stir for a trashy nineteen fifties sci fi movie, Like do they like do they

have the level of complexity and imagining? My mind that says, okay, this had something to do with like love of horror movies, but also a sense of irony and you know, like or would they just have to assume I guess this is just like a religious artifact or something. Yeah, yeah, there's some of there's Yeah, there's so many generalities to potentially apply to that situation. And then and then it's going to get you know, very specific about the individual

whose house it is. Of course, in this case, it is a you know, again more of a less a public space for the gladiators that are assembled there. But then you have to again question who decided that this is what should be on the wall, and then what is the intended meaning of that? Like what are they trying to enforce or celebrate? Right? Is it valiant? Is it funny? Is it honoring them? Is it scaring them? Like what if they put that that image up at work here, like would we take away from that? Or

it's like, oh, I don't know. Are they both podcasters? So I don't I don't know what's happening. So again, we're not gonna be able to get into anywhere close to all the studies that discuss what daily life was like in Pompeii or Herculaneum prior to the eruption of Vesuvius and seventy nine CE. But but I do want to discuss just a few quick ones, and these are all relatively recent that shed some interesting light on everything.

So the first one I want to talk about is a two thousand seventeen University of Southern Denmark study that looked at the drinking water situation for the Romans of Pompeii and they found that while yes, lead pipes which they used would sometimes poison the water, of the issue here is they would quickly calcify, so you would only be dealing with high toxicity levels after they've been initially

installed or when you've had to make some repairs. H So, so the lad would from time to time poison you, but that the toxic chemical element antimony would have been more of a factor it was with the lead, and it was a more It was also more common in the groundwater, as is typical of areas of volcanic activity. So this would have, according to the researchers quote, lead to daily problems with vomiting, diarrhea, and liver and kidney dan So um, I mean, it's yeah, it's it's it's

it's terrific to imagine. But but but it does shed a little a little more light, like, what does it what does it mean to have amazing and really advanced plumbing in uh in seventy nine CE? While it probably meant being poisoned part of the time, especially in this area, Well, it makes me think. So Pompei is basically a rich town. It's kind of a resort region. A lot of successful elites lived there poisoning themselves with diarrhea pipes. And it reminds me of the raw water trend from a couple

of years. I remember that a lot of like rich tech world kind of people decided they were going to pay fifteen dollars a gallon for untreated drinking water full of giardia. I haven't looked it up. Is that like, is that still a thing or did that go away? I hope it went away, but but I don't know. We'll have to say, maybe we'll do an episode on that. Maybe we'll get as a sponsor. Who knows. Um, Now, a couple of other study. Both of these other studies,

I'm going to talk about our University of Cincinnati studies. UM, Okay, there's a teams there that have have been working uh in POMPEII, and both of them have really concerned, like refuse what we can learn, not so much from the the artistry that has survived or the human remains that we can look at, but digging around in the trash, looking in the sewer pipes and trying to solve the riddle of you know what they ate, what they how they lived and uh and you know how they disposed

of their trash. So there's two thousand and twelve University of Cincinnati study looked at a question that has come up in archaeology concerning trash uh in POMPEII. Why was there so much garbage littered among the tombs? So one theory was that we saw garbage dumb in tombs and a grave sites that had been damaged by previous earthquakes

in the vicinity and therefore they had been abandoned. And since this was an abandoned you know, grave area that wasn't used anymore, people decided, what would just dump our trash here? Right? Yester year's graveyard is today's dump. Yeah, And we see shades of this in today's society. Right. You have you have, say a house that's under repair or it's you know, it's there's something there's nobody's living there. One person dumped some garbage there, and then suddenly other

people were dumping old couches and what have you. And there may be signs to try and prevent people from doing it. But now this is a place where garbage accumulates. Yeah, it's the RLO go three principle. You know, the Thanksgiving day masaker. Okay, is this from Alice's restaurant? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Or they find where you find garbage somewhere you figure that's where you put the other garbage on top. That's

that's that's part of the human experience. However, in this particular study, Allison Emerson argued that the Romans of the time they simply had a more casual approach to trash. So she points out that there's no evidence for any kind of a centrally managed system for garbage disposal, and so life was probably just lived in close proximity to the refuse that created, especially in the alleys, the streets, roads, cemeteries,

and tombs as well. Plus one thing that she drives home is that tombs at the time, like these were places you didn't want your tomb just today we think of, oh, where do I want to be buried? Where do want my remains to go? I wanted to be a nice, quiet place that occasionally be visited by children or families, but for the most part is just left to the squirrels and the birds. Uh So, Emmerson argues that this was not the Roman way you wanted to be remembered.

Uh So, your tomb needed to be seen. Your tomb needed to be in a place that was going to be highly trafficked. Uh And so these tombs would have been high traffic spaces, which meant people would probably be littering everywhere, that they would be leaving graffiti, etcetera. And that was I mean, that was just part of it. Like this is, you want to be seen, you want to be remembered, you need to be in a living space. Living space means graffiti and garbage. Oh yeah, this is

common in the ancient world. It makes me think of the Chattelhoya situation, where people would literally bury the remains of their ancestors in the floor of the house where they lived. Yeah, you want to be near the living That's that's part of the whole equation here. And they would often keep body parts of that, like maybe keep

their head covered in plaster just on the shelf. Now, another University of Cincinnati study came from and this one looked specifically at the drains, cisterns, and the trains of Pompeii to learn what people ate. And it's interesting we've we've talked about how yes, there were definitely some very wealthy, uh members of Roman society in the area. This was a very rich part of the Roman Empire. At the same time, there were, of course commoners, there were people

lower down all on the socioeconomic spectrum. And so in looking at the the these remains, these vestiges of of the of these diets you were, they were able to find these clear socio economic divisions. So for instance, they looked at one area and they found grains, or they found the remnants of grains, fruits, nuts, olives, lintels, local fish and chicken eggs, as well as minimal cuts of more expensive meat and salted fish that had been imported

from Spain. And so this would have been you know, um, this would have been the the the food of of people lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum, the workers throughout the regular people, yeah, eating you know, the staples, but then occasionally having something a little more fancy. But then, of course there were the richer areas. UH. And here they found more imports from outside Italy, such as various shellfish, sea urchins, and I love this detail, even delicacies that

included the butchered leg joint of a giraffe. And UH Professor Steven Ellis points out that the bone quote represents the height of exotic food and is underscored by the fact that this is thought to be the only giraffe bone ever recorded from an archaeological excavation in Roman Italy. So, as far as we know, the only bone from a giraffe ever found in Italy at the time, and it's

in it's underneath the restaurant. Now, some of you might be wondering, Well, you might think to yourself, well, it wouldn't even occur to me to eat a giraffe, which is a giraffe taste like? Well, there's a wonderful article you should read on this. This was published in New York Magazine in februaryeen titled what does Giraffe Meat Taste Like?

By Adam Martin and basically, UH, Martin says that, you know, descriptions are gonna vary, but on one hand, you'll see it described as a very tender meat that is served extra rare and it kind of melts in the mouth. Health Other accounts have said that it's an intensely flavored, lean meat like that of a tender horse, so like horse meat, except not as tough. And another source said that what that giraffe meat was tough and chewy but

also flavorful. Now I would have guessed like tough and gamey. Yeah, I mean it's a wild animal. Yeah, this is not like the kind of the breeds of cattle that are bred for meat. Yeah. Yeah, I felt the same. And of course a big part of this too is like it's exotic, right, people, And this is the reason why rich Romans would have potentially ordered this in a menu. It's like, what do you have? What are your specials today? Well, we have the leg of a giraffe, you know, exciting.

I've never had that before. I will try it and then I'll have some cost on how I respond to the taste exactly. Now, Martin does our drive home though that okay, Yes, there are examples of modern giraffe meat that have been obtained legally, uh, certain like from calling efforts in certain places. But if you but don't use this as license to go and try and obtain giraffe meat because it's also giraffe meed is gonna bring with

it a high risk of being harvested unethically. So ultimately it's not worth it because it's not it doesn't sound like it's gonna taste great, and you don't want to go around trying to order yourself up a leg of giraffe for the barbecue. Uh, if you're gonna have to contend with the fact that it might be obtained unethically. I wonder how many pounds of meat you get out of side of giraffe. I mean, it's it's quite a bit. This Uh, this article by Martin goes into that a bit.

How sometimes they're poaching. There's there you'll see poaching of giraffes because if you land a giraffe, it's worth like it's as much meat as you would get from say, sell several say in Paula or gazelles or something. Um. That being said, it's going to be probably tough and weird. Yeah, Now if you were one of those people thinking like it would never occur to you to eat a giraffe. I was thinking like that, this, this really indicates that

you do not have a Roman elitement tality. Because we've discussed on the show several times. Uh, the Romans ate everything, you know, like, oh, look at this interesting exotic animal. Get the butcher knife. Uh. They were they were really like, let's try to eat that culture. Uh. And apparently another thing I was reading about is that they loved the

rare delicacy of flamingo tongue. I was reading about this in Food of the Ancient World by Joan p Alcock, where she writes, quote, flamingo's tongue was a great delicacy. Emperor Vitellius in a d. Sixty nine presented the goddess Minerva with a dish containing peacock brains, pike livers, pheasant brains, and flamingo tongues, which he afterward ate, Which is great. You know, you got to present it to Minerva and then you know, chow down yourself because Minerva is not

going to eat it. Now. I feel I love two minds on all of this, because on one hand, yes, they're all these wonderfully really exotic sounding things with the Romans eight. And yet if you had to decipher, like which which menu of possibilities is more exotic and uh, you know, it depends on on wider you know, geographic sourcing. Is it this restaurant in Pompeii where the giraffe leg was was served? Is it even the the available menu,

say it even any given time in Rome itself? Or is it what you might get at the large whole foods or armies or what's the restaurant with the colossal menu cheesecake factory? You know, like like if you like trace the origins of all those things and see it as see cheesecake Factory as a restaurant of empire, is it ultimately a larger empire by far than that of the the even like the richest table setting in the

Roman Empire? Well, I mean you clearly drive home that like some of our judgments about these kinds of things are completely arbitrary, you know, about like what is an exotic extravagant food and what is just normal food? And the Roman poet Marshall was actually he lamented the idea of eating flamingo tongues. I don't know why exactly. It's it's what's so bad about flamingo tongues compared to the

other stuff. But he was generally attacking, you know, like, uh, certain Roman elites as decadent, you know, decadent epicureans or whatever. But there's this couplet that Marshall wrote that I found translated in a book called The Flamingo Smile by Stephen Jay Gould, And so Marshall wrote, my red wing gives me my name, but epicures regard my tongue is tasty, but what if my tongue could sing? Well? I think it sounds like what he's getting at is is a

basic truth. The flamingo is a beautiful animal that we love to look at. It is it is different from other varieties of bird that we might behold. And and that's why generally you go to a zoo, what's the first thing you see? Flamingos there? Like this the standard greeters at. It's so many different zoological parks. I mean, flamingos are weird. They are beautiful, like I the way

they eat with their heads upside down, you know. In this book, Gould goes on to write about the about how the flamingos tongue has special texture and taste because of its unique evolutionary function that unlike most birds, flamingos are actually filter feeders. They're more like billen whales, and they dip their heads into the water turned down too, and they open up their mouths and they've got these little, uh, these hair like things called lamlay. And then the tongue here,

the part that the emperor would eat. It serves as a kind of pump to like rapidly suck water in and out of the mouth through the filters. And this pulls in all the you know, weird little bits and life forms that the flamingos ultimately survived based on. But that it's this strange morphology that apparently made it so delicious to uh, to Roman epicures like Vitelius. Well, you know it's I guess it's possible it had a special taste or special texture, uh that that made people want

to eat it. But I you at the impression, it's mostly like here is a unique animal. Uh, serve it to me. Well, I just want to say, as an addendum, Vitelius did not last long. He he was only emperor for less than a year. Uh. He lost a power struggle to Vespasian, was dragged out of hiding by a mob of his enemies and beheaded in the streets of Rome. And uh, I attached a picture for you to look at.

I don't know if you've seen this artwork, but it's called Vitelius dragged through the streets of Rome by the Populace by George Rosia Gross. He looks like he's having a bad day. Yeah, yeah, that is a yeah, that's that. That is a bad day for sure. But maybe he should have served giraffe to Minerva instead and his luck

could have changed. Well, I think even today it would probably be just political death for most politicians to to suddenly publicly eat the tongue of a of a flamingo, or or eat a big chunk of giraffes at the Iowa State Fair eating fried flamingo tongue on a stick. Yeah, I don't know. Well, okay, and now I'm second guessing myself. But all right, on that lovely note, we will take one more break, but when we come back, we will return more specifically two volcanoes. Alright, we're back, So we

mentioned earlier. How the slopes of Vesuvius, you know, once more are home to vineyards and and uh in human populations. The area around Vesuvius is highly urbanized today, but authorities have established a red zone a Zona Rosa, to be evacuated if signs indicate that an eruption is likely Sona rosa. That sounds so nice, yeah, I mean, or or it sounds like like a horror movie, doesn't it like Origento

kind of cold, be a jello like Lazona Rosa. Yeah. Now, the general consensus is that if the signs were to prevent themselves, we'd have about two weeks notice on an eruption. But there are a lot has been written about, like the the actual preparedness in place for an event like this.

So Lee Marshall wrote about this topic in a September seen article for The Telegraph, pointing out that again at the time, seven hundred thousand people lived in this red zone of Vesuvius, and while there there was a finalized evacuation plan and it was still in the process of coming online in six uh. But according to to one Francisco Emilio Barelli Regional Council for the Green Party, quoted in a November two thousand nineteen euronews dot com article

exercises regarding evacuation, we're no longer being carried out. And in that article, Filipo Pultronieri pointed out that other urban areas near volcanic areas are also highlighted for insufficient planning, namely the island vacation destination of Iscia and UH and also of Flagrian Fields, which is another another area in

that region that is known for its volcanic activity. Lee Marshall, writing at the time, pointed out quote the notorious ss TO six S eight dual carriageway between Naples and the Sarentine Peninsula, design not only to relieve congestion but also provide an escape route from the volcano, is still not complete. Construction of the road started incredibly in the eighties. So in that article, Marshall contended that the locals were more

inclined to take solace in religious faith than in emergency planning. Now, this was obviously written a few years ago, and I was looking around trying to find any confirmation that ss TO has actually been completed and is, you know, in operation. I couldn't find any articles about it. Uh some of them were, you know, in Italian somewhere translated into English. So if we have any Italian or Italian speaking Italian reading listeners out there who want to set the record straight, uh,

we would love to hear from you. But based on I was looking around, like Google Maps. If you look a Google Map inquiry for a route between Naples and the Sarentine Peninsula, it initially only provides a route via SS three, sixty six and forty five which travels right between the ocean and the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. So like, not a good place to be. So that sounds like a roughly herculaneum zone. Yeah yeah, like and like, yeah, you don't want to be between Vesuvius and the ocean. Yeah,

this is this is definitely in the red zone. Um. But the more I, when I look closely, it looked like you could actually it would route you on s S two if you dragged the route around with your mouse cursor. So I personally cannot tell to what degree like that is now a valid option to deal with the evacuation. Okay, we have had an official Google Maps fail getting out, but but to whatever degree you know,

this is finally in place etcetera. Like what I'm trying to to drive home from those articles that I that I cited there is that you know, we still live, We still have people living in high concentration in areas near active volcanoes. And yes, even with modern science, we may have again two weeks notice on a pending eruption, but that's two weeks to sometimes move a very large

number of people out of the danger zone. It, I mean, it makes you start to wonder more broadly about like what are the kinds of risks that human settlements should be tolerant of, because it's clear, you know, they're all kinds of places where there are there are different risks of natural disasters that are going to come with different severity,

different frequency. I mean, I don't know how exactly you compare say like densely populated areas around a volcano that you know that sometimes will erupt, hasn't had a majorly destructive eruption, and while but you know probably is at

some point in the indeterminate future going to erupt again. Uh, and you know that would be massively destructive versus I don't know, like having civilizations in like a tornado zone where each you know each tornado is that tornadoes are going to be more regular, They're gonna happen every year. Each one is less destructive than a volcanic eruption. But they're just coming in these constant waves, and you just

hope one doesn't come near your house. Yeah, and then you have to what degree are you leaning on, um, emergency preparation or even again religious faith to deal with that probability? Yeah, I guess I just mean I don't know how to do the math on you know, how

to compare those types of risks. Well, I mean, you know, a big one, of course, is residing in coastal regions that are gonna be affected by hurricanes, you know, and in some cases the I've read that the best advice is like, well, if your home is destroyed, like do not rebuild it. You need to move further inland. Um. So you know there there's a version of this for for various different environments around the world. I mean, even

places where the risk is not as notably catastrophic. If it's just say, and a region that is highly susceptible to the ravages of drought, you know, uh, it doesn't look is good on a painting the drought, uh, you know, reaking habit compared to that of a volcano. But still it can be extremely deadly, and it has proven deadly many times in the past. So Vesuvius has been described as the most densely populated area of active volcanism in

the world. But here are a few others of note. Um. One is Cotapaxi, Ecuador, which is actually a volcano I hope to see in the in the not too distant future. Uh three hundred thousand people. I've also seen it listed his three hundred twenty five thousand live relatively closely nearby. A last eruption was and it was mostly steam. But it is an area of a frequent discussion with these and but on top of that, it is also supposed to be just a very beautiful location and fun fact,

Alexander von Humboldt attempted to climbate in eighteen o two. Okay, I must uh that must be described in that book about him. I like what I recommend of this in our summer reading many years ago, The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wolf fantastic book about Alexander von Humboldt. If if you haven't read it, you should all right, here's another one, Katla, Iceland. This is near the town of

the Vic and it last erupted in nineteen eighteen. Katla is even larger than e Figilogical, which disrupted European flights when it erupted in So I've been to the town of Vic. I stayed in a hotel near Vick one time, and I remember having a conversation with the guy. The hotel I think was basically this guy's house and it's

sort of been expanded out to have hotel rooms in it. Uh, And I remember talking to this guy who ran the place, and he was like showing us a map of the area on the wall and just sort of talking about like, you know how, yeah, here's what happened the last time the volcano erupted, and it will erupt again at some point.

I don't know, it was strange. I mean, he he must have just had a different attitude about this different emotional relationship to the idea of his home being destroyed by a volcano, because he didn't seem all that concerned about it. He was just sort of matter of factly explaining that at some point there will be a geological

event that will completely destroy his home. And uh, I don't know if his matter of factness was just something about this guy in particular, if more people would seem more upset by the idea, or if like, living in a place like that kind of forces you to make peace with it in a way that I don't know, you're just like, yeah, it will happen at some point, Yeah, yeah, I mean probably a little bit of both, right. Yeah. A few other places of note. There's uh uh Sakurajima, Japan,

near the city of Kegoshima. That's a six hundred thousand people. There's Mount Etna that we mentioned earlier. Then there's also Papocotta, Petal, Mexico, and this is near Mexico City itself. And of course one of the big concerns with all these is not you know, it's not necessarily it's not only who are in the danger zone, but then having to deal with people from the danger zone, refugee crisis, et cetera. Now you might be wondering, you know, why do we find

so many people living near some of these volcanoes. So we've already touched, you know, on the the advantages of say the volcanic soil and all and the geological advantages to some of these locations. And you know, again on one levels, just part of the human experience, part of living on a volatile planet where various regions offer threats

like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquake drouts, blizzards and more. Um. According to the U S Geological Survey, not counting ocean floor volcanoes, which are is where we find most of them, UH, there are fifteen hundred potentially active volcanoes worldwide, five hundred of which have erupted during historical time. Some of these are more remote and perhaps only threatened a limited number of people, such as say the two hundred people who live on the remote Japanese island of Agoshima in the

Philippine Sea. It would this particular volcano last erupted in the eighteenth century, killing half the population, and today uh people live inside the volcanic crater depending on its geothermal power. And you can you should look up a picture of this. It's spelled Ao g A s h I m A, and they had some of these images. You can you see the whole volcanic island, and you can pinpoint um. You know, the signs of human habitation within the crater.

And again it's just kind of a reminder of what it means to be a human in uh, you know, on a planet that is subject to to to upheaval like this. And then of course they're the Hawaiian islands, which are of course products of volcanic activity. The islands themselves were created by eruptions, and then ideal bays and harbors or you know, often the remnants of the calderas with Vesuvius. The region is beautiful and economically valuable because

of the volcanic formation of the surrounding region. And on top of that, the volcanic soil, like we mentioned in the first episode, rich ideal for orchards and vineyards, and it's a vacation destination as well. But isn't like the most active volcano in the world old in Hawaii. Yeah,

Kilauea on the Big Island is is quite active. Yeah, and uh, and it's it's really it's worth looking at because there's a there's a wonderful two eighteen New York Times article by Simon Romero titled Hawaii's volcano country, where land is cheap and the living is risky. And I thought this, this is really telling to again getting that question of why do people live in close proximity to U volcanoes? Sometimes um so in this particular situation. Obviously,

Hawaii is beautiful. I love Hawaii. I have when I've visited. I've been fortunate to visit a few times, and uh and I always love it. I never want to leave when I am there. But here's the thing. There's limited land there, and the way that land is used is oftentimes controversial. On top of this, there's a severe housing shortage and very little affordable property and uh, you know, Ramero writes that the economic factors alone have led some on the Big Island to live ever closer to the

wrath of this, this beautiful but active volcano. In this article, which I do recommend reading in full, the author speaks with one uh, an individual by the name of Jaris dreaming um musician. So that's thus the colorful name uh. And he's an individual who purchased some one hundred acres of land for a hundred thousand dollars. And the reason it was so cheap was because it's very close proximity

to active lava flows. So not just the possibility of volcanic activity, but the the visual like the clear of volcanic activity of moving lava um. Another example, I just sorry, I just had a question. How does real estate law deal with lava flows that like change the outlines of land? That's that's a great question. Yeah. Yeah, So like if you say, if you own land and then it gets paved over by lava flows, I assume you still own I don't know how you measure it, like afly the

same land with the same borders. What about if so lava flows create new land going out into the ocean where it was previously, Like who gets that land? I don't know, that's a that's a good question. I'm thinking I'm imagining that in most of the situations that we'd be able to look at, it would not be like an individual's land. I don't know that would it be whoever owns the shoreline that it extends from. I guess.

But then also I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that would be off limits anyway, Like you wouldn't be able to They wouldn't let you even try to build an active lava um for instance. An example that Romero brings up in this particular article is that a nine eruption buried a hundred homes in Kalapana in uh In, Hawaii on the Big Island, and today you'll find dozens of not to code homes that have been built atop the same flow field. So it's I mean, you know, this is

the place was buried. Now there is new land there, and you know, aparently nobody's supposed to officially be living there, but there's available land there in a place where available land is scarce, so of course people are going to move there despite the risks. I mean, it's kind of like I think about haunted houses a lot, especially when when topics of like home values come up and and so forth, in part because I find those topics of dreary and depressing and I want to retreat into fantasy.

But also I'm like, I would put up with a ghost if you know, if it meant uh, you know, lower lower mortgage payment and whatnot. I maybe I would even invent the idea of a ghost if it resulted in that, you know, um, so oh yeah, can you get a discount that way? Like call up your bank and say, like, nobody told me this house was haunted. I want to I want to reduce my mortgage. Yeah.

I mean, plus the other side, the other way of looking at it is that you know, a ghost is much safer than an act of lava flow in your backyard, So I would be all for it. You know what this makes me think is we could do a whole other episode sometime on the theology of volcanic eruptions. Oh for sure, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the various divine interpretations of the eruptions, the mythological reasons given for the eruptions, that would be cool to get into. Yeah. We didn't even

really touch that, didn't. I think the most we did was discussing how there were stories of the rumblings of Vesuvius being tied to tales or accules fighting monsters or giants in the earth. Yeah. Probably. I think that has something to do with the naming of Herculaneum. Yeah, like the idea that it was founded by hercules. Yeah, and of course in uh in the culture of Hawaii you find the tales of of Pale the volcano deity. So yeah, there there would be a lot of rich territory to

discuss there. So maybe we'll return. If everybody's into the topic of volcanoes. There's a lot more to discuss. There's a like. One area I'd like to come back to potentially would be to discuss volcanic winter, discussed the year without summer. Yes, that would be uh, I think a good one to return to. We'll be back in the meantime, just like the lava flow will be back. Yes, they will.

It's an active world. Uh. In the meantime, we would love to hear from any of you, especially if you out there have if you live or have lived in an area of volcanic activity, Uh, definitely right in and let us know what it's like. If you have, if you can answer our questions about the highways surrounding vesuvious, we'd like to hear from you as well. Have you visited some of these places, We'd we'd love to hear from you about that as well. Uh. In the meantime,

also check out our other episodes. You'll find them wherever you get podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Just make sure you rate and review, give us some stars, subscribe, tell a few friends, and if you go to stuffable your mind dot com that should redirect you to the I heart listing for the show. Huge thanks as always

to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.