A new study— published in Current Biology by a team of researchers at Harvard University and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in Naples, Italy—asserts that ancient DNA taken from some of the victims challenges stories long told about those particular Pompeii citizens.

A new study has shattered historians' long-held assumptions about some of the people who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 C.E.

Fourteen miles southeast of modern Naples lies Pompeii, a city frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. What was once a bustling Roman town became a sprawling graveyard,

Analysis of ancient DNA from the ashen casts of Pompeii victims changes presumed relationships between them, and reveals the port city's socioeconomic and geographic diversity.

Plaster casts of calcified Pompeii residents have long been used by archaeologists to tell the stories of the last, desperate moments of ancient Romans before they were buried and preserved in pyroclastic ash from Mount Vesuvius in A.

A recent DNA study has upended long-held theories about the people who died in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, revealing unexpected details about the demographics and connections among the victims.