Rocks from Pompeii suburb tells a story of destruction—that could help us today

Two-thousand years ago, a Roman author and lawyer named Pliny the Younger wrote an account of one of the most destructive disasters in human history. He chronicled Mount Vesuvius’ eruption and the subsequent burial of Pompeii, which killed his uncle Pliny the Elder and about 2,000 others. The detail in Pliny the Younger’s account and the inferred eruption date of August 24, 79 CE has provided scientists and archaeologists with a benchmark method for dating not only Vesuvius’ er