Pompeii: Secrets of the Dead

As the Roman Empire reaches its height,

an eruption of Mount Vesuvius buries the town of Pompeii.

Imagine walking outside of your house...

and seeing stones falling from the heavens.

Almost 2,000 years later, casts are made of voids

in the solidified ash,

revealing the bodies of those who died.

These are people left behind,

watching the world collapse around them.

For one group, called the Fugitives,

archaeologists are now using modern forensic techniques

to examine the bones hidden inside.

Teeth. You can definitely see teeth.

Oh, yeah, lots. Look at 'em.

To reveal who these people were...

Oh, my god, what's that there?

How they lived, and why they became victims

of the most famous disaster of the ancient world.

Nearly two millennia after Vesuvius wiped it off the map,

archaeologists excavated Pompeii to reveal an entire Roman town,

complete with an amphitheater

and a grand forum surrounded by temples.

Well, how exciting is this?

Here we are.

They also found bodies.

The most iconic are a group of 13 victims known as the Fugitives.

LAZER (off screen): So, I do have a plan.

LUYCK (off screen): Yeah.

And I would want to start at that end,

-I want to go that way. Yeah.

A team of experts

is launching the first ever forensic investigation

into their remains.

They're led by Dr. Estelle Lazer.

There's a hole in the wall at the back of the display

and people actually put flowers through for the tiny children.

They're a very, very powerful reminder

of the event that killed so many people.

Ready. Mm-hmm.

For volcanologist Kayla Iacovino,

clues in the rocks shed light on why this eruption was so deadly.

It started with a bang.

So when the eruption first began,

you would have seen a jet of material coming up in the middle

and then branching out, like an umbrella shape.

They probably would have felt rumbling, shaking,

as the magma hit the surface and exploded...

and this huge cloud just looming over everything,

sort of spreading out above the city.

The majority of Pompeiians left immediately.

But within the city walls, over a thousand bodies

have been found.

It's long been assumed these people were physically unable to run away.

The old, the very young, and the frail.

With the Fugitives,

Dr. Lazer can put this theory to the test.

There's the skull. That's good.

Her work should determine if age or disability

prevented their escape.

We're using traditional forensic techniques

to work out what age the victims were when they died,

if there's any sign of illness or trauma,

any evidence about their lifestyles.

-Looks like two rips. Two rips.

Just to get a sense of who they were.

The Fugitives were discovered by head of excavations,

Amedeo Maiuri in 1961.

They're incredibly life-like,

seemingly frozen at the moment of death.

This was made possible by a technique pioneered in the nineteenth century.

Local archaeologist Antonio de Simone explains how it works.

ANTONIO DE SIMONE (off screen): This is the first plaster cast

that was made in Pompeii.

While the archaeologist was digging

at about 16 feet above road level,

he noticed a hollow space,

and immediately thought it could be a body.

Over the years, the flesh rots away,

but the form of the body is preserved as a cavity in the ash.

By filling the void with Plaster of Paris,

a three-dimensional replica of each victim was produced.

The cast has accurately preserved all the details

of the cape worn by the victim

as if it was a sculpture.

But wherever detail was lacking,

nineteenth century archaeologists often improved

the casts themselves.

If we look closely, we can see a dividing line.

Above it, the face was probably a shapeless bulk

which was then redefined with extra plaster,

so this has all been re-worked.

They didn't set out to deceive,

but the casts are like photos of the tragedy.

They need to convey what happened.

When Maiuri's team worked on the Fugitives,

it's thought that they, too, sculpted the plaster

to make the casts more lifelike.

To engage the public, he also created a story

about who they were and how they died.

For him, it was a remarkable discovery.

There were 13 victims together, so it was the largest number

of casts that had been made at one time.

He wrote a very emotional article

which had a profound impact on people visiting the site.

Published in National Geographic magazine,

that article sketched out the characters in the group

and the relationships between them.

The bodies were originally found in three smaller groups.

Now lined up as one, the groups remain.

Maiuri described the first two as families of farmers.

He claimed the third group was a merchant family,

giving vivid details about their final moments.

He says they're two boys who he reckons

were holding hands and fell as one.

And then the mother, "her body already weakened through childbirth,"

supporting the youngest child, a girl,

and trying to ease her pain.

And then, the very end, "the merchant," in his words,

resting on one arm, rising up out of the ashes

to try and protect and save his family.

He says that it's based on evidence,

but I cannot see from the information that I have available to me

what he bases this story on, and I think this is a real problem.

Can we have another one?

My aim is to actually strip away all the previous stories

and just give them back their lives and their stories.

And I do believe that that will impart a little more respect on them

as victims of a mass disaster.

What Maiuri did, was in sync with the times.

The focus then was on creating an exhibit

to attract visitors.

Today, that focus has shifted.

Dr. Lazer's team hope to discover

who the Fugitives really were.

They're using x-rays

- to penetrate the plaster... -(camera beeps)

...and 3D scanning to create digital replicas of each cast.

By placing these in a 3D model of the entire town,

the Fugitives can be seen in context.

They died by the city walls,

apparently so close to making their escape.

The early stages of the eruption scared most people away.

The mystery is why the Fugitives stayed behind.

Work begins on the victim that Maiuri described

as the head of the first family.

The Merchant.

Skull base, pretty well preserved.

Yes Look, it's got calvarium,

it's got everything.

Beautiful! Lots of bones inside.

This is a really nice skeleton.

We should be able to get quite a bit of information

out of it, don't you think?

Beyond the 2,000-year-old bones,

the scans also reveal something more modern.

VU (off screen): Look at that! There!

LAZER (off screen): What do you think they've done in there?

-What's this? -MIDDLETON (off screen): Mmm.

He has a big metal hook in his head.

LAZER (off screen): Yes, we can see that.

-This huge lump of metal in there. -MIDDLETON (off screen): Yeah.

LAZER (off screen): There's a lot of funny wire, in there, isn't it?

-That's a weird wire. Yep.

But there's a nail and a rod holding the plaster of the upper limb,

to the rest of the body.

This unexpected find shows that Maiuri went

to extraordinary lengths to preserve the Fugitives' final poses.

The challenge now is to look beyond these modifications

and focus on the bones themselves.

So this is the first x-ray. This is iconic.

To help assess the evidence,

Pompeii expert Kevin Dicus joins the team.

It feels strange to shed these old stories

about these people

because they have been a part

of the modern history of Pompeii as an archaeological site.

But now we have the technology to actually go deeper,

literally deeper into the plaster

and I think we actually owe it to these people

to strip them of these modern narratives

and get it back to who they really were.

After in-depth analysis of the x-rays,

subtle details emerge.

We've got the frontal sinus, and it's well developed

so that's an indicator that we're looking at an adult.

The teeth are all erupted, the roots are fully formed,

so that's an adult dentition.

Another x-ray shows a hand,

with the arm bones visible below it.

But between the hand and the arm,

the area containing the small bones of the wrist

has become abnormally compressed.

We've got a case of quite severe osteoarthritis at the wrist.

Probably the cartilage has been lost,

and there's a likelihood that we've got bone rubbing against bone.

Ooh. Be quite painful, I would imagine.

So certainly they'd have pain, swelling,

some, p-possibly some weakness,

and I think it would be more likely

to be an older than younger individual.