Why did the people in the pictures of the city of pompei not melt?

Question

I was showing middle school students some books on the subject and one of them asked me this and I didn't really have an answer. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The people of Pompeii were not covered by lava, they were encased in ash and pyroclastic debris. Pyroclastic flows are flows of superheated rock, ash and gas that can travel very quickly. The people of Pompeii were killed by the gasses, ash and heat of the flows and encased in hot welded ash. Then more ash from the eruption buried them and the rest of the town. The ash quickly hardened and the bodies slowly decayed inside the ash. There are actually records of some human remains that were found inside the holes in the ash, that's how early archaeologists knew that these molds were of people, one of them, Guiseppe Fiorelli, developed the technique of pouring plaster into the voids and then removing the ash, perfectly preserving the mold of the bodies. On some of them you can even see their expressions. There are also dogs, horses and other animals that they found.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

The people of Pompei were for the most part killed by the ash, when they breathed the ash it was like breathing fragments of shattered glass into their lungs. You might be able to download a video of Pompei at the History Channel website.

Answer 4

Pompeii Pictures Bodies

Answer 5

It was the fstness with which lava buried the bodies, and the relative short time it took to cool more or less down....
They didnt melt however, because also the type of porous lava that covered them,. allowed their bodies inside of their own shapes or cavities, according with the surrounding temperatures,,,,those sheperds that were at the moment of the eruption, closest to the vulcano, were really charred to death , and almost no trace was left behind,,,,,so not all of them.. only tgose harboring under "fresh" shelters, such as gouses, barns, dormitories, or those in the market od Pompeii, that were protected relatively by hard roofs....(Limestone)....it was not an even phenomenon,,,

Answer 6

They were burn´t by the extreme heat of the ash and died where they were. When they died the bodies were encased in the ash and over the years they decayed.
When archaeologists were digging they found holes where the body was. they poured plaster in and removed the ash when it was set.
What you see today is the plaster cast of the hole left by the decayed bodies not the actual bodies.
they didn't melt because the human body does not "melt" or burn away easily (high water content) and the ash and gasses that killed the people covered the area very fast, so preserving them in the positions how they died

Answer 7

Were they not killed by the lava flowing from the Volcano? The lava hardened in time and encased those bodies. Flesh and bone do not melt, they just got boiled or burnt crisp under the hot lava!

Answer 8

Because the first thing that happened is that the ash covered them and along with the gas killed them, and then other layers of such material built up over their bodies. I'm not even sure the lava actually covered them, but if it did the other layers of ash would have protected them from burning up.

Answer 9

Human beings do not melt, they burn and dry out (if you put a chicken in the oven, it doesn't melt). When submerged in molten rock (lava), the lava cools (hardens into solid rock) around the burned, charred, dried-out remains.

Answer 10

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