A new study has shattered historians' long-held assumptions about some of the people who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 C.E.

A recent DNA study has upended long-held theories about the people who died in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, revealing unexpected details about the demographics and connections among the victims.

Analysis of ancient DNA from the ashen casts of Pompeii victims changes presumed relationships between them, and reveals the port city's socioeconomic and geographic diversity.

Fourteen miles southeast of modern Naples lies Pompeii, a city frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. What was once a bustling Roman town became a sprawling graveyard,

The results of new DNA tests just dropped this week, and they prove that we don't know as much about Pompeii as we once believed.

Using DNA taken from fragmented skeletal remains, researchers found an adult holding a child, long thought to have been a mother, was actually a man unrelated to the child.

New DNA studies of those victims tell a different tale than what experts had previously speculated. Common interpretations of three well-known relationships were proven false by the scientific study.

New DNA evidence from Pompeii’s body casts reveals that traditional assumptions about residents’ relationships and origins were often incorrect, showing instead a diverse population with roots in the eastern Mediterranean.