Pompeii man not decapitated by flying stone, archaeologists find
A 2000-year-old skeleton, previously thought to have been decapitated by a flying boulder at Pompeii and dubbed by the internet as "the world's unluckiest man", has now been reunited with its head.
In May, archaeologists uncovered the legs and lower half of a torso of the man who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, with a 270-kilogram boulder sitting where his head should have been.
The leading theory, until last week, was that the man had been decapitated by the flying rock.
But further digging has unearthed the man's intact skull with the mouth wide open and full of teeth, suggesting he was not crushed by the volcanic projectile.
The skull and the upper torso and arms of the man, who is believed to have been aged about 35, were found about a metre almost directly below the rest of the body and the gigantic stone.
At the time of the discovery, archaeologists said the large rock resting on his head may have been a door jamb that had been "violently thrown by the volcanic cloud".
What appeared to be the Wile E. Coyote-esque nature of the man's final moments made him an instant, meme-worthy celebrity on social media about 2000 years after his death.
But the intact skull - which has only "some" fractures - suggests he died from other causes, and most likely asphyxiation, said Massimo Osanna, director of the Pompeii archaeological site.
The archaeological team said they knew the bones discovered last week belonged to the same person because of their proximity to each other and because the two halves matched up.
In an announcement earlier in the week, the Pompeii Archaeological Site said its leading explanation for finding the skull directly below the lower half of the skeleton was due to a tunnel underneath the skeleton, most likely built in the 18th century.
The archaeologists believe the tunnel caved in, collapsing the supporting rocks where the skull lay, but leaving the stone block in place.
Officials said the man had suffered from an infection of his tibia, which might have caused walking difficulties or impeded his escape following the eruption. This might have slowed him down and made him more more vulnerable to the incoming noxious gas and ash.
The team is not sure when the block fell over the body.
One hypothesis is that the man was in or near a building during the eruption when he suffocated and died. The walls - and the large stone block - may have collapsed at the same time or later and fallen over the body.
"The surprise for us was that the skull was intact and it was not crushed by the block," Osanna said. "Now that we have the complete skeleton we can understand a lot of things."
The skull, thorax, upper limbs and jaw are now undergoing analysis, with the team hoping they will be able to "reconstruct the final moments in the life of the man with greater accuracy".
With The New York Times