
National Geographic: In the Shadow of Vesuvius
- Year:
- 1987
- 43 Views
From deep in the earth come clues to
mystery nearly 2,000 years old.
They died instantly,
victims of a volcano's wrath.
But only now are we beginning
to piece together
the mosaic that tells
Pulsing with
an electric energy uniquely its own,
southern Italy is also the intimate
companion of destruction and death.
Active for 17,000 years,
Mount Vesuvius erupted most recently
in 1944, devastating two towns.
Only a few miles from Vesuvius another
town lives with yet a different threat.
Here, the sea appears to be boiling,
the earth regularly grumbles and groans
and sulfuric gases choke the air.
"Vesuvius slumbers",
one scientist wrote,
"but his heart is still awake".
A microcosm of our eternal battle
this is life in the shadow of Vesuvius
Washed by the placid waters
of the Bay of Naples,
the region of Campania
has long attracted poets
and travelers, emperors and kings.
"the most blest land",
"the fairest of all regions,
not only in Italy but
in all the world",
"a place where the summers are cool
and winters warm
and where the sea dies away gently
as it kisses the shore".
The climate and extraordinarily rich
soil enabled farmers then, as now,
to grow grapes, olives,
and up to four seed crops a year.
But 2,000 years ago few understood
that the richness of the soil
was a gift from the mountain
the mountain was in fact a volcano.
Today we know Mount Vesuvius
as one of the most famous,
and infamous, volcanoes in history.
The most active volcano on the
mainland of Europe,
it has erupted some 50 times
since the Roman era.
Looming over a metropolis vastly
Vesuvius, the "flaming mountain",
is no less of a threat today.
Today, Vesuvius's shadow falls on
some two million people
one of the most densely populated
urban areas in all of Europe.
Nowhere else in the Western world
do such vast numbers dwell in the
immediate vicinity of an active volcano.
Though most Neapolitans either don't
know or refuse to believe
that Vesuvius is an active volcano,
local scientists are on 24-hour alert.
Seismic information from throughout
the region is continually monitored.
With no practical civil defense plan
possible caught unaware,
the goal is to accumulate enough data
to be able to develop
The science of plate tectonics
tells us that the earth's outer shell
is composed of about a dozen rigid
plated that are in continuing motion.
The movements cause the plates
One is called subduction, in which one
As this happens,
the heat of the earth's interior
creates magma hot liquid rock.
In this way about 80% of the world's
volcanoes are formed.
Along the coast of Italy subduction has
created an entire string of volcanoes.
The most famous in Italy, and perhaps
the world, is Mount Vesuvius.
Here, the power of nature's forces
has been felt, at Pozzuoli,
Naples itself,
San Sebastiano,
and two towns made famous
when Vesuvius buried them in 79 A.D.
Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Lost and forgotten for
more than 1,600 years,
Pompeii is one of the great
archeological sites of the world,
as much for its poignant story
as for its historical significance.
Lying six miles from
the foot of Vesuvius,
Pompeii was a thriving Roman
commercial center of some 15000 people,
specializing in the export of wine,
fish sauce, and woolen cloth.
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"National Geographic: In the Shadow of Vesuvius" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 19 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_in_the_shadow_of_vesuvius_14539>.