Pompeii escape: AI reconstructs the last gesture of an eruption victim

In Pompeii, the stories of two men who died during the eruption of 79 AD resurface. Between escape, everyday objects and AI, the story of their last moments take shape...
Lifting an earthenware mortar above your head to protect yourself from the rain of fire. It's an instinctive, desperate, almost primordial gesture. It was one of the last acts performed by a man fleeing during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, now reconstructed thanks to new excavations in the Porta Stabia necropolis in Pompeii. A fragment of life - and death.

Two victims, two moments
Excavations conducted in the area of the monumental tomb of Numerius Agrestinus Equitius Pulcher have brought to light the remains of two men who died during the catastrophe.

Their positions and the condition of the bodies tell of two different phases of the eruption.The younger one was probably swept away by a pyroclastic current, a searing cloud of gas and ash capable of killing instantly. The second, more adult, died a few hours earlier, under an incessant rain of lapilli (material that falls out of the air during a volcanic eruption), while trying to get away from the city.

Next to the body of the older man, archaeologists found an earthenware mortar with obvious signs of fracture. Everything suggests that he was using it for protection.

Also with him were a ceramic oil lamp, probably for orientation in the darkness caused by the ash, an iron ring on his left little finger,and ten bronze coins. Everyday objects that become precious clues, as they tell of a lucid escape, organised as much as possible, in the chaos of an apocalypse.