Sawse - Stir it Up!

There might be quite a few who would not really agree with the title. Its true that Pompeii was not really as big as the world and nor does it exist as of today; but yet there are so many secrets that the city holds within it, which it keeps revealing one by one, almost as if it were alive. Every story that the city wished to tell is frozen in time.

Be it the people that were burnt and buried alive or be it the architectural marvels that still remain to tell the world about the poignant saga. Each stone that was left covered by the pumice from Vesuvius has the same story to tell.

The story goes something like this: Pompeii was a prosperous city. In the February of A.D. 62, an earthquake struck the city. This was a severe earthquake and destroyed several parts of the city apart from disrupting the normalcy that otherwise prevailed. However, the Pompeians strived hard to get back to normal. They did all that they could so as to rebuild the structures and make up for the losses that were caused by the earthquake. Some of us might wonder as to why they had to strive so hard to build some small structures. Well, re-building the infrastructure in the city even back then involved re-establishing the water system, rebuilding certain structures and also repairing and renovating some of the structures that were only partially destroyed.

Then, in the August of A.D. 79, the earth beneath the city rocked all over again. Who would have thought that the beautiful and magnificent Vesuvius, which seemed so calm otherwise, had woken up from its sound sleep. The volcano that had been asleep almost forever, was thought to be an extinct one. However, the mean demon woke up only to envelop the whole city with its pumice and ash. Nearly three or four days after the earthquake, the sun was covered by a 12 mile high cloud of ash. Complete darkness filled the sky as day became night. All the pious believers were sure that it was time for judgment day. Little did they know that Vesuvius had decided to end it all! As Vesuvius erupted a 12 mile high cloud covered horizon and a wind blowing from the Northeast carried the pumice and ash towards Pompeii and other settlements in the South east. As time passed, the roof tops and roads in the city began to get covered ash and rock. The streets piled up with the debris from the volcano. The roofs began to collapse because of the weight of the debris and several of the inhabitants of the city were left injured even before they could understand what was going on.

Several people tried to find their way through the debri and moved around in the darkness to save themselves. However, not long after half of the night was over the magma from the volcano began to surge towards the city. The city wall managed to stop the magma and hold it back for sometime. However, as the debris piled the streets of the city, the magma was able to flow into the city. Several of the inhabitants lost their live because of the noxious gases while the others died because of the debris; and the few who survived this were killed by the luminous hot magma.

This is what most of us know of the city. We also know that Pompeii and the neighboring cities remained buried for nearly 1700 years before they were excavated by archeologists. Apart from this, some of the building and inhabitants were mysteriously found to be preserved after the place was dug up; and these preserved structures and persons are what we are trying to study and examine. In fact, these structures amuse us in a rather sad manner and perhaps this is the reason why Pompeii is still so lively (with tourists).

Apart from being a tourist hotspot there is so much more that Pompeii is for us. Pompeii teaches us so many different ideals and virtues of life. These teaching have been frozen in time and some them are still beckoning to be understood. All that we know about Pompeii is through some amount of research and writings from the inhabitants of the city and their off springs.

However, what about all those aspects of Pompeii that we still have not learned about yet. It is said that the culture of Pompeii was quite similar to European culture. The artistic galleries of Pompeii are still intact. Besides, the whole city seems like one that was well planned; right from the amphitheater to the streets to the houses and even the water supply in the city. Every bit of the infrastructure that formed the city is an architectural marvel in itself. Perhaps we might want to learn a bit about cities and their structures from one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.

Apart from the teachings that Pompeii has to impart to us, there is a certain amount of parody involved in the fact that the day that might have been nothing less than Doomsday for so many seems to give us so much pleasure. The number of smiling faces that are captured at the site seems to be remarkable. Besides, how many of us would really ponder over the misery and death that the incident brought to the world.

Wonder what secrets the city hold? It holds the secrets of that love story that was never complete, the secret of the child who died before seeing the world, the secret of the ingenious and wicked enemy, and the secret of every human being who did everything possible to live happily! Just like us!

Then again there are several of us who would not be pleased with the whole idea of revealing these secrets; but we humans need something that will feed our need to know more and the need to explore; even if that means making casts of the fossils that remain from the disastrous volcano.

Tags: Amazing photos, Travel, world history