News Archaeology

Mount Vesuvius may have suffocated, not vaporized, some victims

People who took refuge in stone boathouses died a slower death when the volcano erupted

Mount Vesuvius boathouse

Some people fleeing the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 hid in these stone boathouses.

Norbert Nagel/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Erin Garcia de Jesús

- More than 2 years ago

When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago, the blast may not have instantly killed some fleeing residents of Herculaneum, a seaside outpost near Pompeii.