Original subtitles

NARRATOR: As the Roman Empire reaches its height,

an eruption of Mount Vesuvius buries the town of Pompeii.

KAYLA IACOVINO: Imagine walking outside of your house...

and seeing stones falling from the heavens.

NARRATOR: Almost 2,000 years later, casts are made of voids

in the solidified ash,

revealing the bodies of those who died.

ROBERT MEYER: These are people left behind,

watching the world collapse around them.

NARRATOR: For one group, called the Fugitives,

archaeologists are now using modern forensic techniques

to examine the bones hidden inside.

ALAIN MIDDLETON: Teeth. You can definitely see teeth.

-DR. ESTELLE LAZER: Oh, yeah, lots. -MIDDLETON: Look at 'em.

NARRATOR: To reveal who these people were...

LAZER: Oh, my god, what's that there?

NARRATOR: How they lived, and why they became victims

of the most famous disaster of the ancient world.

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Nearly two millennia after Vesuvius wiped it off the map,

archaeologists excavated Pompeii to reveal an entire Roman town,

complete with an amphitheater

and a grand forum surrounded by temples.

KATHRYN WELCH: Well, how exciting is this?

STIJN LUYCK: Here we are.

NARRATOR: They also found bodies.

The most iconic are a group of 13 victims known as the Fugitives.

LAZER (off screen): So, I do have a plan.

LUYCK (off screen): Yeah.

LAZER: And I would want to start at that end,

-I want to go that way. -LUYCK: Yeah.

NARRATOR: A team of experts

is launching the first ever forensic investigation

into their remains.

They're led by Dr. Estelle Lazer.

LAZER: There's a hole in the wall at the back of the display

and people actually put flowers through for the tiny children.

They're a very, very powerful reminder

of the event that killed so many people.

-LUYCK: Ready. -LAZER: Mm-hmm.

NARRATOR: For volcanologist Kayla Iacovino,

clues in the rocks shed light on why this eruption was so deadly.

It started with a bang.

IACOVINO: So when the eruption first began,

you would have seen a jet of material coming up in the middle

and then branching out, like an umbrella shape.

They probably would have felt rumbling, shaking,

as the magma hit the surface and exploded...

and this huge cloud just looming over everything,

sort of spreading out above the city.

NARRATOR: The majority of Pompeiians left immediately.

But within the city walls, over a thousand bodies

have been found.

It's long been assumed these people were physically unable to run away.

The old, the very young, and the frail.

With the Fugitives,

Dr. Lazer can put this theory to the test.

LAZER: There's the skull. That's good.

NARRATOR: Her work should determine if age or disability

prevented their escape.

LAZER: We're using traditional forensic techniques

to work out what age the victims were when they died,

if there's any sign of illness or trauma,

any evidence about their lifestyles.

-Looks like two rips. -MIDDLETON: Two rips.

LAZER: Just to get a sense of who they were.

NARRATOR: The Fugitives were discovered by head of excavations,

Amedeo Maiuri in 1961.

They're incredibly life-like,

seemingly frozen at the moment of death.

This was made possible by a technique pioneered in the nineteenth century.

Local archaeologist Antonio de Simone explains how it works.

ANTONIO DE SIMONE (off screen): This is the first plaster cast

that was made in Pompeii.

While the archaeologist was digging

at about 16 feet above road level,

he noticed a hollow space,

and immediately thought it could be a body.

NARRATOR: Over the years, the flesh rots away,

but the form of the body is preserved as a cavity in the ash.

By filling the void with Plaster of Paris,

a three-dimensional replica of each victim was produced.

DE SIMONE: The cast has accurately preserved all the details

of the cape worn by the victim

as if it was a sculpture.

NARRATOR: But wherever detail was lacking,

nineteenth century archaeologists often improved

the casts themselves.

DE SIMONE: If we look closely, we can see a dividing line.

Above it, the face was probably a shapeless bulk

which was then redefined with extra plaster,

so this has all been re-worked.

They didn't set out to deceive,

but the casts are like photos of the tragedy.

They need to convey what happened.

NARRATOR: When Maiuri's team worked on the Fugitives,

it's thought that they, too, sculpted the plaster

to make the casts more lifelike.

To engage the public, he also created a story

about who they were and how they died.

LAZER: For him, it was a remarkable discovery.

There were 13 victims together, so it was the largest number

of casts that had been made at one time.

He wrote a very emotional article

which had a profound impact on people visiting the site.

NARRATOR: Published in National Geographic magazine,

that article sketched out the characters in the group

and the relationships between them.

The bodies were originally found in three smaller groups.

Now lined up as one, the groups remain.

Maiuri described the first two as families of farmers.

He claimed the third group was a merchant family,

giving vivid details about their final moments.

LAZER: He says they're two boys who he reckons

were holding hands and fell as one.

And then the mother, "her body already weakened through childbirth,"

supporting the youngest child, a girl,

and trying to ease her pain.

And then, the very end, "the merchant," in his words,

resting on one arm, rising up out of the ashes

to try and protect and save his family.

He says that it's based on evidence,

but I cannot see from the information that I have available to me

what he bases this story on, and I think this is a real problem.

Can we have another one?

My aim is to actually strip away all the previous stories

and just give them back their lives and their stories.

And I do believe that that will impart a little more respect on them

as victims of a mass disaster.

NARRATOR: What Maiuri did, was in sync with the times.

The focus then was on creating an exhibit

to attract visitors.

Today, that focus has shifted.

Dr. Lazer's team hope to discover

who the Fugitives really were.

They're using x-rays

-to penetrate the plaster... -(camera beeps)

...and 3D scanning to create digital replicas of each cast.

By placing these in a 3D model of the entire town,

the Fugitives can be seen in context.

They died by the city walls,

apparently so close to making their escape.

The early stages of the eruption scared most people away.

The mystery is why the Fugitives stayed behind.

Work begins on the victim that Maiuri described

as the head of the first family.

The Merchant.

(beeps)

DR. DZUNG VU: Skull base, pretty well preserved.

-MIDDLETON: Yes -LAZER: Look, it's got calvarium,

it's got everything.

Beautiful! Lots of bones inside.

This is a really nice skeleton.

We should be able to get quite a bit of information

out of it, don't you think?

NARRATOR: Beyond the 2,000-year-old bones,

the scans also reveal something more modern.

VU (off screen): Look at that! There!

LAZER (off screen): What do you think they've done in there?

-What's this? -MIDDLETON (off screen): Mmm.

He has a big metal hook in his head.

LAZER (off screen): Yes, we can see that.

-This huge lump of metal in there. -MIDDLETON (off screen): Yeah.

LAZER (off screen): There's a lot of funny wire, in there, isn't it?

-That's a weird wire. -VU: Yep.

But there's a nail and a rod holding the plaster of the upper limb,

to the rest of the body.

NARRATOR: This unexpected find shows that Maiuri went

to extraordinary lengths to preserve the Fugitives' final poses.

The challenge now is to look beyond these modifications

and focus on the bones themselves.

-LAZER: So this is the first x-ray. -KEVIN DICUS: This is iconic.

NARRATOR: To help assess the evidence,

Pompeii expert Kevin Dicus joins the team.

DICUS: It feels strange to shed these old stories

about these people

because they have been a part

of the modern history of Pompeii as an archaeological site.

But now we have the technology to actually go deeper,

literally deeper into the plaster

and I think we actually owe it to these people

to strip them of these modern narratives

and get it back to who they really were.

NARRATOR: After in-depth analysis of the x-rays,

subtle details emerge.

LAZER: We've got the frontal sinus, and it's well developed

so that's an indicator that we're looking at an adult.

The teeth are all erupted, the roots are fully formed,

so that's an adult dentition.

NARRATOR: Another x-ray shows a hand,

with the arm bones visible below it.

But between the hand and the arm,

the area containing the small bones of the wrist

has become abnormally compressed.

LAZER: We've got a case of quite severe osteoarthritis at the wrist.

Probably the cartilage has been lost,

and there's a likelihood that we've got bone rubbing against bone.

DICUS: Ooh. Be quite painful, I would imagine.

LAZER: So certainly they'd have pain, swelling,

some, p-possibly some weakness,

and I think it would be more likely

to be an older than younger individual.

We're starting to see a human being emerge from this cast,

which you know, people have often seen them as being more like statues...

-DICUS: Absolutely. -LAZER: ...than individuals.

NARRATOR: As the team scan the rest of the cast,

one last x-ray provides a clue about the Fugitive's final,

desperate moments.

VU: There's bone here.

LAZER (off screen): Ah, yes.

NARRATOR: In Pompeii, the forensic team is examining

the victim known as the Merchant.

VU: That one there must be broken.

NARRATOR: They've discovered this is an older individual

with signs of arthritis.

-VU: But funny bits of bones, too. -LAZER: Yeah.

NARRATOR: And the x-rays reveal one more intriguing clue.

LAZER: What we're looking at is the upper arm bone...

-and there are some breaks in it. -DICUS: Mm-hmm.

LAZER: So, there is evidence of post-mortem fractures

and peri-mortem, so those that happened at or around the time of death.

NARRATOR: At the top of the upper arm

is the rounded head of the humerus.

Cutting across it, barely visible,

is a hairline fracture,

possibly the result of a fall onto the arm.

LAZER: What that suggests is that this person experienced

something quite violent at or around the time of death.

DICUS: That really does say something if they're breaking arm bones.

LAZER: Yes.

NARRATOR: Volcanologist Kayla Iacovino is in a corner of Pompeii

that's still half buried,

to investigate how the eruption took its very first victims.

IACOVINO: So, we've just come up from main street.

And what we're looking at here is a wall of pumice stones.

So, these pumice stones would have rained down on the city of Pompeii

during the second phase of the eruption.

And as the magma is rising up to the surface,

you have so much energy, that here at Pompeii,

you were able to send stones like this over 30 kilometers

into the air, up into the atmosphere.

NARRATOR: High altitude winds dragged the mushroom cloud

across Pompeii.

Then gravity took over, and pumice began to rain down

on the town below.

IACOVINO: At this point, there's no escaping it anymore.

You're inside of the eruption.

So, you can imagine walking outside of your house

and seeing stones falling from the heavens.

So, while these things are sort of light and fluffy,

and a single one maybe hitting you on the head,

or even a few hitting you on the head, wouldn't kill you...

but when you have five meters of this pumice

sitting on top of a flat roof,

the roofs start to collapse.

And unfortunately for Pompeii, a lot of the people were killed

because those roofs collapsed on top of them,

because they decided to shelter in place.

NARRATOR: When archaeologists dug down through the pumice layers,

the remains of those that sheltered inside were still there.

The eruption's first victims.

Buried in loose pumice,

it wasn't possible to make casts of these bodies.

Only bones were retrieved.

The Fugitives, however, did not die inside.

Their bodies were found in a garden,

on top of the pumice.

They survived this part of the eruption.

But they never left Pompeii.

Social scientist Robert Meyer

is an expert on the decisions we make

in the face of disaster.

(siren wailing)

MEYER: It's kind of useful to think through what exactly

is going through people's brains at the moment they feel

that something bad is going to happen to them.

MAN (over radio): Mandatory evacuation, mandatory evacuation.

MEYER: And we're subject to a number of,

what are called cognitive biases or rules of thumb,

which normally work really well for us on a day-to-day basis

but when it comes to these very rare,

very, very dangerous sorts of events, can lead us astray.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This storm is now designated a Category 5 hurricane.

We cannot stress enough the danger this poses to communities.

MEYER: In a period of intense threat,

one of the deepest instincts that we have

is to stay with things that are familiar.

So, safety is associated with the place that we live.

It's where all our possessions are.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I urge all citizens to put their own safety first,

by moving to safe ground.

MEYER: Sheltering in place may not be the best thing to do

but what are the alternatives.

And do I really think that running away outside

is necessarily going to be a safer option than it is to stay here?

And the more confused we get,

the more our brain is telling us, don't do anything.

REPORTER (over TV): Neighborhood that's completely underwater.

There's a couple of rooftops here.

MEYER: This is the thing we call the status quo bias.

REPORTER (over TV): Completely stranded, this is a family of five people.

MEYER: You end up with mental paralysis.

REPORTER (over TV): Just realized the gravity of the situation here.

MEYER: And in the face of paralysis, our instinct is

to not do anything and just stay.

NARRATOR: In Pompeii, everyone who stayed behind would perish.

Including the next targets of the investigation,

the very youngest in the group.

(camera beeps)

NARRATOR: As pumice rained down on Pompeii,

the Fugitives clung on.

For the youngest in the group,

it must have been a particularly terrifying ordeal.

According to the story created by Maiuri,

this was a farming family,

and the children were brothers,

four or five years of age.

(indistinct chatter)

To make their own age estimates,

Dr. Lazer's team has a particular target in mind.

MIDDLETON: Teeth! Ah yeah, you can see it.

NARRATOR: Forensic dentist Alain Middleton

usually works on the victims of modern disasters

like air crashes and earthquakes.

But these 2,000-year-old teeth contain just as much information.

MIDDLETON: We've certainly got lots of molar teeth,

they're obviously fully erupted.

I mean, for instance this tooth here, the roots are fully formed.

LAZER (off screen): Means that we're not looking

at a really, really young child?

MIDDLETON: No, it's someone who's got fairly well-developed secondary teeth,

so probably looking at something around five plus.

LAZER: Okay, this is number two.

(camera beeps)

MIDDLETON: So, teeth, you can definitely see teeth.

-LAZER: Oh yeah, lots. -MIDDLETON: Look at them.

They're primary teeth. But where are the secondary teeth?

That should make it easier to get an age estimate.

-LAZER: And you reckon it's... -MIDDLETON: And I--

It would appear to be

probably a little bit younger than the previous one.

NARRATOR: On this, Maiuri's estimate of four or five years old was correct.

Young children, with everything in front of them.

For archaeologists like Kevin Dicus,

understanding what life was like for children here

is a challenge.

Across Pompeii, they seem almost invisible.

DICUS: Wow, what a house this is.

This is absolutely the house of a very wealthy,

influential aristocrat.

How often do you see an entirely mosaiced atrium?

We even have a mosaiced peacock,

a symbol of opulence.

It's beautiful...

everything suggests leisure,

suggests enjoyment of life.

(birds singing)

NARRATOR: Designed for entertaining guests,

this was an adult world.

Across Pompeii, there are no spaces dedicated to children.

To get into their world requires a closer look.

DICUS (off screen): A plaster wall can serve as a sort of canvas

for anybody to engrave names or figures or whatever they wanted.

Here we just have a series of lines, horizontal, diagonal--

I can't identify anything here.

But I can identify something right here.

Always lower to the ground,

we can find stylized figures of animals or people.

Here we have an animal.

Here we have a very simple rectangle representing the torso

and a stylized head, here.

Down below, vertical lines representing the legs.

I'm not sure what sort of animal it is,

but it's definitely from the hand of a child.

NARRATOR: Kids' graffiti like this crops up all over Pompeii.

The wealthier children had other entertainment, too.

DR. GRETE STEFANI: In a monument at Porta Nocera necropolis,

I excavated a grave, and inside it I found

this collection of small animals

made from bone.

It's a mother dog with her puppies

DICUS (in Italian): So lovely.

STEFANI: There were also some small animals

made from amber, like this cow

and a small amber soldier.

DICUS: Ah, si, si, si.

STEFANI: And also some tiny vases, like this.

Like all of these things, they were children's toys.

(Dicus speaking Italian)

DICUS (in Italian): So beautiful.

NARRATOR: Never before seen on television,

this collection was found in the tomb of a grown woman.

Objects so precious, that she had kept them her entire life.

DICUS (off screen): It's incredible.

They're such a tangible reminder to us that in 79 AD,

there were children everywhere in the city of Pompeii.

NARRATOR: According to Maiuri, the second family was made up

of a young farming couple and another child,

described as their slender and undernourished daughter.

VU (off screen): Go down the lowest you can get, right?

NARRATOR: Apparently a similar size to the other children,

this cast has a surprise in store for the team.

LUYCK (off screen): Ready.

LAZER: I'd say blitz it.

(camera beeps, shutter clicks)

NARRATOR: In Pompeii, forensic dentist Alain Middleton

is examining one of the smallest children in the Fugitives group.

MIDDLETON: Well, this is quite interesting, this view,

because we can see a jumble of teeth.

It's showing us in, right in the center of the picture there,

a lot of dental information...

And most of these teeth, the development of the roots is incomplete.

This is the second primary molar.

This tooth hasn't fully erupted.

This is a very good pointer as to the age of this individual.

It's definitely an infant.

Probably around about 12-14 months

through to about 15-16 months.

NARRATOR: The milk teeth emerge in stages

through early childhood.

A molar like this, still embedded in the bone and gum,

gives a reliable age estimate.

LAZER (off screen): That's amazing, because babies don't always survive

very well in the archaeological record.

The bones weren't recognized as a scientific resource

until relatively recently, so they weren't stored very carefully,

and infant bones are quite different looking to adult bones,

so it's quite possible

that they weren't even recognized as human.

This is a fantastic discovery.

NARRATOR: This is the youngest child to be identified by the team,

in Pompeii.

A remarkable discovery...

a child barely able to walk.

Dealing with an infant would have certainly slowed

the Fugitives down.

But they stuck together until the end.

MEYER: When a disaster occurs, some people will go rogue.

They'll act for themselves and run off.

(speaking in foreign language)

But the greater norm is to go ahead and stay with the group.

There's a certain sense of emotional reassurance

of just being with others.

It's also the case we like to look after each other.

So, if we see an elderly person

or if we see a child,

our tendency is to, to wanna stay back and help them.

This instinct to stay with others is so, so powerful

that often, that trumps

our individual desires to survive by ourselves.

NARRATOR: The layers of pumice here are so thick

that volcanologists believe it kept falling right through the night.

(rumbling)

The Fugitives, found above these layers,

survived until morning, when a new threat emerged.

IACOVINO: What's really fascinating about this deposit in particular

is that you can put your finger on the exact moment

that the eruption switched from the pumice fallout phase

to the pyroclastic flow phase, just here.

Everything beneath this layer is pumice that had fallen from the sky.

This was that stuff that was raining out of a cloud

that had shot more than 30 kilometers above the summit of the volcano.

Once that pumice rained out,

that column began to collapse in on itself

gathering up and then shooting down the steep slopes.

NARRATOR: As the eruption lost power,

the central column gave way to gravity.

Clouds of ash and hot gas, known as pyroclastic flows,

raced down the flanks of Vesuvius at over 100 miles an hour.

IACOVINO: So you can imagine being someone in Pompeii

who had survived this disastrous downpour of pumice,

you're thinking maybe things are safe now and the eruption is over,

but things were actually about to get a whole lot worse.

NARRATOR: As pyroclastic flows raced down the flanks of Vesuvius,

time was almost up for anyone that had stayed in Pompeii.

Altogether, more than 80 victims of these flows are preserved in plaster.

-LUYCK: You're ready? -LAZER: Okay.

NARRATOR: Dr. Lazer plans to x-ray them all.

Including the casts on display at the entrance to the ruins.

-LAZER: So, left hand, please and-- -LUYCK: We will see what we get.

LAZER (off screen): Okay, thank you.

(camera beeps)

LAZER: Oh, look. Oh, my god.

What's that there?

That doesn't look like bone at all.

LUYCK: It is metal.

LAZER: It's metal, for sure.

I think we need a clearer view of that.

Okay.

That's super clear now. Look at that.

That looks like a ring, doesn't it?

So, you can see that the metal has corroded.

But you can still see the form of the ring around the finger.

Yeah. That's fantastic.

NARRATOR: To find out what the ring could tell us about this victim,

Kevin has gained access to some of the valuables found

when Pompeii was excavated.

DICUS: We've got these beautiful gold chains...

gold earrings with pearl drops.

Many of these were found in association with the bodies.

We've got these beautiful examples of gold rings, set with gemstones.

Go down the line, we have silver examples.

This one exhibits a little bit of corrosion.

It's not quite as perfect as the gold rings.

When we start to get down the spectrum,

we see more and more corrosion.

We can take a look at the bronze ring here.

And of course, coming down here, the iron rings.

Ours, as it looks in the x-ray, exhibits a lot of corrosion.

So, we could say it's definitely not a gold ring.

It's perhaps an iron ring, or maybe even a silver ring.

NARRATOR: The metal of an oval setting is perfectly preserved,

suggesting the presence of a gemstone.

But the rest of the ring has clearly corroded over time.

DICUS: So, this is not an elite piece of jewelry,

it's not remarkably expensive.

But there is a gemstone set into it.

So it's not an incredibly humble model,

it still cost some money.

And it does say something about this person.

Maybe he is not an aristocrat, the wealthiest person

but he is trying to communicate something with this.

And for him this is a very, very personal piece of adornment.

NARRATOR: This ring was worn proudly until the day of the eruption...

when all of these valuables suddenly became worthless.

In the story created by Maiuri,

the third family in the group was led by a servant...

carrying a sack of provisions.

On the hunt for more artifacts,

it's an obvious target for the forensic team.

LUYCK: You have to go, like, that much deeper I think.

What do you think, Julia?

On the right-hand side completely, yeah--

LAZER (off screen): You can see where the lump is.

LUYCK (off screen): Yeah, we will start with the shoulder?

LAZER: Start with the shoulder and just work round,

and as many angles and as possible.

-LUYCK: One, two, three... -(camera beeps, shutter clicks)

-VU (off screen): Nothing-- -MIDDLETON (off screen): Nothing.

-It's just plaster. -VU: Nothing.

LAZER (off screen): And it's not there?

LUYCK (off screen): It's not there.

NARRATOR: There's no sign of a sack, or provisions.

Nothing that matches Maiuri's suggestion that this was a servant.

LAZER (off screen): I think if you, the x-rays...

DICUS: Wow, look at that.

NARRATOR: But further analysis of the skeleton

does reveal something of this victim's true identity.

LAZER: Unfortunately, there are no teeth

that could be studied in the skull

so our age estimate's purely on skeletal evidence.

And what we're looking at is the lower leg bone...

and the foot areas around the ankle.

-DICUS: Right. -LAZER: This is the growth plate

that hasn't yet closed.

So we're looking at someone possibly in their mid-teens.

DICUS (off screen): Wow!

NARRATOR: In adolescence, some of the bones are still

in the process of fusing together.

The presence of this growth plate tells us the age

of this so-called servant when they died.

This teenager clearly contradicts one theory

about those who failed to escape.

DICUS (off screen): But this was sort of the legend of the victims

that's been circulated for so long is,

there's been a limitation or some reason why they were left behind,

why they died, they were too young, too old, too infirm.

We're starting to get a sense that this actually really isn't the case.

LAZER: Mm, yeah, absolutely, I mean, we have a range of ages

so we do have very young individuals,

but we've also got older ones,

we've got people who are in their teens.

So, a good selection of the population.

DICUS: Right, right, suddenly we're not talking

about physical limitations as being the cause of these deaths.

It could be a multitude of reasons why they decided to stay back.

NARRATOR: To complete their work on the purported servant,

the team move on to the feet.

-LUYCK (off screen): Is that nails? -LAZER: Oh!

-VU: The metatarsal's there-- -LAZER: Oh!

Oh, my gosh.

You know what, I think you're right, they are nails.

So, they had shoes on, look at that!

LUYCK: It's part of a shoe, yeah.

LAZER: Wow, they're really good.

VU: Seems to have two rows of nails...

-MIDDLETON: Yeah. -VU: ...parallel to each other

-LAZER: It's amazing-- -MIDDLETON: One, two...

three, four, five, six, seven...

NARRATOR: Clearly visible in the x-ray, these are hobnails,

from the sole of a practical and well-made sandal.

Hardly the footwear of someone Maiuri described as a lowly servant.

From a victim in the so-called Merchant's family,

there's also a clue to how the Fugitive's final moments played out.

LAZER: Well, as you can see both the feet are together.

DICUS: Mm-hmm.

LAZER: And what we can see is there's a cluster of metal nails

associated with the right foot, none with the left foot

so it looks like while they were fleeing they lost the left sandal.

DICUS: Oh.

LAZER: The idea that somebody's running away from a terrible fate

and they lose a shoe and they just keep going,

it's a very compelling image of people trying to escape

literally the end of the world.

(rumbling)

NARRATOR: Just after dawn on the second day of the eruption,

a huge pyroclastic flow raced down the flanks of Vesuvius...

and tore through Pompeii.

The Fugitives were engulfed immediately.

To find out what happened to them,

Kayla is examining three nearby victims

that were hit by the same flow.

IACOVINO (off screen): We got clues as to how these people would have died

based on the poses that the bodies are found in...

with the arms bent, pulled in tightly close to the body.

Here you can see the elbow bent

as if he's bringing his arm in

to protect his face.

That's kind of what it looks like,

as well his legs are bent, flexed at the knees.

So, we know from modern eruptions,

where pyroclastic flows have moved through villages

that the bodies end up in poses similar to what we see here in Pompeii.

(siren wailing)

(people shouting in foreign language)

NARRATOR: In 2018, a Guatemalan volcano called Fuego

produced devastating pyroclastic flows.

(men speaking in foreign language)

(girl screams)

Bodies pulled from the ash were frozen in position,

with arms and legs bent inwards.

IACOVINO: A pyroclastic flow can be 200 or 300 degrees,

and that causes the muscles to dehydrate instantly,

causing them to then flex inward due to contraction,

and they end up in this pose, which we call a pugilistic attitude,

kind of like a boxer protecting his face with his, with his fists.

But it's really this action of the dehydration of the muscles

that's causing the body to contract and tense in this way.

So, they would have instantaneously swept up in this cloud.

Cooked in place by the hot gases.

NARRATOR: Of the Fugitives, a number of victims show similar poses.

Contorted by the heat during their final, desperate moments.

MEYER: These are people probably who should have left

many, many hours earlier.

They didn't.

And they were left behind, and they were kind of watching

the world collapse around them.

And then ultimately this group decides,

look, our only chance for survival is we have to brave

the elements outside.

Of course, in this case what happened, it was really too late.

NARRATOR: What remains is a three-dimensional impression

of the moment the Fugitives died together.

MEYER: This is very rare.

We never really get to see people

in the moment of their last conscious thought.

In some cases, we spend that last moment trying to protect ourselves.

And in other cases, we go ahead and reach out

to someone who is close to us.

We see that incredible diversity here,

and in that sense it's a remarkable image.

NARRATOR: Before the investigation,

the Fugitives were known by the identities created

for them by Amedeo Maiuri.

The Merchant...

The Farmer's Daughter...

and The Servant.

The team has found nothing to support these claims.

But a new picture is emerging.

LAZER: We know the ages range from pretty young infants,

through young childhood into the teen years

and right into older adult age.

We know something about the health of the individuals.

So slowly, slowly we're learning about who these people were.

NARRATOR: By determining the age profile of the Fugitives,

the team has also challenged another theory about Pompeii's victims,

that they were too old, too young,

or too infirm to escape.

DICUS: What we're seeing here is something very different.

We're looking at a full range and really not one of them,

as I can see,

has a condition that would preclude them from escaping.

And so, it's something beyond physical that caused them to stay,

it was decisions.

And this is very important because they're not passive.

They made decisions.

It's a new way to look at these individuals.

LAZER: And hopefully we've given back

a little bit of their lives to them.

DICUS: And a little bit of their voice.

LAZER: And I guess in the first century AD, in Roman culture,

to be remembered was very important.

So, I think even though it was completely inadvertent

you know, their death in this horrible event

has led in some way towards making them immortal.

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