"A Bronze Age village preserved when
Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years before Pompeii. It was
uncovered near Afragola during work on a
high-speed railway near Naples. Archaeologists say
it offers a rare glimpse into Early Bronze
Age life in the Campania region. Like Pompeii,
Afragola was encased in meters of ash, mud and silt,
which preserved the site so well that
researchers can even tell the season in which the
disaster occurred from the remains of a food
store. Footprints of fleeing adults and children
were also well preserved. The site covers 5,000
square meters. Dr. Tiziana Matarazzo of the
U. of Connecticut says: “We found the site because
of the construction of a high-speed train
line... The site is exceptional because Afragola was
buried by a gigantic eruption of Vesuvius and it
tells us a lot about the people who lived there, and
the local habitat... "In this case, by finding
fruits and agricultural materials, we were
able to identify the season of the eruption, which
is usually impossible." The eruption happened
in various phases, starting with a massive explosion
that sent debris away from the village, to the
northeast. This gave the villagers a chance to
escape, which is why we found preserved
footprints and not bodies as at Pompeii. Then the
wind changed and ash blew over the village."
Images:
right, near Nola, called a "Bronze Age Pompii"
when it was found 20 years ago;
left, Poggiomarino, called a "Bronze Age
Venice" when it was found 20 years ago.
Thus, this
discovery is different not in kind from others, but
rather in the quality of information scholars were able to glean. Scholars have left us the
convenient three-age system for the periods of human
pre-history: the Stone Age,
the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. That covers a lot of
time. There is also an earlier "Copper age", 5000 BC to 3300 BC. (These ages are not the
same across cultures, worldwide. It can be the
iron-age in part of the world
and the bronze-age in another. So the Swiss Army Knife
you wanted to get Bobby? Check and see. Bobby would
look like an idiot pulling a rock out of his pocket. The beginning of the Bronze Age in western
Eurasia and India is conventionally dated to the
mid-4th millennium BC.
Elsewhere it gradually spread across regions. An
ancient civilization is deemed part of the Bronze Age if it produced bronze by smelting
its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or
other metals, or traded other
items for bronze from production areas elsewhere.
Bronze was harder and more durable than other metals, giving Bronze Age
civilizations a technological advantage. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age
starting from about 1300 BCE and reaching most of
Eurasia by about 500 BCE, although bronze continued to
be widely used.
What age are we
in now? We invented agriculture, smelting ore and the
wheel pretty quickly and are now up to space flight and atomic energy. We have
scientists, artists, poets, and musicians. I don't
know why sliced bread was so great,
but we're better. Yet, I recall here Alfred Russel
Wallace, the ‘other’ Darwin. He wrote a book in 1898 called The Wonderful Century. The
future seemed predictable. The book was a glowing view
of science and the future. It
contained this passage:
The flowing tide is with us. We have
great poets, great writers , great thinkers, to
cheer and guide us; and an ever-increasing
band of earnest workers to spread the light and help
on the good time coming. And as this century has
witnessed a material and intellectual advance wholly
unprecedented in the history of human progress, so
the Coming Century will reap the full
fruition of that advance, in a moral and social
upheaval of an equally new and unprecedented
kind, and equally great in amount.
In fairness, the whole title of the book
was The
Wonderful Century: Its successes and failures. Wallace
was an intense social activist and some of the book
covered what he
considered our social failures, the destruction and
waste of wars and arms races, the rise of the urban
poor and the dangerous conditions in which they lived
and worked. Yet he was an optimist. Wallace died in
1913, one year before the beginning of the Great War.
Some call ours the "atomic age". I'm not sure how many more we get. Are we going to have
to do all this again?
In terms of discoveries in this area
near Naples I suppose I'm more interested why so many
Bronze Agers would build their
houses near a volcano. These discoveries are all
classed as part of the "Palma Campania culture" (after the name of a local town). If you look at
this local Tyrhhenian area near Vesuvius, it was very warm and there was a drop in the
sea-level, both of which encouraged the birth of small
settlements. We find them often
joined by hardened earth roads that carried carts. The
areas along the way were under cultivation. The population was engaged in agriculture
(including growing fruit trees), hunting, handicrafts
(especially metallic objects
worked in smelting ovens, and stitching/sewing. The
entire area came to light in 1972 during roadwork to build the Caserta-Salerno autostrada (divided-highway,
freeway, turnpike, dual-carriageway,
pedal-to-the-metal-way --pick
one!). They found a hut covered in a hardened lava
flow. They dated it to 2000 B.C., somewhat after an eruption near Avellino. In the hut they
found ceramic vases and about 130 other decorative
ceramic objects in good condition
(smooth, shiny surfaces) and about 80 cups and some
larger jugs with spouts and handles for pouring.
Other nearby
settlements have been found and since declared
archaeological sites: Nola-Croce del Papa, an
earlier one at Afragola, in
the Sarno valley at Longola di Poggiomarino, and, in
general, farmed land, fences,
footpaths, and cart tracks. Other nearby locations
that show that this was, in a bustling place: Oliva Torricella, Picarielli, Ostaglio,
Saviano, Gricignano di Aversa, Pratola Serra and
Battipaglia.
So to my big question: Why Here? Well,
what do you need to live? Besides air to breathe.
Food. What do you need to grow
food? Fertile land. What makes land fertile? The
mineral content of the soil. What comes out of a
volcano? Minerals like you
wouldn't believe. All that molten magma. (It's called
'lava' when it's flowing down the side of the volcano.) That's Mother Earth's gift to you.
Here, have some fertilizer. Careful. It's still hot.
(If you need an image of Vesuvius, see the top of this page.)
OK, fertile soil, check. You
need one more thing. Water. Where do you find fresh
water? In a flowing river. Is there one near Vesuvius?
Yes. The entire area is
mountainous with lots of streams and one big river,
the Sarno with a large drainage basin. It flows east
to west right by Vesuvius and empties into the Bay of
Naples. (It's the blue line running across the top
half of this image.) It does that now as it did
a few thousand years ago. Now, of course, the Sarno is
the most polluted river in Italy, but back in the
Bronze Age times were better. So, good soil, good
water. You're good to go.