When a volcanic eruption buried the Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago, a thick layer of volcanic ash covered the bodies, preserving their shapes.

The bodies, later immortalized in casts, inspired narratives about who the victims were: for example, a mother holding her child and two sisters embracing each other in their final moments.

New DNA evidence has changed some of these assumptions about the identities, lives and relationships of ancient people. A group of four long-dead Pompeians, for example—once thought to be parents and their children—turned out to have no biological relationship to one another.

A team of archaeologists and geneticists from the University of Florence in Italy, Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany have been able to identify the sex and genetic ancestry of five people who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD . .

Their findings, published this week in diary Current Biologyit was based on DNA extracted from Pompeian remains that were preserved with patterns made in the 1800s by filling in the gaps left by their decomposed bodies.

Alissa Mittnik, co-author at the Max Planck Institute, said in a press release that the findings “highlight the importance of integrating genetic data with archaeological and historical information to avoid misinterpretations based on modern assumptions.”

Another discovery revealed that an adult wearing a gold bracelet and holding a child, long thought to be a mother and child, was actually an adult man and an unrelated child biological. The pair of individuals believed to be sisters, meanwhile, actually includes at least one genetic male.

“The findings challenge long-held notions such as the association of jewelery with femininity or the interpretation of physical proximity as evidence of family relationships,” said Professor David Caramelli, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florence.

The researchers also cautioned against making similar misjudgments based on the new DNA findings.

“Rather than establishing new narratives that might also distort these people’s experiences, the genetic results encourage reflection on the dangers of inventing stories about gender and family relationships in past societies based on current expectations,” said co-author David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard, said in a press release.

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