The skeleton of this women was buried with a treasure of jewels

Before Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24, in the year 79, according to most historians, Herculaneum had a population of about 5,000.

Because the entire town has not yet been excavated, that is a rough guess based on the size of the area where it sits and the size of the amphitheater. Excavations turned up practically nobodies until 1982 when the waterfront area was excavated.

Far from all the skeletons found in the city were found in the boathouses, shown in this photo. Others were found along the beach which would have been in the foreground.

Apparently the residents did what I would have done. If the volcano is erupting inland, I would run for the ocean and attempt to flee by boat.

There is no way of telling how many people successfully did this, but we can determine how many people did not make it. We didn’t get to tour the boathouses but from internet searches, it appears that many of the skeletons are still there (note in the first photo that some of the boathouses have tarps over their entrance).

One of the skeletons found on the beach included one that has been dubbed The Ring Lady. As can be seen in this photo, she had an emerald and a ruby ring on her fingers when she collapsed on the beach.

In addition, she had a purse that contained two gold bracelets with serpentine heads that met as well as two gold earrings that probably held pearls. These were likely her prized possessions that she was attempting to take with her.

Here is a close-up of the rings. Examination of her body shows that she was a tall 45-year-old woman in good health with good teeth but a bit of gum disease. She was likely knocked down by the pyroclastic blast and died immediately.

Another skeleton found on the beach was of a Roman soldier who collapsed, his fists clutching the sand. Every bone in his body except his inner ear was broken suggesting that he too was hit forcefully by the surge and knocked to the ground.

He was about 37 years old, wore a sword and bone-handled dagger by his side, and had a bag of carpenter’s tool on his back. Soldiers often worked in that trade. Fifteen silver coins and three gold coins were found near him, likely originally held in a cloth moneybag.

Anthropologist Sara Bisel examined the body and found that he had probably been a warrior for quite some time.

He was missing three front teeth (missing six teeth in total), had a mark on this thighbone where a prior wound had healed and had thick well-developed thighbones likely from frequent bareback horse riding as was common among soldiers of the era.

Roman soldier skeletons are a very rare find since the Romans usually cremated their dead.

Buried Roman basilica at Ostia Antica spotted by Google Earth

The slight bump of the grassy field in Ostia Antica close to Rome is just that for the untrained eye: archaeologist Marcello Turci it is a pointer to an amazing discovery; a large chunk of ancient Roman property, the size of two football pitches, lurking centimeters below the ground.

“That’s the praetorium — the residence of the imperial perfect,” he says, “and just beyond, under the daisies, is a large basilica.”

The smart use of electrical sensors, some ancient sources, and Google Earth, Ostia Antica, the excavated, sprawling Roman city that rivals Pompeii is about to get bigger.

The buildings set to emerge in the unassuming field on the edge of town could also change the way historians view the once-bustling port at the mouth of the Tiber.

Boasting 100,000 residents in its heyday, Ostia Antica vanished under silt from the Tiber as the Roman Empire faded, before being dug up by Mussolini in the 1930s, allowing visitors today to wander streets lined with former restaurants, shops, homes, and a theatre.

Digging was halted during World War II, but in 2007 researche­rs checking Google Earth images noticed that strange lines and dots had emerged in a field just beyond the excavated thermal baths at the Porta Marina gate into the city.

“The lines were formed by differe­nces in vegetation, influenced by what lay below, which had become more evident due to a dry summer,” Mr. Turci said.

Backed by the University of Aix-Marseille and French research body CNRS, he and his colleagues merged images provided by Google­ with others from search engine Bing to get a better idea but also went back to ancient sources.

They recalled that a fourth-century­ chronicler had mentioned a forum built-in Ostia by the empero­r Aurelian in the late third century and an adjacent praetorium, built later, neither of which had been found.

Magnetic sensors and electrified metal probes — inserted in the field to create an underground map based on the path taken by the current — did the rest.

“We are looking at a large open area flanked on one side by a 30m by 60m building with five naves divided by rows of columns, which are the dots we saw from space,” Mr. Turci said. “It was likely used as a court and was part of the forum complex the source describes.

“We know the emperor Tacitus, the successor to Aurelian, donated 100 columns to Ostia, and this would explain where they went.”

Also revealed by the vegetation is the ghostly outline of the praetor­ium, with semicircular extensions from the facade typical of such buildings.

Maria Rosaria Barbera, director of the site, will oversee ­digging if funding arrives, and Mr. Turci said the discoveries would help to counter the view that Ostia went into decline shortly after the sacking of Rome in AD410, and that the city entered the sixth-century ­ with its civic life still going.

2,000-Year-Old Sundial Unearthed in Roman Town

A rare and intact 2,000-year-old Roman sundial was discovered in central Italy, engraved with the name of the man who commissioned it.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge made the find during an excavation in the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas, near Monte Cassino. Inscribed on the sundial is the name Marcus Novius Tubula, an unknown plebeian tribune to Rome, in Latin.

It is claimed this sheds new light on Rome’s relationship with other regions. Interamna Lirenas, founded in 312 BC and abandoned in 6th Century AD, was about 130 km (81 miles) from Rome.

The name and lettering style place the sundial’s inscription at about 1st Century BC when citizens were granted full Roman citizenship.

Dr. Alessandro Launaro, the lecturer at the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge, said the ancient town was “not a town of remarkable prestige or notable influence”.

Therefore, he said, the discovery showed “the level of involvement in Rome’s own affairs that individuals hailing from this and other relatively secondary communities could aspire to”.

The limestone sundial, found in a roofed theatre, is thought to have represented a celebration of Marcus Novius Tubula’s election to the political office of the plebeian tribune.

The concaved face is engraved with 11-hour lines intersecting three-day curves, which indicate the season with respect to the time of the winter solstice, equinox and summer solstice.

The needle which cast a shadow to show the time “is essentially lost” but part is preserved under a lead fixing.

It is believed the sundial was left behind at a time when the theatre and town were being scavenged for building materials during the Medieval to the post-Medieval period.

Exquisite 2,000-year-old sapphire ring thought to have belonged to Roman Emperor Caligula

The Roman emperor Caligula, who had been governing for four years from AD 37 until his assassination, was said to own an exquisite 2,000-year-old ring of Sapphire.

The sky blue hololith, made from a single piece of the precious stone, is believed to have been owned by Caligula. The face engraved into the bezel is thought to be his fourth and last wife Caesonia, who was said to be so beautiful Caligula paraded her naked in front of his friends.

The reason for Caligula’s assassination could stem from the extravagance of spending, especially on precious stones, which depleted the Roman treasury.

There are even rumors that Caligula also incestuous relationships with sisters in the royal family and adultery with the wives of allies.

Worth mentioning, this ancient sapphire ring has a woman’s face engraved on it. According to the Daily Mail, this woman is Caesonia, Caligula’s fourth wife.

Caesonia possesses the beauty of tilting the water, tilting the city. Emperor Caligula even once naked his wife and march in front of friends for people to admire. However, “beautiful fate”, Caesonia was killed shortly after Emperor Caligula was assassinated.

The sapphire ring is said to have attracted attention during an exhibition of more than 100 gems held by jewelry company Wartski next week in London, England. Its value is about USD 7,000 – USD 750,000.

The auction became a major concern for gem collectors around the world. People from Japan even lined up outside Wartski’s premises days before the exhibition was first approved.

The “Caligula Ring” is in the Earl Marlund Gems “Marlborough Gems” from 1637 to 1762. This is a collection of 800 gems carved by George Spencer, the 4th earl of Marlborough, into the late 18th century, early 19th century.

They were sold in 1875 by John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Earl of Marlborough, to fund the repair of the Blenheim Palace.

“This ring is one of the precious pieces of the” Marlborough Gems “collection. It is made entirely of sapphire. Very few of these rings still exist and I bet this is the best one of you. find.

We believe it belongs to Emperor Caligula and the face that appears on the ring is his fourth wife, Caesonia, “said Kieran McCarthy, director of Wartski.

Possible Shrine Dedicated to Romulus Found in Roman Forum

The resting place of the legendary founder of the city, Romulus, could be tombs located under the Roman Forum.

On a Roman Forum, Colosseum Archeological Park Manager Alfonsina Russo said Monday, a hypogeum or underground temple and tomb structure with a tuff sarcophagi connected to what looks like an altar.

Archaeologists are believed to have uncovered an area devoted to the first King of Rome and a rock sarcophagus, measuring 4.6ft, which are believed to date back to the 6th century BC.  The Space is believed to be part of a votive area called a heroon devoted to the founder of Rome, Romulus, she said.

The sarcophagus, made out of the same tufa rock that built the Capitol, is around 1.40 meters long and is believed to date back to the sixth century BC, she said.

The find was made next to the Curia-Comitium complex, a few meters away from the famed Lapis Niger, which Romans thought had brought bad luck because it was linked to the death of Romulus, Russo said. She said she would present the discovery to the media on Friday. 

“This is an extraordinary discovery,” Russo told reporters on Monday.”The forum never ceases to yield amazing fresh treasures,” she said.

The discovery was made during a dig that “started about a year ago to celebrate and commemorate the discoveries made by famed archaeologist Giacomo Boni at the beginning of the 20th century,” Russo said.

The hypogeum is located below the entrance stairway to the Curia, where Senators met to vote. The new entrance stairs were built in the 1930s by Alfonso Vartoli.

Russo said that scholars believe the altar to have been placed on the spot where ancient Romans believed Romulus was buried.

This is according to a reading of the ancient Roman historian Varo, cited in the poet Horace’s Epodes, the Colosseum Park director told reporters. “It is not an accident,” experts cited by Russo said, “that this underground altar was placed close to the Lapis Niger”.

The excavation and valorisation of this monument to the cult of Romulus and the origins of Rome will be illustrated by Russo and the team of archaeologists and architects who have been involved in the discovery, on Friday 21 February at 11 o’clock in the morning.

A hypogeum or hypogaeum, literally meaning “underground”, from Greek hypo (under) and Gaia (mother earth or goddess of earth) is an underground temple or tomb.

Hypogea will often contain niches for cremated human remains or loculi for buried remains. Occasionally tombs of this type are referred to as built tombs.

Hypogeum can also refer to any antique building or part of building built below ground such as the series of tunnels under the Colosseum which held slaves (particularly enemy captives) and animals while keeping them ready to fight in the gladiatorial games. The animals and slaves could be let up through trapdoors under the sand-covered arena at any time during a fight.

Restored Pompeii Kitchens Give Us An Idea Of How Romans Cooked

In a new project that seeks to give visitors a taste of the everyday life within the city the ancient roman kitchens of the Pompeii launderette were once again equipped with pots and pans.

The kitchens were once used to provide food for the hungry attendants of the three-story launderette, Fullonica di Stephanus before they were destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79.

It was the location where rich Roman patricians were sent to clean their togas to be washed in huge baths using clay and urine. The garments were then rinsed, dried and placed on special presses to ensure they returned to their noble owners crease-free.

Thanks to a refurbishment which finished on Monday, the kitchens inside the Fullonica now appear as they did 2,000 years ago, complete with metal grills, pots, pans, and earthenware crockery.

The new installment provides an interesting window on Roman cooking practices.

Instead of using gas or electric hobs, the Romans cooked their food over specially-made troughs, in which beds of flaming charcoal were placed.

Hunks of meat, fish, and vegetables were then laid on grills directly over the coals, while soups and stews simmered away in pots and pans that were stood on special tripods to elevate them above the scorching embers.

All of the cooking equipment now on display was found in and around the kitchens when they were first excavated in 1912 by the then Superintendent of Pompeii, Vittorio Spinazzola.

Spinazzola initially left all the items in the kitchen, but his predecessors packed them away in storage or placed them in glass display cabinets in different areas of the site.

“We’re delighted the pieces have finally been put back on display where they were found and we’re certain they will be appreciated by modern tourists, eager to learn how people lived in antiquity,” said Massimo Osanna, the current Archaeological Superintendent of Pompeii.

As part of the same initiative, further examples of ancient Roman culinary practices were also given a permanent exhibition at the city gym, the Palestra Grande, on Monday.

Visitors can now marvel at a carbonized loaf of two-millennia-old bread and admire a metal pot containing the fossilized remnants of a bean and vegetable soup.  

Genetic Study Reveals Exactly Who ‘The Romans’ Were

Ancient Rome was the capital city of an empire that encompassed some 70 million inhabitants. An international research team now reports on data from a genetic study suggesting that, just as all roads may once have led to Rome, in ancient times, a great many European genetic lineages also converged in the ancient city.

Results from the research present possibly the most detailed analysis to date of genetic variability in the region. They reveal a dynamic population history from the Mesolithic era (~10,000 BCE) into modern times, which spans the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

“This study shows how dynamic the past really is,” said Hannah Moots, a graduate student in anthropology at Stanford University, who is the co-lead author of the published paper, which is reported in Science, and titled, “Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean.”

At that time, “Rome was like New York City … a concentration of people of different origins joining together,” says Guido Barbujani, a population geneticist at the University of Ferrara in Italy who wasn’t involved in the study.

“This is the kind of cutting-edge work that’s starting to fill in the details [of history],” adds Kyle Harper, a Roman historian at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

The study, published today in Science, traces 12,000 years of history using genomes from 127 people buried at 29 archaeological sites in and around the city of Rome.

Alfredo Coppa, a physical anthropologist at the Sapienza University of Rome, sought hundreds of samples from dozens of previously excavated sites. Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna extracted DNA from the skeletons’ ear bones, and Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at Stanford University, sequenced and analyzed their DNA.

The oldest genomes came from three hunter-gatherers who lived 9000 to 12,000 years ago and genetically resembled other hunter-gatherers in Europe at the time. Later genomes showed the Romans changed in step with the rest of Europe, as an influx of early farmers with ancestry from Anatolia (what is now Turkey) reshaped the genetics of the entire region some 9000 years ago.

But Rome went its own way from 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. That’s when it grew from a small town into an important city, says Kristina Killgrove, a Roman bioarchaeologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who wasn’t involved in the study.

During its growth, “probably a lot of migration [was] happening,” she says—as the genomes of 11 individuals from this period confirm. Some people had genetic markers resembling those of modern Italians, whereas others had markers reflecting ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa.

That diversity increased even more as Rome became an empire. Between 27 B.C.E. and 300 C.E., the city was the capital of an empire of 50 million to 90 million people, stretching from North Africa to Britain to the Middle East. Its population grew to more than 1 million people. The genetic “diversity was just overwhelming,” Pinhasi says.

But people from certain parts of the empire were far more likely to move to the capital. The study suggests the vast majority of immigrants to Rome came from the East. Of 48 individuals sampled from this period, only two showed strong genetic ties to Europe.

Another two had strong North African ancestry. The rest had ancestry connecting them to Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and other places in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

That makes sense, Harper says, because, at the time, areas to the east of Italy were more populous than Europe; many people lived in big cities such as Athens and Alexandria. And Rome was connected to Greece and the Middle East by the Mediterranean Sea, which was far easier to traverse than overland routes through the Alps, he says.

“The genetic information parallels what we know from historical and archaeological records,” Killgrove says. She and others have identified individuals from imperial Roman cemeteries who likely didn’t grow up in Rome, based on isotopes in their teeth that reflect the water they drank when young—though the studies couldn’t show their precise origins. Ancient texts and words carved on tombstones also point to large populations of immigrants in the city, Harper says.

But once the empire split in two and the eastern capital moved to Constantinople (what is now Istanbul, Turkey) in the 4th century C.E., Rome’s diversity decreased. Trade routes sent people and goods to the new capital, and epidemics and invasions reduced Rome’s population to about 100,000 people.

Invading barbarians brought in more European ancestry. Rome gradually lost its strong genetic link to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. By medieval times, city residents again genetically resembled European populations.

“People perhaps imagine that the amount of migration we see nowadays is a new thing,” Pritchard says. “But it’s clear from ancient DNA that populations have been mixing at really high rates for a long time.”