@@garywheeler7039Hagia Sophia was another place at the top of my bucket list. I was terribly disappointed. If you know the history of this amazing building, you will know that it was a Byzantine Cathedral. The interior would have glowed, glittered and awed the visitor. In fact early comments from both Roman Christian and Islamic visitors show that they were blown away by its magnificence. That means lots and lots of gold silver, icons and jewels shimmering in the candlelight. What is left is a scoured shell, everything beautiful looted. Any Christian iconography, scraped off. It is a building without a sole. The Blue mosque is lovely though.
Not mentioned, Pompeii wasn't the only town buried by a pyroclastic flow, so was Herculaneum. Whereas Pompeii was south of Vesuvius, Herculaneum was north of Vesuvius. Oplontis and Stabiae were also buried by pyroclastic flows, but the sights to see are in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Only one third of both Pompeii and Herculaneum have been excavated. Excavation is a very slow process as both cities were buried under more than twenty feet of pumice and ash. Once certain layers are reached, the contents dug up must be carefully sifted. Finally, while Pliny the elder died trying to save people, Pliny the Younger (then about 12 or 13 years old), who was in Naples, documented the eruption. His descriptions of the pyroclastic flows weren't taken seriously by the USGS (United States Geological Survey) until the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980. When Mt. Saint Helens blew, a pyroclastic flow destroyed and buried everything in a 230 square miles area (mostly north of the volcano).
The pyroclastic flow that swallowed Pompei, Herculenaum and the other towns you mention came down the slope of the volcano at about 200 mph with a temperature of about 1500 degrees F. The people in those towns never had a chance.
Isn't it also in Herculaneum where things like wood and written scrolls were preserved? Scrolls that they are now digitally able to read, if I recall correctly.
@@nsbd90now True that the scrolls were in Herculaneum, but reading them? While it is true that two of them are now partially readable, the process is very slow and painstaking.
I visited Pompeii in 2017. It was eerie and amazing all at once. Amazing because it's so well preserved. And errie because the city still feels alive, and I don't mean because of the tourists walking around. You could almost feel the Romans who died were still there, like they were just around the corner and just out of sight. I've been to other ruins but Pompeii is on a whole other level. If you get the chance go see it.
Pompei is a world wonder. Nowere on earth history has preserved so well as in Pompei. Everything there is like 2000 years ago. Walls, streets, paintings, gardens. Everything. History never preserves as it is. Comes new king and rebuilds everything. So such time capsule is very unique. And precious...
@@michajastrzebski4383 and all the Pompeii victims seemed to drop where they were when it went off, whereas in Herculaneum what bodies were discovered were killed making a mad dash away from the volcano.
We have seen many volcanoes erupt in our lifetime. The biggest in recent times was Mt. Pinatubo that did the same thing Vesuvius did with ashfall and pyroclastic surges but today, we have cars and helicopters that evacuated the locals. If modern transport were not available, it would’ve been over 100k bodies for future generations to observe.
We visited Pompeii about 10 years ago. It's a pretty amazing place to go. The thing that struck me the most was looking over the city skyline and seeing Vesuvius in the distance. One can only imagine seeing that black cloud of pyroclastic material headed your way with nowhere to run.
1:39 Not really true. We've studied the ash layers and concluded that there were several pyroclastic flows which occurred before the city was finally engulphed in one, including a final one which stopped _just_ short of the city. The only reason to stick around at that point was ignorance or the inability to get up and go. Most people did in fact vacate.
It's so ironic that the very thing that killed all these people in Pompeii and Herculaneum is also the very thing that has kept them alive for us to "know" 2000 years later.
Excellent video!!! I've always found the story of Pompeii so incredibly heartbreaking but also absolutely fascinating.... One day, some day, I would love to go there....
Ugh, I always feel for that dog in particular. When I was a little kid in the 1960s there was a book with a drawing of it... I couldn't quite grasp the shape from the drawing as it looked like a roast turkey shape. Much later, probably as an adult, seeing the actual cast I got that the poor thing was writhing in agony on its back.
I have visited graphic websites where unbearable crime events or incidents are uploaded. A quick glance at the comments section and I realized how some people have twisted brains. Sympathizing with animals e.g dogs and cats who feast on human cadavers more than their fellow humans. I say to that "ugh"
We were there in the summer of 2019. We climbed to the top of the volcano, which is still active. You can smell sulfur and see the gases still emanating from the volcano. In the ruins of Pompeii, we hired a personal tour guide to go through much of the remains, including the remains as shown in the video. It was a great tour.
That's the way to do it. I stopped and bought some food from a grocery store to make fresh sandwhiches along with fruit. Plan for a lot of walking. It's a small city and you can go anywhere within it when you're not on a tour. It's an amazing place. My favorite other than the amphitheater was the pomegranate trees at the entrance! Also seeing olive trees was a first.
I DO recommend having some kind of guidance. We visited in 2014, and used an internet audio tour guide. It was Rick Steves, as I recall. I've met many who went it on their own with NO guide, and all were disappointed and underwhelmed. OTOH, being in a bustling, ridgid tour group that limits your time onsite would also be unfortunate.
One of my favorite places I visited. Some third years ago now. I want to go back and see what more they have uncovered. The Temple ruins in Egypt were a like fascination and wonder for myself. I love medieval castles, but they are a distant second to these true wonders.
Thank you for the content and especially for not using the annoying electronic voices that other people are using today and for using real pictures/videos.
I guess it shows something about me, but my sharpest memory are the frescoes in a bordello that showed the services provided that were very detailed. They said that it helped the visiting sailors who didn't speak Latin make their choices.
You should definitely go back some day if you have the chance. They've made a lot of new discoveries in the last few years and the whole area is much better organized and easy to visit than it used to be.
Actually, Pliny the elder was an admiral in the Roman navy. He was using the ships under his command to evacuate as many people as he could. He died when he went back for one more load and the final pyroclastic flow caught and killed him. Pliny the younger was on a ship in the Naples harbor during the eruption.
From Pliny's account, (and a little architectural imagination) the column of smoke and ash rose and rose above the volcano very high in altitude, then as is cooled some (it lost its buoyancy) it started to settle back down, slow then faster, the still hot rock and ash then would have flowed down the sides of the volcano, picking up speed. It would have flowed like dense wet concrete knocking down portions of walls, although tremendously hot, emitting toxic gases as it sped across the landscape, down across the fields and onto the town. Too fast to outrun. Knocking over roofs (some already covered with heavy ash) and top floors, columns, burning all organic material inside to carbon.
The British fellow's comment that resulting plastic statues were negative imprints is in correct. A negative imprint would be the empty hollow itself. The plastic statues are positive imprints.
If you find a fossil of, say, a clam, no part of that fossil is the clam except maybe its calcareous shell which is its exoskeleton. The meat inside is consumed by bacteria and ground water leaving behind a mold of the animal. the same ground water gradually deposits into the void Quartz or limestone. That process is a whole nother story, but what you are holding in your hand is a cast the shape of the clam and some of the shell might also be preserved around it, but it takes a long time. The body shape of animals with endoskeletons are not typically preserved, only the bones which are not fossils but the actual bones. Dinosaur bones are not the original bones but rock replacements and not the shape of the animal's fleshy outside. The replacement rock is usually, mostly quartz and often preserving fine detail of the internal bone structure such as the marrow. You will have to walk me through how these human fossils were formed. are they hollow and the shape we see ash that stuck to the flesh with the flesh now gone? if they are not hollow what mineral replaced the flesh?
The religion of Isis was portrayed in the 6 hour made-for-TV series (shown in three 2 hour episodes) in 1983. The series was called 'Pompeii'. Isis is the preceding religion that instituted priests and nuns, that Roman Catholicism adopted. I'd like to see the series again. How do I access it ?
I think the current residents need to pay attention and some very serious thought should be given to how to evacuate this highly populated area. Kind of like Florida where we can convert the Western most and Eastern most Interstates to North only evacuation routes. In that this happened in one very seriously violent day, the modern inhabitants don't have time to pack and consider what lipstick to wear. Grab your bug out bags and get the heck out... This volcano is still active and we can have a second Herculaneum in just a few days. Because we are modern, we are not immune.. only warned!!!
My sister once said "thank goodness they all died quickly", and I had to put down my glass of milk to repeatedly and dramatically tell her "no, nooo, no, no, no" before explaining to her these people died in one of the worst ways possible.
Between the temperature, poisonous gases, and sheer impact of the rapidly-moving volcanic material, it would indeed be very fast. You seem pretty confident in your answer. Is there any particular reason you believe this?
Wasn’t this the same disaster where there was that joke about being killed something like in Loony Toons style cause someone was killed by a falling rock shot out from the volcano as that person was running away it crushed their top half?
I was fortunate enough to visit both Pompeii and Hurkulanium a couple of of years ago. ( Do go if you are into history if you can ) 3:41 We approached pompaii from over the mountain and down into the valley that surrounds Vesuvius. You get an amazing view of the volcano and the huge sprawl of Naples that extends from the coast to well over halfway up the slopes of the volcano. I must admit the sight gave me chills. This is obviously a mega disaster ready to happen at any time. The reason that people hug the skirts of active volcanos is the extraordinary fertility of the soil. You can grow anything, more of it and bigger with a superb flavour. The general attitude of the locals is that yes it might happen but it didn’t happened in my grandfather’s, father’s or as yet my time, and probably won’t in my sons and grandsons. But now we need to make a living. The best wine and the tastiest food and harvest all those tourists!😘. The very finest pragmatic optimism.!!
I hope that Naples has a working evacuation plan if the volcano blows again. It’s densely built around and up it. It would be very difficult to get people out, it is scary even to think about it. The Neapolitan tour guide admitted that the Neapolitans are fatalists in this respect.
To comment on what had been said at 1:06, what is a pornographic fresco for us in 2024 in these sad and pathetic political correctness times, might just had to be an over joyous family picture party in those days.