The Victims of Pompeii

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE it sealed Pompeii's people in ash mid-motion, and their plaster casts became antiquity's most haunting images. Genomes teased from the casts and skeletons rewrote the famous stories (a 'mother' cradling a child was an unrelated man) and showed a boisterously cosmopolitan port city, its citizens drawn from across the eastern Mediterranean.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Ancient DNA from the people of Pompeii.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Victims of Pompeii are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

• 01

  Who were the Victims of Pompeii?

  The Victims of Pompeii (79 CE, Pompeii, Italy) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 4 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Ancient DNA from the people of Pompeii".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Victims of Pompeii mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to the Victims of Pompeii?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

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• The Sky Caves of Mustangc. 400 BCE-700 CE

• The Durotriges of Dorsetc. 100 BCE-50 CE

• The Romans of Viminacium1st-6th century CE

• The People of Imperial Romec. 100-300 CE

• The Xiongnu Imperial Elitec. 100 BCE-100 CE

• The Romans of Docleac. 100-400 CE

• The Sarmatians of the Lower Danubec. 100-400 CE

• The Goths of the Vistulac. 100-400 CE