Sunday, July 3, 2016

LOOTERS SIFTED THROUGH POMPEII RUINS
BUT MISSED SKELETON GOLD COINS


EVEN in ancient times, looters stopped at nothing to find gold ... even rifling through the skeletons of victims of the Pompeii disaster in search of treasure, according to a grisly new discovery.

Experts have found four skeletons, including one of a teenage girl, in the ruins of a bronze workshop on the outskirts of Pompeii on the road to Herculaneum.

The group of people seem like they tried to take shelter in the back room of the shop when Mount Vesuvius unleashed a deadly eruption in 79 AD.


Images from the excavation show a jumbled mass of bones emerging from a trench. 

The skeletons appear to have been disturbed by looters who went digging through the ash in search of valuables some time after the volcanic eruption, according to the archaeologists' announcement.

But the looters missed three gold coins that date back to between the years 74 and 78, as well as a flower in gold leaf, which probably was part ofa pendant from a necklace, the researchers said. 

A furnace discovered in the shop has led the excavators to speculate that the building was a bronze workshop.

The discovery adds to the hundreds of bodies, or at least body imprints, that have been found at Pompeii since the 19th century.

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