I was watching a documentary on TV and it said the people of Pompeii were caught off guard and couldn’t have know they were living in the shadow of great destruction.
I guess you can interpet this many ways, but the destruction of the city took place in AD 62, and my question is would the people, at least the educated people of the city realized that a volcano in the area could be a dangerous thing.
I read that the city and the area was used to experiencing earthquakes, was science advanced enough to know what a volcano was at that time? I know people live in volcano area, because of the fertile soil around the volcano.
So I guess my question is, would the people have Pompeii have said, “Yeah it’s dangerous to live by a volcano, but it probably won’t happen.” Or would they have been cluess of the destructive potential.
Obviously I mean the educated ones. I realize most people weren’t that far advance in education
IIRC, the volcano was essentially dormant for several generations prior to the eruption; it was just a big hill with a hole in it, and they woke up (or didn’t wake up) one morning just in time to die.
They certainly knew what volcanoes were; Etna and Stromboli were both within the earliest boundaries of the Roman Empire, and have been continuously active for several thousand years.
Anyway, there was a temple to Hercules/Heracles at the base of the volcano, around which the town of Herculaneum was built, so even if the Pompeiians hadn’t lived there, the denizens of the temple and its supporting town would.
ETA: Wiki says it was dormant for 800 years prior to the 79 CE eruption, and nobody even knew that it was a volcano.
There’s a new book out on Pompeii. I forget the author’s name, but she claims that, in opposition to the usual view, the locals certainly would have known that something was up with Vesuvius.
My recollection from other works is that there were rumblings of the volcamo and other activity. It’s not as if Vesuvius suddenly blew its top and sprang to life all of a sudden.
In addition, there had been a notable earthquake some twenty years before the eruption (we have carved depictions from pompeii itself showing the damage). Whether or not the people in Pompeii and Herculaneum associated this with the volcano, I don’t know, but there’s a good chance that there were indications from the volcano at the time.
I also have to note that there have been eruptions of Vesuvius as recently as the 1940s, yet people continue to inhabit Naples and other areas around the volcano, despite the possible danger.We have a lot more people living in the vicinity that there were there in 79A.D.
I am not sure if you are talking about a known theoretical possibility or a practical daily sense that one is “living in the shadow of great destruction.” Walk around Pompeii today; there is still no sense of foreboding; no sense that the little hill over there is potentially dangerous. It doesn’t seem possible.
Ditto New Orleans, San Francisco and a thousand other places even today.
In the era of Pompeii, even the theoretical knowledge would have been very limited, and the potential consequence of a major eruption would not be quantified at all. For the most part they would not have known.
Take rational people like us: if we were told by the majority of respected scientists that we were contributing to endangering the world’s future, even though there were no visible signs clearly reminding us on a daily basis that was obviously true, of course we would radically change our lifestyles in the way these wise men recommend. Oh, sure, an oddball here or there, a retrograde reactionary skeptic or two might withhold his approval, but the vast majority of people on this planet in an enlightened age such as ours would heed such dire warnings almost instantly, I’m quite sure, and do whatever was required of them, however inconvenient.
It’s clear from a number of texts (Pliny being one of them) that the people of Pompeii knew of volcanos and the potential danger (though not necessarily the danger signs). However, the pyroclastic flow theory that most now believe was actually the cause of death for most inhabitants was unprecedented. Having ash falling on you being relatively harmless in itself, if unusual - being hit suddenly by superheated air slightly less so…
Why do people live near St. Andreas Fault today, where everyday, there could be a big devastating earthquake? And although there have been warning signs in form of smaller earthquakes in the past 30 years? Why do people continue to live in Japan and other islands around the hotspots?
Although, for that matter, if the Yellowstone Caldera (Supervolcano) blows suddenly, most of the US will be covered by volcanic ash, which is quite heavy and devastating. (The rest of the world will suffer from a wet summer due to the nuclear winter phenomen). How far do you want to move to get away?
It should be noted that the OP made no value judgement, but is simply asking a factual question. Yes, people (even today) will voluntarily live in a disaster-prone area; were that not true, the OP would be unnceccesary, since if people did have the habit of avoiding disaster-prone areas, then the inhabitants of Pompeii must not have known. But people do in fact sometimes knowingly and willingly live in disaster-prone areas, and of course they also live in areas not known to be disaster-prone. That makes either scenario plausible for Pompeii, so it’s a reasonable question to ask.
There was an article in National Geographic maybe last year or so about another eruption of Vesuvius - I forget if it was Stone Age or Bronze Age or Iron Age, but way back then. The fear is that a new eruption could be more like that one than the one that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum - that it could be HUGE, not just “huge”. One like the pre-historic eruption could kill Naples with no chance of complete evacuation.
Well I was wondering 'cause people take calculated risks. But today we are aware of them.
I get on a plane I could crash, get hijacked, but I calculate the risks versus the benefit of being somewhere quicker.
Living in California you trade the risk of an earthquake versus great climate.
Living in by a Volcano, you say, I trade the fertile soil for a chance of destruction, that destruction may never come.
Now I assume Volcanos just don’t explode. Like we knew Mt Saint Helen’s was rumbling.
My question was were the people advanced enough to say, first of all, OK that IS a Volcano, but it might not go of for centuries, it’s worth the risk. And second of all, where the people, at least the educated ones, smart enough to know, OK the mountain is making noises, noises equal possible erruption, that is bad.
Or would they have said “Gee I wonder what that noise is?”
Yes, you’re right, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be snarky or aggressive, and I apologize.
I asked my geologist friend, and I remember the following points (for more details I have to get him next to me and translate)
People would not plausibly have known that after the early warning signs (minor earthquakes, change from smoke to pieces of lava rocks being ejected, increase in smoke) that suddenly a gas cloud (CO) would come out and suffocate them in their sleep*. If they would compare Vesuv to Aetna, an active volcano, there was hot lava, but that wasn’t a big problem.
Furthermore, in those times, scientific method (observing nature, testing theories, being skeptical) hadn’t been invented yet. Natural science was applied philosophy, and so observation ranked below theoretic deduction.
Another factor against the ancients knowing about the size of the possible danger is the bad quality of communication in those times (compared to today) - if another “extinct”** volcano had suddenly blown up on the other side of the world or 200 years ago, the romans living in Pompeii couldn’t have heard about it as easily as we today. Most likely, they wouldn’t have heard about it at all.
Although geologists had known about Methan nodules on sea bottom before, nobody had suspected before it happened how big they were or how big a problem they could be, until suddenly in a lake in Africe (which name I can’t remember at the moment) had a very minor quake/trembler, which resulted in a cloud of deadly, silent gas “belching” out of the lake and killing over a hundred people in their sleep at night. At first, scientists were greatly puzzled as to the cause. So even today, with science so advanced, many things are unknown until they happen the first time.
Hijack to other disasters waiting to happen: the Black sea is a large-scale “belch” of methane waiting to happen, due to the natural problem that because there’s no outlet, the water stays basically calm, which means the different layers don’t move, so no oxygen in the deeper layers, leads to anoerobic putrefecation of organic waste dropping down from below, methane builds up and rises. This is compounded (factor so far unknown) because the adjoining nations (Ukraine and others) let their waste water (organic waste plus nitrogen-rich waste) run untreated into it (sewage plants cost money these countries don’t want to spend).
Although the scientists are busy researching it for about 20 years, there’s not enough data to reliably say how fast the dead layer and the methane is rising upwards, how much the human waste is contributing, when the methane bubble will reach the top (and possibly kill 10 to 20 mill. people on the shores).
Unlike the Yellowstone supervolcano problem, however, this problem could be solved by technology - both sewage plants in the adjoining countries, and by sinking (optimal) long pipes down to the bottom, extracting the methane and treating it (so it doesn’t contribute to global warming) or simply sticking pipes in the methane layer and burning it off (cheaper, but bad for global warming).
However, since this costs money without visible effect (a catastrophe adverted isn’t sexy), the countries involved are busy ignoring the problem.
** Another instance where science today has changed considerably: in my schooltime, accepted geologic theory was that there were active and extinct volcanoes, and extinct ones were no threat, but a nice spot to settle on (good, rich earth). Today, accepted geologic theory is that no volcano is extinct, it’s only currently inactive, but can erupt again any time it likes (since the “link” down to the magma is already there, that’s where the lava will go). Plus, since the inactive volcanoes are usually stopped with a plug, once they do erupt, it’s a bigger blow-up than a normal active volcano that’s constantly venting pressure.
To move to general natural disasters waiting to happen: the supervolcano under Yellowstone was only recently (10 to 20 years ago) discovered, too.
He added that Earth goes through periods of vulcanism and no-vulcanism (when all plates are arranged so that the glide smoothly instead of bumping), but waiting for some hundred thousands or million of years till the current active phase wears off is not a solution for yellowstone and the other volcanoes that I like.
