What happened

The plaster casts of the calcified inhabitants of Pompeii have long been used by archaeologists to tell the stories of the last desperate moments of the ancient Romans, before they were buried and preserved in the pyroclastic ash of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. But new DNA evidence shows that many of those stories are wrongthe researchers reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Who said what

A team of American and European researchers performed genomic tests on bone remains embedded in 14 models being restored, including two people hugging and the four-member “House of Gold Bracelets Family.” The supposed nuclear family — including a mother wearing the distinctive bracelet with a child on her lap — turned out to be four unrelated men, the researchers said. At least one of the entwined “Two Virgins,” long thought to be sisters or a mother and daughter, was a man, and the pair were not related. Many of the calcified Pompeians seem to have immigrated, by choice or force, from the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa.