The scientific data we provide do not always align with common assumptions,” said study co-author and professor David Reich.

Ancient DNA recovered from Pompeii shows that people found holding one another beneath the volcanic ash weren’t related in the ways we think.

Plaster casts of calcified Pompeii residents have long been used by archaeologists to tell the stories of the last, desperate moments of ancient Romans before they were buried and preserved in pyroclastic ash from Mount Vesuvius in A.