Vesuvius Report
AS91202: Demonstrate understanding of a significant event in the classical world
THE BIG BANG
The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and it’s importance for our knowledge of Roman everyday life.
Nazia Ahmed 12SO
The eruption of Mt Vesuvius
In the year of 79AD Mount Vesuvius violently erupted causing devastation in the surrounding area. Prior to the earthquake tremors were felt, however these warning signs were brushed off. Pliny the younger even wrote of these tremors as ”not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania”. It is thought that seismic activity heightened on the 20th August, so the four days before the erupted were littered with many earthquakes .The people of Pompeii were not even aware that Vesuvius was a volcano, there is no word in Latin for volcano. The people of Pompeii did not flee when the tremors began because they were not aware that these were the precursors to such a violent eruption
After 1500 years of being dormant, Mount Vesuvius awoke from it’s sleep on the 24th of August 79AD. At approximately 1pm Vesuvius expelled lava at supersonic speeds to form a churning column of molten rock and gas which reached 15kms into the sky just minutes after the eruption. “I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. It rose into the sky on a very long "trunk" from which spread some "branches."”. This description of the column was featured in Pliny the younger’s letters to Tacitus.
The path of the ash cloud during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD
Unusual wind drove this cloud of ash to Pompeii roughly half an hour after the eruption. The boiling rock that had been propelled into the atmosphere mixed with the air, cooled, solidified, then fell as rocks. The majority of this fallout consisted of pumice, but amongst them there was also cold dense rocks torn from the inside of the volcano that fell at 200km/h. Anyone victim to a blow from one of these rocks would have met their end.
Pumice and ash sucked
THE BIG BANG
The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and it’s importance for our knowledge of Roman everyday life.
Nazia Ahmed 12SO
The eruption of Mt Vesuvius
In the year of 79AD Mount Vesuvius violently erupted causing devastation in the surrounding area. Prior to the earthquake tremors were felt, however these warning signs were brushed off. Pliny the younger even wrote of these tremors as ”not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania”. It is thought that seismic activity heightened on the 20th August, so the four days before the erupted were littered with many earthquakes .The people of Pompeii were not even aware that Vesuvius was a volcano, there is no word in Latin for volcano. The people of Pompeii did not flee when the tremors began because they were not aware that these were the precursors to such a violent eruption
After 1500 years of being dormant, Mount Vesuvius awoke from it’s sleep on the 24th of August 79AD. At approximately 1pm Vesuvius expelled lava at supersonic speeds to form a churning column of molten rock and gas which reached 15kms into the sky just minutes after the eruption. “I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. It rose into the sky on a very long "trunk" from which spread some "branches."”. This description of the column was featured in Pliny the younger’s letters to Tacitus.
The path of the ash cloud during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD
Unusual wind drove this cloud of ash to Pompeii roughly half an hour after the eruption. The boiling rock that had been propelled into the atmosphere mixed with the air, cooled, solidified, then fell as rocks. The majority of this fallout consisted of pumice, but amongst them there was also cold dense rocks torn from the inside of the volcano that fell at 200km/h. Anyone victim to a blow from one of these rocks would have met their end.
Pumice and ash sucked