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00:00Mamma mia, veramente terribile sta frattura.
00:19Mai scavato un essere umano ridotto così.
00:22È come se fosse diventato in 2D.
00:29Perché qua è stato proprio il blocco di...
00:33Potrebbe essere donna, potrebbe.
00:39Non ti do certezze.
00:43In AD 79,
00:46the eruption of Mount Vesuvius entombede Pompei in metres of pumice and ash,
00:56preserving the city and its people for 2 millennia.
01:06Today, Pompei's ruins are the archeological wonder of the world.
01:11But, incredibly,
01:14one third of the 66 hectare site remains unexcavated.
01:22Now, this is about to change.
01:28As a team of Italian archeologists set out to unearth a new complex of buildings.
01:34This is the biggest excavation in the generation in Pompei.
01:38It's an entire city block.
01:39It took a very long time to plan it.
01:42So it's very specialised.
01:46Oh, do you have to understand what this is?
01:48Do you want to see something?
01:49Do you want to see something?
01:50Oh, my God.
01:51Come here.
01:52Come here.
01:53Come here.
01:54Come here.
01:55Come here.
01:56Come here.
01:57Come here.
01:58Come here.
01:59Come here.
02:00Come here.
02:01Come here.
02:02As the team removes tons of ash and pumice,
02:05we'll see a new part of Pompei rise from the rubble for the first time
02:10in almost 2,000 years.
02:19Revealing new secrets about the lives of the ancient Romans.
02:23Immaginare sempre dietro a un oggetto la vita di una persona.
02:39Questo piacerebbe raccontare.
02:42In AD 79, Pompeii was a bustling cosmopolitan city.
03:12Situated on the Bay of Naples, it attracted rich Romans from across the empire.
03:23You can imagine life, a nice little town in the countryside where people went for holidays
03:34and vacation.
03:41But it's also very commercial.
03:46Every day, Pompeii's bakeries, laundries and impressive amphitheater hummed with life.
03:58You were in a cramped city full of people, full of noise.
04:03Chariots moving along the streets.
04:09Shops.
04:11Public baths.
04:13Children writing messages and drawing on the walls.
04:19People getting drunk, prostitutes.
04:26All that happening in a very limited space.
04:33People getting drunk, prostitutes.
04:37But then, everything changed.
04:40The violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius threw a column of ash and rock 21 miles into the air.
04:59Burying Pompeii and its people for over 1700 years.
05:18Rediscovered in the 1740s, archaeologists have been excavating the ruins ever since.
05:39Today, the team start work on an untouched area of the site.
05:52This is Insula 10.
05:59A 3,000-square-metre city block backing onto Via Nola.
06:05A busy commercial street leading to the Eastern Gate, lined with shops and luxurious villas.
06:14This was a wealthy part of town.
06:18The archaeologists think they are likely to find a large residential complex.
06:23Possibly the home of an elite citizen.
06:26The archaeologists think they are likely to find a large part of the site.
06:32Pompeii is extremely fragile.
06:35And it's always a fight, a battle against time.
06:42Excavating is also a huge responsibility.
06:44You have to restore and protect what you excavate forever.
06:49It's an enormous challenge to preserve this site for future generations.
07:07As the dig begins, the team need heavy machinery to reach the original floor level.
07:12Buried under five metres of volcanic debris.
07:15In a small room close to the main street, anthropologist Valeria Amoretti has made a discovery.
07:45Let's go.
07:46Now what happened?
07:47It's constantly ubic- monopoly.
07:48Where is the rain though?
07:52This face is not good.
07:53This information isη sung by an enormous area.
07:56Thisño has beenante, but in such an American mountain level.
08:02What is the mountain map?
08:03The mountain Where I am going to keep the resurrection?
08:06The mountain torch?
08:08I think this is the plateau of the race,
08:11I think it should stay this promising way too.
08:13I'm the person who calls me.
08:20But it's a little bit.
08:24It's a minute.
08:27It's a minute.
08:29It's open.
08:31It could be a woman.
08:33It could be.
08:35From what you see, I don't know.
08:38It's a minute.
08:47But it's adult.
08:49Oh my God.
08:56Can I remove this document?
08:59OK, fine.
09:01Valeria has been unearthing ancient bodies for many years.
09:14In this moment, I'm acting like a forense anthropologist during a mass disaster.
09:20But we're working on what happened to the person and what its last moments.
09:25So it's a reconstruction of the moment of death.
09:31But this person didn't die alone.
09:40Close by, there's a second body.
09:46Mamma mia.
09:49Perché vedo una serie di colpi pure laterali.
09:53One, two, three, four, five.
09:56One, two, three, four, five.
10:06It's a congelamento della morte.
10:07Il momento della morte è qualcosa che non sono ancora abituata.
10:12Nemmeno io.
10:14Il momento della morte.
10:19With both bodies severely crushed, the team are keen to find out exactly how they died.
10:25And who they were.
10:27Before the eruption, Pompeii's population was a rich mix of the Roman social strata.
10:41At the top, the powerful and wealthy.
10:45Pompeii's old money elite and the nouveau riche.
10:50Then, the skilled workers and laborers, including those that had won their freedom, plied their trade in the shops and markets.
11:00And at the very bottom, and doing most of the work, the enslaved workers.
11:09Pompeii's rich and poor, living cheek by jowl.
11:13And there's a lot of people.
11:18Walking through Pompeii, you can really see a very stark social contrast between extremely rich people.
11:30With a large house, with the dining rooms and courtyards.
11:36A garden with running water, you know, fountains, statues, Greek marble.
11:41Paintings and frescoes all over the house.
11:51And this, right next to all the little spaces.
12:02The majority were one or two, three room apartments.
12:07Ten to fourteen people living there.
12:12It gets quite cramped.
12:18Many of the small apartments without kitchen, so you can understand why there are so many bakeries.
12:24Because people, essentially, who have no kitchen, they were eating bread.
12:30And that's it.
12:33Back at the dig, the team are clearing out a large, brick-built oven.
12:46Situated in the room next door to the bodies, it's unusual to find one so large in a private house.
12:51Giovanni!
12:54Giovanni!
12:58Giovanni.
13:00It's a moment.
13:01Come here.
13:02Once, I used to see the smoke.
13:03Here.
13:04Come.
13:05If you can see the smoke.
13:07Here, the smoke.
13:08This smoke.
13:10Here, the smoke.
13:12Yes.
13:13I'm going to take my hand at the end of the day.
13:19It's the end of the day.
13:21No.
13:27Don't hurt you.
13:33Gennaro Jovino is one of the digs' team leaders.
13:37He's lived close to the ruins all his life.
13:43He's a few steps from the city of Pompeii.
13:47Also, Scafati is nothing else than Pompeii,
13:51where there were a lot of rural villages,
13:53so it's like to really excavate a house.
13:59I find myself on the ground where my antennas were born.
14:08It's amazing.
14:10We'll come back and then we'll try to enter.
14:14We'll try to work from above, you know?
14:16We can find some surprise inside.
14:18We'll try to work from there.
14:24We'll be in the eye of the Ciclon,
14:27in the good and in the bad.
14:28We'll be those who will ask what we found.
14:33So I imagine that from here to a year I will resume a year of work,
14:44centinaia of US, centinaia of USM, of revestments in a phrase that we found.
15:03As Valeria continues to work on the fragile skeletons, she wants to understand how these
15:30people died.
15:49What could have killed these people so quickly?
15:55Archaeologist Professor Chris Jackson is an expert in ancient volcanoes.
16:02He's come to a partially unexcavated area of Pompeii to examine some of the volcanic rock
16:07that buried the city.
16:16Here we're looking at some of the material associated with the very earliest phase of the eruption.
16:21And it's this white pumice we have here.
16:25And if you were in Pompeii at that time, the sky would have been black, it would have been
16:29very dark because all of this material would have been swirling around in the atmosphere
16:34before raining down out the sky like snow.
16:38But the thing is, it was falling continuously during that earliest phase of the eruption,
16:42quickly building up into a thick layer on the roofs of the houses.
16:46And although this material is quite light, and these particles are quite small, this would
16:51have been falling out of the sky for around about 19 hours.
16:55Those roofs would not have been able to withstand the thick layer of material deposited in a relatively
17:00short period of time.
17:02And amazingly, my feet are on ground level here at Pompeii.
17:07And this wall of rock towers above me, really giving you a sense of the material that came
17:12into the city and swamped it.
17:14During that initial phase of the eruption, ash and pumice was raining down on the roofs of
17:27houses in Pompeii.
17:30Some residents may have come inside to hide indoors, unaware that the build-up, the slow creep
17:37of this incessant ash fall was eventually going to lead to catastrophic failure and loss of life
17:44in Pompeii.
17:46Acho ハハ wieder
17:47I'm deciding between the size and meat of the litter and the floor.
17:53Soби be a looking nitrogennear on the roof…
17:55And the weight?
17:56Blo covenant.
17:57Forse, what could not be, right?
18:02Moving on!
18:03Myiądala…
18:05Chen 앞에?
18:06How much is it?
18:09The stanie a plant?
18:12Bubba of 300 kilo in water…
18:14Can all the soften…
18:15The revelation that a collapsing ceiling crushed these people implies they were sheltering
18:39in this room during the eruption.
18:42And who they were remains a mystery.
18:53Next door, in the oven room, Gennaro calls in Nicola Montex, expert on Roman bakeries,
19:01to try to determine what the oven was used for.
19:07How is it?
19:162,64€ for 2,20€.
19:20Bella bestia!
19:24This, we can clearly say that for the grandezze it is a commercial oven.
19:30Yes, I would say it with all calmness.
19:32Yes, yes, it is improbable that it is a domestic oven.
19:39Is there an exit on the road for the moment?
19:43No, Nicolai, we have not found it.
19:47Commercial properties in Pompeii usually had shopfronts opening onto the street.
19:53But there is no evidence of one here.
20:13The team have discovered this was not a domestic but a commercial bakery distributing bread around
20:20the city.
20:26At the time of the eruption, Pompeii was thriving.
20:30Traders and visitors flocked to the town and baking was big business.
20:36Bread was a key staple of the Roman diet.
20:41And remarkably, some loaves still survive.
20:47This is one of the carbonised bread that was founded here in Pompeii.
20:55This shape of bread is one of the most common in Pompeii.
21:00So the panis quadratus that have this rounded shape and that was divided in four or eight
21:07slices.
21:08This is one of the last bread that was baked in Pompeii in 79 AD.
21:16And here you can see the fingerprint of the bakers.
21:21And this is the last action, we can say, of the worker that worked in the bakery.
21:33But what would life have been like for those working in the newly discovered bakery?
21:43Across Pompeii, over 40 bakeries have been found.
21:50Nicola Montex has come to one of the best preserved.
21:53You have to imagine that life in the bakery was not a life around you.
22:03And then, in front of the oven, it means to take the heat every day from 100 to 500 degrees.
22:10It was also maintained by a human being.
22:23It was maintained by a human being.
22:24It was maintained by a human being.
22:26And it was in the same time, putting the grain on top of it and putting the flour on top of it.
22:32And that all the day.
22:34There was the permanent bruit of the savots on the basalte, the probable bruit of the
22:42meule that turns out.
22:43There is a description in Landor d'Apulé where, in the fond, it describes people who are
22:53slaves, who work in the bakery, and they describe them all as very maigres, covered with
23:01blood, white blood, because it's the flour that falls on them, and really in a state of
23:08guenille.
23:09Well, it must have been completely horrible.
23:15And a small room next door containing two skeletons.
23:22And a small room next door containing two skeletons.
23:28Now they begin excavating an untouched area in the centre of the block, the atrium or reception
23:35room, where visitors, merchants and workers might have entered from the main street outside.
23:41Now they begin excavating an untouched area in the centre of the block, the atrium or reception
23:50room, where visitors, merchants and workers might have entered from the main street outside.
23:55workers might have entered from the main street outside.
24:25It's a really exciting thing.
24:43Is this or this?
24:47The shape of a car.
24:50But it's a goal.
24:52It's the goal of the machine.
24:56Yes, the goal of the machine.
25:00This is a millstone used to grind grain.
25:04They were essential for making bread.
25:07But why is this in the reception room?
25:12Alessandro Russo, co-team leader, joins Gennaro,
25:16trying to make sense of the discovery.
25:18It looks good.
25:22Yes, yes.
25:23But it's not that they were making it.
25:25They were making the new one.
25:27Look at the marks.
25:29Look at the marks of the rasp.
25:32The millstone was brand new and unused at the time of the eruption.
25:35And just meters away, something equally unexpected in the past.
25:39The millstone was brand new and unused at the time of the eruption.
25:43And just meters away, something equally unexpected appears.
25:45The millstone was brand new and unused at the time of the eruption.
25:48And just meters away, something equally unexpected appears.
25:52the millstone was brand new.
26:09The millstone.
26:10What do they do, is this васمر?
26:13Where does it go from?
26:15The millstone, the millstone was brand new so it's not far ahead.
26:18Come on, come on.
26:27Good, it's a little bit.
26:29What do you need?
26:36These are 2,000-year-old roof tiles.
26:39They're still in almost perfect condition.
26:42Let's see.
26:47Finding dozens of new roof tiles and a brand new millstone
26:51suggests that renovation work was taking place here.
26:55But why?
26:59Could this building work be linked to a dramatic event
27:02which rocked Pompeii 17 years before the eruption?
27:12Mount Vesuvius still looms large over the ruins of the city.
27:192,000 years ago, to the Pompeians,
27:24it would have looked like any other mountain.
27:27But its looks were deceiving.
27:31Magma is always moving around within the Earth's crust.
27:40And sometimes when that magma moves,
27:42it pushes against the rocks.
27:44And those rocks can break.
27:46And it's the breaking of those rocks
27:48that can generate a series of earthquakes.
27:55In AD 62, a violent earthquake shook the city.
28:00The earthquake severely damaged Pompeii.
28:18And following that earthquake,
28:21there was a number of other earthquakes.
28:23These earthquakes damaged buildings across the city.
28:29Back at the dig, evidence is mounting that this property was one of them.
28:34And was still being repaired 17 years later.
28:38And was still being repaired 17 years later.
28:42And if not, we have here,
28:43there was certain 스lei was created by Castelo by Gosti.
28:46From the city center.
28:47There, this is a scene of been chromosomal.
28:48But this is a scene of Treaty.
28:49These are taken over the hill,
28:50and you can see that the town was built.
28:51This is a city of St. Gosti where it is!
28:52And this town is built.
28:53The town is built...
28:54The town is built in the city of St. Gosti.
28:55and that here we will probably hold the camps.
29:02So this house was built,
29:06they're not going to know.
29:11At this point we will probably find
29:15the equipment used for the camp,
29:19the equipment used for the camp.
29:25If they haven't escaped, we'll find the workers.
29:29What do you say?
29:30Because if they were working...
29:32Yes, no, no.
29:34Let's hope.
29:36Congratulations, let's continue.
29:46In a small room nearby,
29:48the team discover more evidence of ongoing repair work.
29:55,
30:03.
30:08Trinidad, can you go down a minute?
30:10.
30:12I'm going to spend some time.
30:13It's a great deal.
30:15Let's go, let's go.
30:17Here they continue to get out.
30:19Wow.
30:21You know how many measures are you?
30:23But here was the house, right?
30:25The house ended up like this.
30:27Yes, if these were holding the handle,
30:29they were attached to the house.
30:43It's a big one, right?
30:45It looks like a big one.
30:47Yes, it's a big one.
30:49Yes, it's a big one.
30:51Oh, nice.
30:53You're enjoying yourself.
30:55I like this thing.
30:57It's more than a fresh one.
30:59There are all the other people in the house.
31:01All right.
31:03Give me this thing.
31:05Gir be.
31:07Yes.
31:09Yes, he.
31:11It's amazing how nothing has changed.
31:15He's there.
31:17He's there.
31:18He's there.
31:19He's there.
31:20He's there.
31:21He's there.
31:22He's there.
31:24Since I was in the world of Edirizia,
31:27before I was working,
31:29there are things that I use.
31:32They show that
31:34the way to Edirizia
31:37they've noticed it.
31:39They're also
31:41functional,
31:43so they're changing.
31:45They have three different measures.
31:48Yes.
31:49You can imagine
31:50they've already used the house.
31:52It's not a coincidence
31:53that they're all in line.
31:54No, no.
31:55They're in position.
31:56Like our workers?
31:57Like our workers?
31:58Like our workers?
31:59Yes.
32:00For sure.
32:01As you can imagine,
32:04with the house
32:06the house
32:07was the deposit.
32:09The deposit of the equipment.
32:10Our barrack
32:12of the equipment.
32:14It's the last thing they did.
32:15Good.
32:16So,
32:17you're saying
32:18this place is a magazine,
32:20to put it up to the end,
32:21they're all in line.
32:22They're all in line.
32:23They're all in line.
32:24They're all in line.
32:25They're all in line.
32:26They're in line.
32:27It's now clear that builders were at work when the eruption occurred, repairing the
32:37damage caused by the earthquakes.
32:44Similar repairs were being carried out all over Pompeii.
32:51Archaeologist Dr. Domenico Esposito is visiting a building known as the House of the Painters
33:05at Work.
33:10Here there is clear evidence of how a group of Roman decorators were suddenly interrupted
33:15by the disaster.
33:20This decorator was working in this room on the north wall, exactly in the middle of the
33:27red panel, where he was realising a big mythological scene.
33:33I can still recognise some warriors.
33:37Another colleague was preparing the wall for the black ground.
33:43A third decorator was realising part of the architectural frames that are enriching the decorations.
33:54Domenico thinks it took four highly skilled painters and their assistants to restore the
33:59delicate frescoes.
34:03Two of the four frames they were planning to realise are finished.
34:09A third one is still unfinished but we can interestingly recognise the preparatory sketch used by the decorator.
34:20This is for us an important clue of this restoring and redecorating the houses affected from the earthquakes.
34:27When the eruption started, the workers here fled, leaving behind not just their half-finished frescoes,
34:38but also their paints, still in their original pots.
34:54They left all their stuff on the side trying to escape from the eruption.
35:15It gave me the opportunity to understand exactly which tools they were using, which colours they were using to paint.
35:28In that sense, the house of painters at work is unique and extraordinary.
35:36At the dig, the team is unearthing evidence that the builders here also left in a hurry.
36:03In other words, I think we have reached the lowest level of this stratification,
36:13of the more moments of the cooking of this foliage,
36:18the more moments distinct in the time, of sand, carbon.
36:24Look, look!
36:28Look, this is an egg.
36:31You can see.
36:34Look!
36:35You see, an Irish fish.
36:36Forse it is or you.
36:37You can see.
36:38Like a fish, fish and it is an egg.
36:40You see, you get a fish.
36:41Would you have a fish.
36:42You about to eat on an egg.
36:43You see, this fish.
36:44You see, used in onion and green.
36:45You see, it is from honey.
36:48You have a fish and egg.
36:49You see, you saw a fish.
36:50You see, I have a fish in the table.
36:51You know, food.
36:52It's the sausage.
36:53I have a fish in the strawberry.
36:54There's a fish in the есть.
36:55You see, you see an egg in the trash.
36:56You see.
36:57You see, it's a fish in the chicken.
36:58You see, it's a fish.
36:59It's typical of the Roman period, the consumption of the maial.
37:05The food was the main animal animal, but it was beautiful.
37:13Chiara, have you seen this?
37:15Ah, no.
37:17Is this fish?
37:18Yes, also the fish.
37:20It's a fish.
37:21It's a fish.
37:22It's a fish.
37:23It's a fish.
37:24It's a fish.
37:25It's a fish.
37:26It's a fish.
37:27It's a fish.
37:30Are these the remains of the builder's last meal?
37:43Dr Erika Rowan is an expert in ancient food.
37:47She believes examining what the Romans were eating provides a window into their world.
37:56By studying food, you can kind of study almost any aspect of the ancient world.
38:00So you can look at politics, you can look at colonialism or imperial expansion,
38:04but then you can also look at what regular people are eating on a daily basis.
38:09It's a good lens with which to kind of look at life in the past,
38:15to really try and connect with their kind of lived experiences,
38:19the good glimpse into kind of ancient lives.
38:25Erika joins Chiara to investigate the remains of the ancient worker's meal.
38:29This is a small fragment of a fish.
38:39And look at this.
38:41It's a nice piece of fiction.
38:42Yeah.
38:43In Pompeii, to have this mix of ingredients seems to have been something quite common.
38:50Yeah.
38:51It's quite diverse and flavorful and even kind of regular people can afford quite a wide range of ingredients.
38:56For us?
38:57Yeah, yeah.
38:58And of course, eggs, you can just, you know, hard boil them and carry them anywhere,
39:00so they're a good snack while you're working.
39:02And we found this almost complete kind of cooking, not a pot, but a...
39:12Casserole dish?
39:13A shallow bowl?
39:14And it was located on the fireplace, so it's quite likely that they cooked this animal there.
39:22Oh, yeah, you can see, like, the burn.
39:24Yeah, yeah, there are evidence of burning.
39:26I guess you can picture everyone's working and one guy goes to the side and he's just making lunch.
39:33Yeah, yeah.
39:43You can imagine them where they've set up their kind of little lunch station every day.
39:47Somebody goes over and kind of lights the fire and gets it going and starts making food while the rest of them work.
39:56Somebody potentially just sitting on the stairs, eating the pork, eating the chicken.
40:07And then kind of discarding the bones and thinking, oh, clean them up later when we're all finished.
40:13But of course, that didn't happen.
40:15It was a particularly touching scene because it is entirely the norm.
40:24That is what people would do.
40:28That little moment in time that you can really kind of imagine their regular lives.
40:33That little moment in time.
40:34That little moment in time.
40:48As the dig continues, in the south-west corner of the atrium, a fascinating fresco has come to light.
40:57That little place in the south-west corner of the atrium, a little bit.
41:05That little place in the south-west corner of the atrium, a little bit of a little bit.
41:12The first things that came out were the lumbar, then you can see a red light, a cup.
41:23As soon as we came out, we started to identify the first colors,
41:31because you understand that you are facing something that is totally exalted,
41:42because you don't know what it is, but you know that it is a precious thing.
41:48In the centre is a food offering, with fruit, a cup of wine, and what looks like a pizza.
41:57One of the first frescoes of its kind found in a Pompeian house.
42:03I came to the excavation and somebody said to me,
42:07you know, after the oven, there's also the pizza.
42:10And I thought it was actually a joke.
42:13I didn't think there actually was something like a pizza.
42:16The fervour in the staff was enormous and it grew more.
42:26So we had a moment before we stopped the activities
42:29to put in security this thing so precious.
42:36And it's clear that in that moment our mind really went a lot.
42:41And we thought, what they painted, what the meaning of it is.
42:53If you look at it, it seems like a pizza from Naples, right?
42:58Some kind of bread or pita with some kind of fruits and other spices on it.
43:04It's something that might be considered a kind of ancestor of modern pizza,
43:12in the sense that it's a very simple, poor kind of food,
43:18but it then became part of this lavish decoration.
43:21It's simple food, but the quality of the painting is impressive.
43:34And close by, other colourful frescoes are starting to emerge.
43:41It's a good-sized atrium,
43:44so it presumably was a potentially wealthier household.
43:46But I do think it is aspirational in that it wants to show possibly more wealth than they have
43:52or the wealth that they do have.
43:55I feel like they're aiming probably for kind of a luxurious look
43:59because it's a big silver platter and then a big silver cup to show wealth.
44:04And there's a lot of detail and a lot of different colours,
44:07so a lot of effort has gone into it.
44:08It is unique, it is different, so it's obviously also a commission.
44:15So they have spent time and money and effort on it.
44:18It's a new fresco because they hadn't finished the rest of the atrium.
44:23And of course, if they were just renovating it or redoing this room,
44:27presumably it's in the very last years before the eruption or maybe even AD 79 itself,
44:31if they were finishing the room.
44:32The quality of the pizza fresco suggests whoever owned this building wanted to impress visitors.
44:45Across Pompeii, experts have found evidence that bakeries were a route to wealth and social status.
44:52Professor John Clarke, an expert in ancient Roman art, has come to see a portrait found in another large Pompeian bakery.
45:11So, what's this picture doing in a bakery?
45:15Because this is a man and a woman looking very fancy.
45:19The woman holds the diptych in her hand and the stylus to her chin,
45:26and the man is wearing a toga, which is a sign of status.
45:32Commissioning a portrait of this quality was very expensive.
45:38These are two people who have made it.
45:41They had strived to make their bakery bigger, expanded it,
45:46and they were able to pay a very good portrait artist to make this painting.
45:54But, if you look at the upper part of the painting,
45:58then you see two people who are just like us.
46:02Kind of, you know, they're ordinary and they wanted to look like they looked in life.
46:06At the time of the eruption, artists were making idealized images, even of ordinary people.
46:15But what's so interesting here is that these two individuals said,
46:20no, we want to look like who we are.
46:25So, what we have here is almost the equivalent of a photograph.
46:30Because it's showing all of the irregularities of the face.
46:34It's not all smoothed out and made perfect.
46:37It's not idealized.
46:39Their faces are faces of real people.
46:41And this is amazing.
46:45Because what we see here is what people looked like 2,000 years ago.
47:00We can imagine the smell of the bread and the sound of the mills.
47:04We're looking at a time capsule from sometime right before the eruption of 79.
47:23And what's amazing is that they're still here for us.
47:27They're speaking to us over almost 2,000 years.
47:34They're speaking to us.
47:35They're speaking to us.
47:36They're speaking to us.
47:37They're speaking to us.
47:38They're speaking to us.
47:44At the excavation, Valeria and her team look for clues that could help identify the two bodies.
47:52Could they be the wealthy owners of the bakery, who ordered the renovations and paid for the pizza fresco?
47:59You see that they didn't want anyone to use.
48:03That is the money, right?
48:06It's unfortunate.
48:07I told you a方面 ago...
48:16It's your view to a week one.
48:25Thanks a lot.
48:27You see me.
48:28They are attached.
48:33They don't have anything, even this.
48:35What do you think?
48:37What do you think?
48:39There's nothing left.
48:41There's nothing left.
48:42There's nothing left.
48:44There's nothing left.
48:46They don't give the idea of rich patriots,
48:48even because what would they have done?
48:50What would they have done?
48:52What would they have done?
48:54They are slaves.
48:59The lack of personal possessions suggests
49:02these people were not the bakery owners,
49:05but enslaved workers.
49:07And after further analysis,
49:10Valeria thinks she can identify their age and sex.
49:28The first victim to be excavated was an old woman.
49:37We see both from the dentistry
49:39and the changes in public health.
49:43When I say old, I mean old,
49:46which means more than 55 years old.
49:49It doesn't mean old now, obviously.
49:51a long-term limit.
49:56And digging further,
49:58Valeria uncovers a shocking new find.
50:04Anyway, the femor,
50:06this is the left.
50:08The femor is tibial from the back.
50:11But the femor is opposite,
50:13so no one has an atomic connection.
50:16The two crushed bodies are accompanied by tiny fragments of a third.
50:46This one is not good.
50:51I would say, under five years.
51:03I didn't expect to find a child.
51:07It was the last of my thoughts, because I have children.
51:16Six months into the dig, Gennaro and the team have a clearer picture of the lives of the people who once lived and worked here.
51:33This large oven was part of a thriving commercial bakery.
51:40In a small room at the front of the building, three people, probably enslaved workers, were crushed by a collapsing ceiling.
51:50In the richly decorated atrium, the building owner had commissioned a unique fresco.
51:56And abandoned building materials, complete with tools and the remains of a worker's last meal, suggest these buildings were under reconstruction just before disaster struck.
52:08The fact that the house was captured, shows us that there is a project for a future.
52:17That means that there is a new beginning compared to a destruction, which was that of the earthquake.
52:27There is a death and a resurrection, testimonies by the project to revive that house.
52:38However, it was destroyed by the eruption of 1979.
52:4424 hours before the eruption, things would have started to change in Pompeii.
53:05There would have been a series of earthquakes shaking the city.
53:14There would be smells in the air, sulphur dioxide being expelled from the magma within the volcano.
53:23There would have been emissions of steam out of the volcano as magma rose through the volcano and actually came into contact with water.
53:32Animals, birds, would have started to leave the area.
53:35They would have known something had changed.
53:39And then about an hour before the eruption, there was an emission of steam and ash from Vesuvius.
53:49Gases within the magma started to increase the pressure within the volcano, which at that time didn't have a crater, but was covered by hard rock.
53:58Those pressures built and built and built and built, finally blowing the top off the volcano.
54:07Magma and rock surged out of the centre of that crater, going up a few tens of kilometres very quickly into the atmosphere.
54:21The people living in Pompeii at that moment would have known something was happening, but they wouldn't have heard anything straight away.
54:31And that's because the sound of the top of the volcano being blown off took 24 seconds to reach them.
54:37Chaos broke out across the city, and now we can begin to picture the scene of terror that played out in the room at the front of the bakery.
55:00Two women and a small child came here to shelter from the hail of pumice and ash.
55:15If one imagines the fear of this child, who is looking for the arms of a mother,
55:22the fear of the mother for her life, and especially for the child,
55:38they said, if you stop a moment, it destabilizes you.
55:48They didn't know what was happening.
55:50Everything was dark, they started raining.
55:53It's clear that the instinct was to escape or to refuge.
55:57So the choice of refuge was always to be wrong, and that was wrong.
56:10As the pumice continued to rain down, after several hours, the ceiling collapsed,
56:20killing all three instantly.
56:25All over the city, people were facing the same life-or-death decision.
56:46Should they stay, or should they go?
56:50should they stay, or should they go?
56:59But for two women and a child in a bakery near the Eastern Gate, it was too late.
57:05Next time, the team continues to unearth the glories of Pompeii.
57:30And a new investigation begins.
57:32Could anyone have survived the disaster?
57:37What if people got out?
57:41Did they go alone? Where might they have gone?
58:04Transcription by CastingWords
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