DNA analysis has brought the ancient city of Pompeii, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, back to news. The researchers, with the help of modern science, have discovered that popular assumptions exist about the tragedy.
The DNA results revealed that a 2000-year-old mummy, earlier assumed to belong to a woman, belonged to a man. Now, many argue that the bodies belonged to a same-sex couple and not two sisters or a mother and child.
City of Pompeii
When Mount Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years ago in 79 AD, the city of Pompeii was obliterated, killing its residents. Pompeii was covered in ash before being buried by several meters of lava. The world didn't know about Pompeii until it was rediscovered in the 1700s. Among the ruins, researchers also found human remains -- citizens of the lost city who didn't survive the volcanic eruption.
Dozens of bodies were found preserved from the soot and ash that covered the streets, buildings and people. The soft tissue of the bodies had decayed over the millennia, but their outlines remained intact. Although the bodies got buried in mud and ash and eventually decomposed, the researchers managed to preserve their DNA samples by filling the cavities with plaster.
'The Two Maidens' and the new findings
Among the dead bodies recovered were the bodies of two Pompeii residents who looked like in an embrace as doom arrived. The remains were given the 'The Two Maidens' as they appeared to be the bodies of two women.
Alissa Mittnik from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and her team are responsible for decoding the DNAs of the Pompeii victims. The researchers found out that at least one of the two maidens was a man!
But how did they determine the sex of the 2000-year-old mummies? In the hope of determining the sex, and genetic relationships between the victims, Dr Mittnik's team extracted DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains, ITV said in a report. This led to the conclusion that 'The Two Maidens' may need another name, after all.
The researchers also found that the two other bodies found inside the same building the maidens didn't belong to a mother and child. The way the smaller body was held by the other, it was assumed that the victim was a minor and his/her mother. However, the German team also found out that the adult holding the child was a man.
In light of the new discovery, some have started arguing that 'The Two Maidens' could have been gay lovers. While there exists no evidence to support the claim, tabloids have started amplifying the claim. "The fact that they were lovers is a hypothesis that cannot be dismissed," Daily Mail quoted Massimo Osanna, superintendent of the Pompeii archaeological site, as saying.
Homosexuality in ancient Rome
6th century BC frescoes in Lazio depicted men having sex while Ancient Greeks imported their same-sex relations–a form of civil education for young men–to their colonies in South Italy. Ancient Rome’s social elite, mostly influenced by Greek models, also kept a pretty relaxed attitude towards same-sex encounters, a report said.
"The civil freedoms of a Roman citizen allowed him to engage in such relations with any man lower in society than him, whilst demonstrating his virility and ability to conquer others. Young men specifically between the ages of 12 and 20 were seen as perfectly acceptable sexual partners for a Roman man, and to an extent, there was a cultural expectation for older Romans to seek these kinds of relationships," the University of Bermingham said in a report.