ポンペイ噴火で埋葬された人々の物語を書き換えるDNA証拠(DNA evidence rewrites story of people buried in Pompeii eruption)

2024-11-07 マックス・プランク研究所

<関連情報>

• https://www.mpg.de/23699890/1106-evan-dna-evidence-rewrites-story-of-people-buried-in-pompeii-eruption-150495-x
• https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)01361-7

古代のDNAがポンペイの石膏模型に関する一般的な解釈を覆す Ancient DNA challenges prevailing interpretations of the Pompeii plaster casts

Elena Pilli ∙ Stefania Vai^, ∙ Victoria C. Moses∙ … ∙ David Caramelli ∙ David Reich ∙ Alissa Mittnik
Current Biology  Published:November 7, 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.10.007

Highlights

•We generated genome-wide data from skeletal material in Pompeii plaster casts
•The data contradict prior narratives about the victims’ identities and relationships
•Pompeiian individuals mainly descended from recent eastern Mediterranean immigrants

Summary

The eruption of Somma-Vesuvius in 79 CE buried several nearby Roman towns, killing the inhabitants and burying under pumice lapilli and ash deposits a unique set of civil and private buildings, monuments, sculptures, paintings, and mosaics that provide a rich picture of life in the empire. The eruption also preserved the forms of many of the dying as the ash compacted around their bodies. Although the soft tissue decayed, the outlines of the bodies remained and were recovered by excavators centuries later by filling the cavities with plaster. From skeletal material embedded in the casts, we generated genome-wide ancient DNA and strontium isotopic data to characterize the genetic relationships, sex, ancestry, and mobility of five individuals. We show that the individuals’ sexes and family relationships do not match traditional interpretations, exemplifying how modern assumptions about gendered behaviors may not be reliable lenses through which to view data from the past. For example, an adult wearing a golden bracelet with a child on their lap—often interpreted as mother and child—is genetically an adult male biologically unrelated to the child. Similarly, a pair of individuals who were thought to have died in an embrace—often interpreted as sisters—included at least one genetic male. All Pompeiians with genome-wide data consistently derive their ancestry largely from recent immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean, as has also been seen in contemporaneous ancient genomes from the city of Rome, underscoring the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire in this period.