In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius in Italy has explodedash and volcanic debris rains down on the city of Pompeii and its tens of thousands of inhabitants.

In just a few minutes, the giant cloud of ash and gases killed an estimated 2,000 people, many of whom were unearthed more than a thousand years later. Their decomposed bodies were preserved by ash, and archaeologists were able to reconstruct their forms using gypsum of the cavities they left behind. Over 100 castings have been made to date.

Now scientists have used ancient DNA collected from the towers that were made to better understand the inhabitants of Pompeii and their origins. What they found changes the history that has been written since the rediscovery of Pompeii in the 1700s.

“We were able to sample all four individuals from the Golden Bracelet House group, which has traditionally been interpreted as a nuclear family. Two adults, who were interpreted as mother and father, and their two young children,” said Alissa Mittnik of Harvard University, one of the authors of the paper, which was published Thursday in the journal. Current Biology. “And that’s based on the fact that they were just found in the same house, in close proximity to each other. One of the two, an adult, was holding the small child on his lap, and this adult was also wearing this famous and intricate gold bracelet.”

But DNA from the skeletal remains destroyed that theory, she said.

“What we discovered then is that in fact all four were genetically male. And, we couldn’t confirm any genetic relationship between them,” she explained.

Researchers, including authors from the University of Florence, cannot yet determine who these people were and what their relationships are to each other.

“This scenario, which has been the most popular, cannot be a plain and simple explanation of why these people were found together,” she added.

“These findings challenge traditional gender and familial assumptions,” co-author David Reich, also of Harvard, said in a statement.

Several factors could have played a role in their disappearance and why they were found together.

“I also imagine that some people, even though they might never have seen each other before and didn’t know each other in these extremely terrifying events, there would have been emotions that – like trying to help each other, even if they “don’t know me,” Mittnik said. “You might end up in a hug in this moment of terror.”

The data they collected also revealed that the Pompeians had diverse origins, mostly descended from recent immigrants from the eastern Mediterranean. This indicates the cosmopolitan nature of the Roman Empire, they said.

More work is needed in the future to fully understand Pompeii’s past, including genetic analysis. Research is ongoing at the site, and scientists can use both the models and the skeletons of the victims to better understand the city’s population. Of course, more research could overturn these findings as well.

Mittnik noted that little was known about the designs before the restoration and how they were manipulated over time to support the narratives they were trying to tell.

“On the one hand, it’s a bit exploitative, of course. And on the other hand, it’s also the only reason people connect so much to Pompeii,” she said.