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Vesuvius : A Perfect Picture Of Past Roman Life

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In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius, the stratovolcano off the west coast of Italy, violently erupted, and destroyed the city of Pompeii. The city was quickly buried under layers of ash, suffocating and killing many of its citizens. The amount of ash that buried Pompeii kept the city well preserved, showing archeologists a perfect picture of past Roman life. Vesuvius is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the large populations and cities that reside around its slopes. It rests on a tectonic plate boundary where the African Plate is subducting under the Eurasian Plate (Bagley). As a stratovolcano, Vesuvius is known to have violent and explosive eruptions along with pyroclastic flows and raining ash. With …show more content…

However, scientists have discovered that there is a tear underneath Vesuvius. The lower part of the subducting African plate is torn and detached from the upper plate, forming a “slab window.” Vesuvius rest right above that slab window. This makes the rocks of Vesuvius chemically different from the other volcanoes in the Campanian arc (Ball). The tear allows heat from the Earth’s mantle to melt the plate, which builds up pressure and causes more violent and explosive eruptions (Bagley). Stratovolcanos like Vesuvius are usually formed from alternating layers of pyroclastic debris and lava flows. The magma present at Mount Vesuvius is andesitic, making it an intermediate composition (Sabatino). The force of the eruption was almost 100,000 times greater than the force of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima (Cartwright). Because of the magma composition, the gases present in volcanoes could not escape. As more gas was trapped, it eventually leads to the deadly eruption when the volcano could no longer contain the amount of gas in the mountain. The volcano has erupted more than 50 times since the eruption of 79 C.E. Originally, Vesuvius was thought to have a 20-year eruption cycle. However, the last explosion was in 1944, making another catastrophic eruption long overdue (Bagley).
People chose to settle near Vesuvius because the ash around the base provided rich soil, perfect for growing wine grapes.

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