Herculaneum

On 19 October 1752, a discovery was made 20 meters underneath the town of Resina, near Naples in Italy. Peasants digging wells in the area around Mount Vesuvius had struck marble statuary and mosaic pavements—and they also found lumps of carbon. Initially, they were tossed aside—the lumps weren't considered valuable or pretty, so were of no interest. But thankfully, someone noticed they were all about the same size and shape, and…

In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius lay waste to a library in Herculaneum that was owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. Now, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and some scientists are giving $250,000 away in prizes to the person or team who successfully usesmodern technology to decipher scrolls recovered from the site of the library.It’s called the Vesuvius Challenge and the winners who crack the codes first could receive a $150,000 Grand Prize and $100,000 in Progress Prizes. Those who enter the Vesuvius Challenge will…

A chest and table in one of the newly discovered rooms in the House of the Lararium.Photo: Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of PompeiiArchaeologists at Pompeii have announced the discovery of several furnished rooms in the House of the Lararium, a middle class residence on the ancient city’s northern side.Pompeii was famously preserved by the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, an eruption that baked and suffocated its cosmopolitan habitants in superheated pyroclastic flows. The eruption covered the…