The Americas have their own Pompeii, five centuries younger than Italy's. Vesuvius buried Pompeii in AD 79; volcanic ash buried the Maya village of Joya de Cerén in El Salvador around AD 600.
The events
- Joya de Cerén, the 'Pompeii of the Americas'c. 600 · Joya de Cerén (El Salvador). Around 600 (estimates vary by a few decades) the eruption of the Loma Caldera vent buried a Maya village under several metres of ash. The inhabitants seem to have escaped, as no human remains have been found, but adobe houses, kitchens, pots of food and fields of manioc and maize survived. Found by chance in 1976 and a UNESCO site since 1993, the village shows how ordinary Maya lived.
- Eruption of Vesuvius79 · Pompeii. Vesuvius buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under ash and pyroclastic flows; the scholar Pliny the Elder died in the disaster. The entombed towns preserved a frozen snapshot of everyday Roman life for archaeologists.
More amazing facts
- 79 · 200 A little over a century after Vesuvius buried Pompeii, across the ocean in Teotihuacan the Pyramid of the Sun rose — one of the largest pyramids in the world.
- 79 · 80 The Colosseum opened a year after Pompeii was buried, under the same emperor.
- 79 · 1752 The only library from antiquity to survive whole was saved by Vesuvius.
- 79 · 1592 · 1748 Pompeii was first struck in 1592, and tunnelled straight through.
- 80 A vomitorium was not a room where Romans threw up at feasts.
- 80 Gladiators were nicknamed hordearii, 'barley-eaters'. They lived on a nearly vegetarian diet of barley, beans and dried fruit thought to build strength, while legionaries got barley instead of wheat only as a punishment.