Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed

The Great Pompeii Project is under way, as historian Mary Beard journeys to the historical site frozen in time by an awe-inspiring natural disaster that at once destroyed and preserved an entire community in 79 AD. So much has been said about Pompeii, but despite centuries of research and endless scrutiny, it still has its secrets: a staggering one third of the site has never been excavated and we know almost nothing about who the bodies in the casts actually are. Using state of the art technology, archaeologists have begun a large scale excavation project, searching deep within the 30% of the site that is still buried under layers of ash and lava to reveal brand new truths about those who tragically perished in the disaster at Pompeii. For the first time, the famous plaster casts of the victims are to be removed from the glass cases where they have lived for many decades, to be studied in detail – including the extraction of DNA! (Viasat)