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00:00Pompeii is one of the most iconic monuments of the Roman world.
00:12Millions of tourists come here every year to see the remains of this ancient city destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius.
00:20I'm Margaret Mountford. I've always been fascinated by ancient history, and it doesn't get much better than this.
00:38What makes Pompeii so special are these remarkable relics.
00:43They're not statues. These are the remains of people, frozen in the last few seconds of their lives.
00:52This is like looking at people who are asleep.
00:55Nothing like them has ever been seen anywhere else. They are unique.
01:01That almost looks like the way a boxer defends himself, doesn't it?
01:04Everything here is so well preserved, we know almost every detail of what happened on those days in August 79 AD.
01:18The earthquakes.
01:21The massive eruption.
01:26The hail of ash, rock and pumice.
01:29We even know the stories of many of the people who perished.
01:36But why they are fixed in these extraordinary positions had been a mystery for centuries.
01:43Now it seems that vital clues had been overlooked.
01:49Using new technology.
01:51Well that's really the person, it's phenomenal.
01:53And state of the art experiments.
01:58Wow.
02:00Nobody would have survived that, would they?
02:02We are going to find out once and for all, why these people are caught in these strange positions.
02:09That's a beautiful image. Look at that.
02:12It's like a portrait.
02:14And for the first time ever, we are going to do something extraordinary.
02:17We are going to bring you, face to face, two people who died here 2,000 years ago.
02:29That's amazing.
02:31I think that's just amazing.
02:32Pompeii, southern Italy.
02:50Over the last 265 years, this fascinating city has slowly been excavated from beneath 6 metres of volcanic ash.
03:00Archaeologists have rediscovered a world frozen in time nearly 2,000 years ago.
03:08But this city's last great secret is yet to be revealed.
03:15How exactly did its population die?
03:19And why were their bodies so beautifully preserved?
03:22This is my first visit to Pompeii, and showing me round the castes is Paul Roberts.
03:35He is head of the Roman collections at the British Museum.
03:38The first stop in my investigations is close to the walls of the city.
03:46Beneath what is thought to have been a livery stable are the remains of three people.
03:52These are the first casts I've seen, and I was expecting to see something like white marble statues.
04:03And this is like looking at people who are asleep.
04:06The amazing thing is that inside those plaster casts are real people who were walking around in Pompeii, then running for their lives, and then died here.
04:19Oh, we don't have casts like this from anywhere else, do we?
04:23Pompeii is unique in that respect in preserving the imprints, the casts of the real people.
04:28The figure in the centre is the largest man ever found in Pompeii.
04:37He has a far bigger build than the average Roman.
04:40This has led people to believe he may have been a gladiator brought here from Africa.
04:48Most gladiators were slaves, criminals or prisoners of war who were forced to fight for a living.
04:54On either side of this giant are two other figures, an adult male, and what is thought to be a young boy.
05:11These two casts were found together, and many people believe they are the remains of a father and his son.
05:17One story goes that the family ran the livery stable outside the city gates.
05:30They would unload the carts that came in from the surrounding countryside, and then distribute the fresh produce around the city.
05:36Life for children in Pompeii was hard. They were forced to work alongside their parents, as only the offspring of the wealthy went to school.
05:50One day, this young boy may have taken over his father's job, but this was not to be.
05:57I find it quite difficult to know actually how I should be reacting to them, because I do find it strange that we're standing here looking at these bodies.
06:15It is a very strange sensation to look at them, but I think if we try and look through them, to imagine looking through their eyes and to see them as real people, then that's not disrespectful at all.
06:29That actually gives them back a bit of the life that they once had.
06:32I've visited lots of Roman sites, but I've never seen plaster casts of human bodies like the ones they have here.
06:42Normally the archaeologists find bones lying in mud or under rocks, but here the bodies left behind these strange casts, and I want to find out what was different here, and why those casts were left behind.
06:53To find out exactly what did happen here nearly 2,000 years ago, and to discover why whole bodies were preserved, we need to travel back in time to the day of the eruption.
07:11On the morning of August the 24th, 79 AD, just before midday, a powerful earthquake rocked the quiet countryside around the mountain.
07:32Then at around one o'clock, Vesuvius erupted.
07:43The giant plug of dirt and rock, which had blocked the mouth of the volcano, was hurled into the air.
07:56A huge cloud of ash and dust formed, high above the volcano.
08:05The cloud was pushed nearly 14 kilometres into the atmosphere, forced up by a powerful column of gas and debris.
08:16The cloud spread across the sky like black ink.
08:31It was so dense it blocked out the sun, and turned the sky above Pompeii to night.
08:41And then came the downpour.
08:51Only this wasn't rain.
08:57It was a barrage of fine ash, rock and lumps of solidified lava known as pumice stem.
09:04In less than an hour, the eruption column had grown to almost 32 kilometres high.
09:21Every second, one and a half million tonnes of debris was pushed high into the stratosphere.
09:36Then fell back down onto the beleaguered city below.
09:42Pompeii was buried under a blanket of volcanic ash.
09:55As panic ensued, people tried to escape.
09:59But far worse was to come.
10:03Today, Pompeii is unlike any other Roman ruin.
10:16This is a city frozen in time.
10:20It offers us an unrivalled insight into life in the ancient world.
10:28But it also lets us see the very people who once walked these cobbled streets.
10:35These remains are not just exhibits in a museum.
10:40They're loaded with clues, which can help forensic scientists discover how these people actually died.
10:47And one thing is certain, it wasn't lava.
10:53At temperatures up to 1200 degrees, molten lava leaves little or no human remains.
11:02So if the culprit wasn't lava, what else could it have been?
11:06And why are the bodies of the dead in such strange positions?
11:10This one is sitting, with his hands covering his face.
11:16This one is pushing himself up off the ground.
11:21And this one seems to have just fallen asleep.
11:26It's as if time stopped and the people froze.
11:38For decades, it was thought that the ash that fell like rain on the city of Pompeii
11:43was also responsible for killing its people.
11:48With the air thick with ash and debris, it was assumed that the people suffocated.
11:57And the main reason for that is down to one of the most famous casts in Pompeii.
12:02This man's remains were found near the body of a mule.
12:07And so he's been named the muleteer.
12:16Muleteers held one of the lowest social positions.
12:19But they were vital for transporting goods around the city.
12:22They knew the narrow streets of Pompeii better than anybody.
12:31But this knowledge didn't help him escape on the day of the eruption.
12:39His remains now sit in Pompeii's granary.
12:42This crouching figure, his hands raised to his face,
12:49was taken as proof that the people of Pompeii were suffocated
12:53by the ash raining down from Vesuvius.
12:58But Dr Peter Baxter, from Cambridge University,
13:02thinks the muleteer's pose has been misinterpreted.
13:05Peter, this is one of the most famous casts here, isn't it?
13:08And people used to think that this position showed that this individual
13:13had choked to death or been asphyxiated by ash.
13:16What does the posture tell us?
13:18Well, when the early archaeologists saw this cast,
13:21they automatically jumped to the conclusion that the victims died
13:24as a result of the heavy ash fall from the volcano.
13:27And that they very quickly got covered and buried in ash
13:31and suffocated in the ash fall.
13:32And so the hands were protecting the nose?
13:36So the hands were, in effect, protecting the mouth
13:39from breathing in the ash coming down in the air around them.
13:42So people used to think that this individual had asphyxiated,
13:46had choked to death.
13:48Is this the kind of posture someone would have if that had happened to them?
13:52It's unlikely. They're more likely to be unconscious on the ground
13:56rather than crouching like this.
13:58So if the people here didn't suffocate on the ash and weren't consumed by lava,
14:07what did kill them and fix their bodies in these strange positions?
14:11To solve this mystery, scientists had to look beyond Pompeii,
14:17to another town that was also destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius.
14:23Six kilometres from the volcano sits Herculaneum.
14:26Until the 18th century, this town lay hidden under 20 metres of volcanic debris.
14:37It was only rediscovered when a farmer, digging a well on his property,
14:42struck the remains of a marble building.
14:44Herculaneum was much smaller than Pompeii,
14:51home to around 5,000 people.
14:54But its population was far wealthier.
14:59Herculaneum was once an exclusive holiday resort,
15:15where Rome's rich and powerful relaxed in absolute comfort,
15:20their needs catered to by an army of slaves.
15:23But all that wealth and influence couldn't protect them from the disaster that was about to unfold.
15:32Herculaneum is much closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii is,
15:54so the people felt the force of the earthquake and eruption far more strongly.
15:58They must have watched in horror as a vast cloud of debris shot into the air.
16:13And then run for their lives.
16:15When excavators first began to uncover Herculaneum,
16:28they were surprised by how few human remains were found,
16:32compared to the many hundreds uncovered in Pompeii.
16:35They assumed that the population had escaped.
16:39But then in the 1980s, archaeologists turned their attention to a series of boat sheds that once lined the beach.
16:52Dr. Pier Paolo Petroni is an anthropologist who excavated three of these boat sheds.
16:57There are the victims.
17:07Oh
17:16That's horrific
17:21So how many people were found in here in this chamber during the excavation we found
17:2820 individuals, but all together in the chambers and outside of 300 skeletons of people
17:37So they'd run here to escape or very probably they they knew what an earthquake was and at the beginning of eruption very probably
17:45There were a lot of earthquakes, so they thought this place to be a good place to shelter
17:51But actually this was very very worse place for sheltering by the
17:56eruption
17:58The people thought the boat sheds would keep them safe, but instead they became their tombs
18:17And what first struck you about these bones I
18:22Show you here
18:24The skull of an adult
18:26And it looks as if it's been cut so sharp. Yes, and you see here. There are some very clear cut
18:34Fractured with sharp edges and blackening outside the skull inside skull
18:40So all evidence that testified that these people were exposed to very high temperature I enough to let the
18:48balling brain and
18:50It's called to explode the brains and burst out of this
18:54This is due to the body on the brains then the scars exploded
18:59These skeletons look very different from the body casts in Pompeii
19:04It seems that whatever happened here was the result of a force so hot it reduced these poor people to a scorched pile of bones
19:13And yet just like Pompeii
19:16Lava was never found in herculaneum
19:20So why did the same eruption reduce people to skeletons in one place and yet preserve whole bodies just a few kilometers away?
19:41I want to take a closer look at the volcano at the heart of this catastrophe
19:46Vesuvius
19:48This is the top of Vesuvius. It's very hard looking around here to think that this mountain caused all that damage
20:01But this sleeping giant wasn't always so peaceful
20:05When this volcano erupted nearly 2,000 years ago, it did so in a way that had never been recorded before
20:13Instead of throwing out lava, it somehow created a wave of intense heat that was strong enough to kill people 11 kilometers away
20:22So what did happen here and why was this eruption so different?
20:26Although much of the evidence has been lost in the mists of time there was a witness to the disaster
20:33A Roman whom we call Pliny the Younger was staying across the Bay of Naples from Vesuvius when it erupted
20:40He wrote down what he saw and 2,000 years later his words still hold clues to the events of that day
20:4812 hours after the initial eruption
20:55Vesuvius was still spewing millions of tons of ash and debris into the atmosphere
21:01Pliny then described something very unusual
21:08He wrote that a great mass of material broke away from the eruption column and flowed down the sides of the volcano
21:17The fast moving avalanche of gas and dust spread out across the land and covered everything in its path
21:26everything in its path
21:41Pliny's words were disregarded for centuries thought to be the product of an overactive imagination
21:46But then in the 1980s a volcano erupted in North America and people saw for themselves that Pliny hadn't been exaggerating
21:56Mount St Helens National Park
21:59Mount St Helens National Park has some of the most breathtaking scenery in the USA
22:05But on Sunday, May the 18th 1980
22:09This peaceful world was transformed when the Mount St Helens volcano erupted
22:15For nine hours a vertical eruption column over 24 kilometers high spread half a billion tons of ash and debris across three states
22:34When it fell to earth it covered everything within 600 kilometers in a fine ash
22:51Volcanologists had seen eruptions before
22:53But this was the first time they had managed to capture on film a spectacular phenomenon
22:59If you look at the footage carefully you can see that the whole north face of Mount St Helens collapses
23:14As it does it releases a searing hot avalanche of gas and dust that explodes down the sides of the mountain
23:21This is called a pyroclastic current
23:24This is called a pyroclastic current
23:28Temperatures inside this tidal wave of gas and debris measured 700 degrees Celsius
23:36The turbulent wave of superheated gas traveled at nearly 130 kilometers an hour
23:43It destroyed everything in its path within seconds
23:55You can see the devastation caused by the pyroclastic current over 10 kilometers from the mouth of the volcano
24:05Brittany Brand is a volcanologist who has made an in-depth study of the explosive eruption
24:11She thinks that what happened in North America holds vital clues to what happened here in Italy
24:18Nearly 2,000 years ago
24:22Could you explain what a pyroclastic current is?
24:26A pyroclastic current is an avalanche of searing hot gas ash and rock
24:32That travels down the slopes of a volcano like hundreds of kilometers of an hour
24:36It's impossible to outrun and absolutely deadly
24:41When I think of an eruption I think of streams of lava coming down a mountain
24:45Well the style of eruption, whether a volcano will erupt lava or if it will erupt explosively
24:52Is primarily a function of how much gas is in the magma
24:56If there is no gas in the magma then the magma will erupt as a lava flow or a lava dome
25:01And that is the actual magma, the liquefied rock that is coming out as lava
25:06Exactly, exactly
25:07And in an explosive eruption the difference is the magma has gas bubbles
25:11And as the gas in the magma makes its way to the surface
25:15The gas bubbles get bigger and bigger and bigger
25:18To the point where when the volcano erupts the gases just expand very quickly
25:21And it rips the magma apart into very tiny pieces which are your ash and your pumice
25:28See, so it's still the same
25:31The pumice and the tiny rocks are still the stuff that would be lava
25:37It's just the gases split them up
25:39Exactly, the pumice, the ash, they're all bits and pieces of the magma
25:43If there was no gas it would erupt as a lava flow
25:45But because there was gas it was pulverized in an explosive eruption
25:52From what scientists witnessed at Mount St Helens
25:56And data gathered from other volcanic eruptions
25:59It's now possible to piece together exactly what happened when Vesuvius erupted
26:03Twelve hours after the initial eruption Vesuvius was still forcing millions of tons of volcanic debris into the air
26:19Both Pompeii and Herculaneum were drowning under a thick blanket of ash and pumice
26:25The people in Herculaneum took refuge in the boat sheds
26:31But the ash fall was nothing compared to what was to come
26:37The eruption column stretched nearly 32 kilometers high
26:47Under its own weight it was beginning to weaken
26:56And at around 2am part of the column collapsed
27:02The collapsing column sent a pyroclastic current surging down the sides of the volcano
27:12A turbulent avalanche of superheated gas and dust travelling at hurricane speeds
27:20Temperatures inside the explosive blast were over 500 degrees Celsius
27:31The wave of searing hot gas and ash took less than 5 minutes to strike Herculaneum
27:36The people sheltering in the boat sheds had no idea what was about to happen
27:52The intense heat surge killed them instantly
28:13It vaporised their flesh and the pressure from inside caused their skulls to burst open
28:19And that is why all that remained of the people in the boat sheds were blackened skeletons and cracked skulls
28:36The people in Pompeii were unaware of the horror wreaked on their neighbours
28:41Because the pyroclastic current ran out of energy before reaching the city walls
28:45For the moment it seemed that they were safe
28:49But they would not escape
28:52They would be left not as bones but as bodies captured in their final moments
29:07Remarkably, despite years of research, there are still clues in Pompeii that were overlooked
29:12This is the Mercellum
29:18It was once Pompeii's bustling marketplace
29:23A lively and sometimes smelly focal point for the city's 20,000 inhabitants
29:29It's now the final resting place of two people killed by Vesuvius
29:34For years people thought that this woman had her arms raised because she was trying to protect herself against an attacker
29:49But recently, forensic scientists have re-analyzed her strange posture
29:54And they now think it holds vital information about how the people in Pompeii died
30:01Peter, does this cast give us any clues as to how this person died?
30:05Yes, this attitude is very typical of someone who has been exposed to extreme heat at the moment of death
30:10It appears as if the individual is protecting themselves by lifting their arms up in that way
30:17But it's also very characteristic of the effects of intense heat when they're enveloped in a cloud of very hot ash and gases
30:26That almost looks like the way a boxer defends himself, doesn't it?
30:29Yes, it's called a pugilistic attitude by pathologists because when people are caught and die in fires
30:36They can adopt this posture of causing the muscles to coagulate and shorten
30:40So that the limbs flex and adopt this shape
30:44And then this posture becomes fixed at the time of death, it's very hard to overcome
30:49So this isn't just characteristic of death from a volcanic eruption, it's death from heat
30:54We see this whenever anyone dies from extreme heat
30:59So if this person did die from exposure to intense heat
31:04There must have been more than one pyroclastic current
31:08And one of them must have reached the city of Pompeii
31:12But why are the remains in Pompeii so different from the remains in Herculaneum?
31:18The reason is simply down to distance
31:21Pompeii is five kilometres further from Vesuvius than Herculaneum is
31:28So as the wave of heat travelled the extra kilometres, it cooled from 500 degrees to around 300 degrees
31:37This was still hot enough to kill the people instantly, but not hot enough to vaporise their flesh
31:43But this theory raises another question
31:49If you look closely at the castes in Pompeii, you can still see the imprint of the clothes the people were wearing on the day they died
31:58So if the people were struck by a wave of gas over 300 degrees Celsius, why wasn't their clothing destroyed?
32:13To find out, I've come to Edinburgh
32:20Here at the university, they have a machine that is capable of recreating a pyroclastic current in the laboratory
32:35Helping us is fire safety engineer, Dr Luke Bisbee
32:49Luke, you know we've got this puzzle at Pompeii
32:52Because what seems to have happened is that the people were killed by the heat
32:56But their clothing has remained intact, so we can still see the sandals, we can see the clothes
33:03How can that have happened?
33:05One of the reasons we're trying to run this test is to simulate the conditions of what happened
33:09To try to understand how it is that the temperature could have been sufficiently high to effectively kill the people instantaneously
33:15And yet the clothing wasn't burned
33:17So Luke, what does this machine do?
33:20It's a piece of equipment called a fire propagation apparatus
33:22Basically we place the sample inside this quartz tube on a table down inside the machine
33:27And we use these very high powered infrared lamps to impose heat that we can supply to the sample in a very controlled way
33:35The sample of fabric we are using is a type of boiled wool
33:40It's thought to be very similar to the type of material worn by the population of Pompeii
33:45We are wrapping the wool around pieces of pork to replicate the human flesh beneath the cloth
33:53So we're going to simulate what it would have been like for a person being hit by that surge
34:00That's right, what we're trying to do here is simulate a pyroclastic surge moving down the sides of the volcano and over Pompeii
34:07At a velocity of about 40 miles an hour and a gas temperature of about 300 degrees Celsius
34:12Okay, well, let's see what happens
34:20The light given off by this machine is powerful enough to blind
34:24So before it fires up, I've got to put on safety glasses
34:27We're going to heat the sample for 150 seconds
34:46Experts think this is the length of time the people of Pompeii were exposed to the pyroclastic current
34:52Right, so let's have a look inside our sample here
35:08So the cloth is a bit charred, isn't it?
35:11Yeah, there's some slight discoloration and charring of the cloth
35:14But as you can see, it's still very much intact
35:19And these are phenomenally edge effects due to contact with the foil
35:23In any case, it's really the center that we're more interested in
35:26And you can see the cloth there is very well intact
35:29That's phenomenal
35:31And underneath we have the pork flesh, I'll just take it out of the foil here
35:34And you can see there is some slight discoloration and drying to the top of the pork
35:41So it's definitely been heated and I'll just cut into it here
35:45And see if we can see any discoloration
35:48And there is some clear discoloration at the surface here, although not to a very significant depth
35:54You can see that the pork at the top is actually cooked
35:58Despite the fact that we don't have any damage to the woolen cloth
36:00So what temperature would the flesh have got to turn out like that?
36:06I expect the flesh here got to between 200 and 250 Celsius
36:10Wow, nobody would have survived that, would they?
36:13I think it's probably unlikely
36:15It used to be thought that the victims at Pompeii must have suffocated
36:19Because if they'd been killed by heat, then their clothing would have been destroyed
36:23But this experiment has shown that a wave of heat at 300 degrees
36:27Will leave the clothing intact
36:30By bringing all the evidence together
36:35The charred and burnt skeletons in Herculaneum
36:39Evidence from Mount St Helens
36:42The contorted pose of the body cast in Pompeii
36:46And the results of the cloth test in Edinburgh
36:48It's now possible, for the very first time, to piece together the unique sequence of events that played out when Vesuvius erupted
37:00And to reveal exactly how the people in Pompeii died
37:04And why their bodies were frozen in time
37:07At 1am on the second day of the eruption, the people sheltering in Herculaneum had just seconds to live
37:28They were killed by the first pyroclastic current
37:43They were killed by the first pyroclastic current
37:47The people in Pompeii were oblivious to the death and destruction
38:00Because the first wave of superheated gas ran out of energy far from the city walls
38:05But the eruption was far from over
38:16As time passed, the column continued to weaken
38:31At 2am, it collapsed again
38:36The second pyroclastic current thundered down the side of the volcano
38:42Closely followed by a third
38:46Each surge grew in strength and pushed further and further out
38:52Closer and closer to the city of Pompeii
38:55At around dawn, the shower of ash and debris falling onto Pompeii began to ease
39:06And many people who'd fled the city returned to collect their money and valuables
39:13Thinking that the worst was over
39:15But this was a cruel deception
39:18At around 7.30am, the column above Vesuvius collapsed again
39:32A fourth pyroclastic current surged down the sides of the volcano
39:36The gas and debris raced over the ground
39:50The gas and debris raced over the ground
39:54This time, it did reach Pompeii
39:59This time, it did reach Pompeii
40:01This time, it did reach Pompeii
40:29So now we know the people of Pompeii didn't suffocate on the ash.
40:36They weren't consumed by lava.
40:39They were struck down by a wave of intense heat.
40:43By the time the eruption was over,
40:46Vesuvius had produced six pyroclastic currents.
40:50Over time, the ash that covered the bodies hardened,
41:01encasing each of the dead in a solid outer shell.
41:06As the remaining flesh inside the shell decomposed,
41:10it left behind a cavity,
41:12a perfect mould of each victim's final position.
41:17And this allowed archaeologists to do something extraordinary.
41:23When they pumped plaster into the cavities,
41:26they created these fascinating casts
41:29unlike anything that has been seen before or since.
41:47The ash that covered the dead was so fine,
41:54it preserved details of their faces and the clothes they wore.
41:59And 2,000 years later,
42:01it has provided us with the clues to how the people died.
42:05I wonder what it was like when the first human cast was produced.
42:11Must have been pretty nerve-wracking,
42:13chipping away that rock to see what they'd find.
42:15But incredibly exciting when the whole human shape appeared.
42:21These casts are the real treasures of Pompeii.
42:24They're closely guarded and incredibly fragile.
42:28But for the very first time,
42:30the authorities have given permission to peer beneath the plaster.
42:34Using state-of-the-art digital X-ray technology,
42:39we want to recreate the face of a person who died on that fateful day.
42:44The cast we have chosen rests inside Pompeii's granary.
42:50We want to X-ray this cast because the plaster encasing the skull is extremely thin.
42:57Although this is one of the first casts ever created,
43:02very little is known about who this person once was.
43:06We think it was a male because of the large build.
43:11But what he did for a living remains a mystery.
43:15We call him the Anonymous Man
43:18because we know so little about him.
43:22But can we find out what he looked like?
43:28To recreate this man's face, we've enlisted Richard Neve.
43:33He's an expert on anatomical facial reconstruction.
43:37Tell me, how do you work? What are you going to do?
43:40Because of the limitations on how we can handle this material,
43:45if we can get X-rays of the skull from the front and the side,
43:50then from that information I can rebuild a skull.
43:54And you can actually then put flesh on the bones?
43:57Effectively, yes.
43:58It's a wonderful challenge. It's not been done before.
44:00So are you excited at the idea of doing it?
44:02Oh yes, I am indeed.
44:04It's all in the bone. It's all information in that skull.
44:07Because the skull is encased in plaster,
44:12we need to use a digital X-ray machine to see through it.
44:16And as a safety precaution, we have to wear lead vests
44:20and cordon off the area from the public.
44:25Helping us is X-ray technician Steyn Leuk.
44:28OK, so we're going to do a left lateral.
44:32The handheld X-ray machine sends images directly to a monitor,
44:37where Richard and I can view them.
44:39Bingo.
44:40Look.
44:41Wow.
44:42Gosh.
44:43I had no idea that there'd be a whole skull in there.
44:48I find that amazing, actually.
44:50Look at that. It's like a portrait.
44:53I'm hoping that Steyn is going to be able to do some magic
44:58so that we can actually see the angle of the jaw,
45:00which I think is just there,
45:02because it's a whopping great big square one.
45:04Yeah.
45:05It's a very masculine sort of skull, that, isn't it?
45:07Absolutely.
45:08Very strong.
45:10It never ceases to amaze me.
45:12Well, that's the expert eye, I think.
45:15At first, the X-ray machine produces images
45:18that are grainy and difficult to read.
45:21But we soon start to get pictures that Richard can use.
45:25Oh, wow.
45:27It's surprising, isn't it, when you look at it like this?
45:30Just how much you really can see.
45:36That's the edge of the skull there, isn't it?
45:39Yes.
45:40That's the...
45:41There's the front of the skull, beautifully shown.
45:43There's the frontal sinus here.
45:45That's the roof of the orbit down there.
45:47Roof of the eye socket.
45:49The eye socket, mm-hmm.
45:51There's the nose, the floor of the mouth, the palate, hard palate,
45:56and our teeth, upper and lower teeth.
46:01So is this good enough to create a reconstruction from?
46:04Well, with the other views, yes.
46:06We can...
46:07From this, we can create a skull.
46:11And having done that, we can create the face on the skull we've made.
46:16Well, we spent nearly all day taking X-rays of casts.
46:20It's much more difficult than I thought it was going to be.
46:22But I think, finally, we've actually got somewhere.
46:25We've got a series of X-rays that Richard can work from.
46:28And that's great.
46:30Two, three.
46:31It's incredible to think that something as destructive as a volcanic eruption
46:37could help preserve such fragile remains.
46:43The reconstruction team have also been given access to another victim of Vesuvius,
46:48this time from the town of Herculaneum.
46:51Even though the massive heat surge stripped the people of all traces of their identity,
47:00it is possible to recreate the face of one of these individuals,
47:04because every skull holds detailed information about how a person looked.
47:11To reconstruct a face, we have been given unprecedented access
47:15to the skull of a young woman who died in one of the boat sheds.
47:20She's known as the Belladonna.
47:23She's thought to have been a wealthy inhabitant of Herculaneum,
47:27a woman who lived a life of luxury and pleasure,
47:31a life cut all too short.
47:38I'm now holding a 2,000-year-old skull.
47:42And this is supposed to be a woman's skull,
47:45and she's called Belladonna, the beautiful woman.
47:49I wonder if we can tell that, or if you can tell that.
47:54Now we can see from this that it has the features that one would associate with a female skull.
48:01You have big eye sockets and big orbits, and it's very symmetrical.
48:08And one tends to associate beauty with symmetry.
48:13With regular features?
48:14With regular features, yes.
48:16Well, I shall put this on here.
48:18Nicely in the center.
48:20Okay, let's start this up.
48:22To recreate the Belladonna's face, we first need to make a complete scan of her skull.
48:29This machine will map the skull in the most exquisite detail.
48:34And from this, we can print out an exact three-dimensional copy.
48:38So now you can see on the screen already the 3D objects.
48:44It's like a real object coming out of nothing.
48:47Exactly, yes.
48:49Richard will then use the 3D copy as a foundation from which to build the face of this woman.
48:56I know this is the skull of someone who lived here 2,000 years ago.
49:01And yet, I find it very hard to relate that and the fact that she died in the eruption of Vesuvius
49:08to a skull that I'm holding in my hands now.
49:10It doesn't feel real to me.
49:19My time in Pompeii is now coming to an end, and it's been a fascinating experience.
49:26I'm hoping that Richard will be able to use his skill and knowledge
49:31to show us the faces of two people who died in this terrible tragedy.
49:35For the last two months, Richard Neve has been hard at work in his studio in England.
49:59Using measurements taken from the X-rays and 3D scans,
50:04he's built skulls for both the belladonna and the anonymous man.
50:10And he's now starting to put flesh on the bones.
50:14Slowly, layer upon layer of muscle and soft tissue is built up.
50:20Once the eyes are in place, the faces take shape.
50:24It's no longer just a blank skull staring at you.
50:29This is going to be more and more familiar as time goes by.
50:39It's now winter, and Richard and I are back in Italy.
50:43Both the reconstructions are finished,
50:46and I'm looking forward to coming face to face with two people
50:50who lived here 2,000 years ago.
50:56The first is the belladonna.
50:59This young woman is thought to have been one of Herculaneum's wealthier citizens.
51:03But she died cowering in one of the boat sheds.
51:16We have brought her reconstruction to the town where she once lived, Herculaneum.
51:22Right, so this is the belladonna.
51:23This is the belladonna.
51:25Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what you've made.
51:27Yes, well, you've only seen a skull of her before, haven't you?
51:30So this is what we've got.
51:37It's a person.
51:38She's actually got character.
51:43It's so real.
51:45That's all I can say.
51:46It's just so real.
51:49To think of the skull and then that's the face.
51:52When you were holding the skull, yes.
51:54When I was holding the skull, I couldn't imagine a person.
51:58And now I see her, I find it difficult to relate her face to the skull.
52:04But that's because she's alive and the skull isn't.
52:09No.
52:11She's called the belladonna.
52:12Yes.
52:13And I think she is beautiful.
52:17But whether she'd have been a showstopper...
52:20Difficult to know.
52:21I suspect she could well have been in her day.
52:25So do you think they'll still call her the belladonna?
52:27I expect so, yes.
52:29I certainly became quite attached to her, I have to say.
52:34I mean...
52:35She's not yours now, you know.
52:36She's not mine now.
52:37No, no, no.
52:40I find it very hard when looking at all those skeletons in the boathouses
52:43to think these were all individuals.
52:46But looking at her and thinking her skull was among those...
52:50Yes.
52:51She was an individual and, of course, they all were.
52:53It brings it much more to life, somehow, what happened.
52:58This young woman once walked along the narrow streets of Herculaneum.
53:01She may even have worshipped here, in this temple.
53:09I think it's remarkable that Richard has been able to breathe life into something that was just a skull.
53:15The second face Richard has reconstructed is of the man who now lies in Pompeii's granary.
53:26We call this cast the anonymous man, as no clues as to who he was or what he did for a living were ever found on his body.
53:40But we do have some idea of how and when he died.
53:45We think this man managed to live through 12 hours of the eruption.
54:03He may have escaped the worst of the ashfall by hiding inside his home.
54:07At around dawn on August 25th, he tried to flee the city.
54:16But he didn't get far.
54:22At around 7.30 in the morning, he was engulfed by the fourth pyroclastic current.
54:33It killed him instantly.
54:44We have brought his reconstruction to where his body cast now rests.
54:51Pompeii's granary.
54:52I wonder what face Richard has been able to put on this mysterious figure.
54:58Right, this is what I've been waiting for.
54:59Here we are.
55:00Right, let's see what you've made.
55:03There he is, Margaret.
55:04That's amazing.
55:05I think that's just amazing.
55:09Not what you were expecting.
55:14Not what I was expecting at all.
55:16And I think it looks so real, so human, and so much, what would be more lifelike, but so alive.
55:27And thinking that that actually is what the person whose bones are inside that plaster.
55:33But it doesn't seem to me really like a real person.
55:37Whereas when I see what you've made here, the person comes alive.
55:43You can imagine him living here and walking up and down these streets.
55:47Here at Pompeii, archaeologists have concentrated on the buildings, the artifacts, the wall paintings, all those things left in the physical record.
56:00Because we haven't got them left anywhere else.
56:02But of course it was a town for people and people lived here and these are the people who died here.
56:08It's extraordinary looking into that man's eyes.
56:12He seems so human, he's almost alive.
56:15And he was just an ordinary man who lived here, but he died in the most extraordinary way.
56:19And looking at him, you wonder, what can it have been like for the people who were caught in that eruption?
56:24It must have been indescribably awful.
56:26I still think it's intrusive standing so close to these casts and looking at them.
56:41But they are remarkable.
56:43They don't just put a human face on the tragedy here.
56:47They've helped to explain how the people actually died.
56:50Pompeii has wonderful buildings, baths, theatres.
57:01But what makes it special is the story of the people and how their lives were brought to such a dramatic and horrific end.
57:08POMPEI
57:22Pompeii still sits in the shadow of the giant Vesuvius.
57:40It's erupted over 50 times since this city was destroyed.
57:47The last time, in 1944, half a metre of ash fell onto its ancient streets.
57:58Vesuvius is still alive, still smouldering.
58:03And who knows what the future may bring.
58:06A culture show special talks to the man behind that opening ceremony.
58:17Director Danny Boyle on BBC Two now.
58:20On BBC Three, challenging taste buds.
58:23It's the horse meat banquet.
58:25And there's comedy on BBC Four now, with the cut and thrust of parks and recreation.
58:29People need to know whether you and the hike referee it or know dishonest by they try to live,
58:32Soledad TeOUR
58:46or find the man behind a stranger's relationship with smiled.
58:48I'll bring you to just one of hisily and feeling and remember his foreclose.
58:50They wrath eachably soon and match a celebration.
58:52Better as apox came Gobierno ni as some wine empleados.
58:54To respect.
58:55You can see us on Mars Sears or Joino's.
58:56You can't see you down there today.
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