Sokeina’s Blog

My question is: What are the discoveries of the lost cities?

• In 1594 Count Muzzio Tuttavilla decided to build an aqueduct to carry water from the river Sarno to his villa at Torre Annunziata at the foot of Vesuvius. As the workmen were digging along the southern slopes of the volcano they uncovered ruined buildings. 
• In spite of this discovery Pompeii was not the first of the buried towns to be excavated. In 1710, 13 kilometres up the coast of Resina a peasant was digging another well in which he discovered large slabs of marble. A local noble man seeing the marbles quickly noticed what they where and bought the land.
  Herculaneum, one of the buried towns had been discovered. A great treasure hunt began.
•  I think that perhaps Fiorelli was best remembered for his plaster cast of the dead! Many skeletons were found at Pompeii. The fascinating thing was not so much the skeleton as the imprint of the body which was shown in the ashes. When people who where caught by the eruption died, the ashes and pumice settled in around their bodies. Then the rain came which washed more ash into the cracks between the pumice. This then hardened to seal in the bodies. In time the flesh and clothing decayed leaving only the bones, but every detail of the body was imprinted in the ashes. Fiorelli invented a method of casting copies of the body by pumping a type of plaster into the cavity left by the body. This procces has since been used to cast doors, shutters & even tree roots.

My information comes from the book Pompeii by: Peter Connolly

 My pictures are from www.google.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 3:57 pm Filed under Interesting ....., Writing, School and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.