WASHINGTON -- The skeletons of a man, woman and child, who clung to each other as an earthquake destroyed their city on Cyprus, have turned up 1,600 years after the cataclysmic event rocked much of the Mediterranean.
David Soren, a University of Arizona classical archaeologist who led the digging team, said Thursday the find brings to seven the number of human skeletons uncovered at the same house in the ancient Roman city of Kourion.
'Here are people in their last moments,' Soren said of the remains. 'The find this year was particularly touching in that respect.'
The scientist said in a telephone interview he believes the earthquake was a tremendous disaster similar in severity to the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D.
The quake, which struck just after dawn July 21 in the year 365 A.D., created tidal waves from southern Greece to Alexandria, Egypt. Its epicenter was apparently only 30 miles southwest of Kourion under the Mediterranean Sea.
Evidence indicates the quake struck so quickly there was no time to flee and people were trapped just as they were starting their day.
'The most important thing is the really excellent degree of preservation of the material,' Soren said. 'It will enable us to reconstruct a large portion of this community as well as to study humans and animals of this period -- daily life, people living where they lived, using what they used.'
The three skeletons, perhaps a family trapped in a bedroom, were uncovered in early August by Caterina Dias, a Portuguese archaeology student.
The female victim was about 19 years old, Soren said. Her neck was broken at a right angle by falling plaster and stones as she clutched an 18-month-old child, who clung to the woman's arm.
The skeleton of the man, whose arm was protectively flung across the woman to the child's back, was found under 500- to 600-pound stone blocks, its skull and spinal column crushed. The man's age was not determined.
He had worn a ring with Christian insignia, indicating the town may have been a settlement of Greek Christians, Soren said.
In 1984, in what appeared to be a stable, Soren uncovered the skeleton of a girl later determined to be about 13. Her bones were atop the skeleton of a mule. The skeleton of a man age 50 to 60 was found in 1985 crushed in the doorway of the same house. Two other skeletons had been unearthed in 1934.
Soren and his team have uncovered 15 rooms in the same house. Also found were about 400 Roman coins, the key to dating the earthquake because the latest were issued in 364 and 365 during the joint reign of Roman emperors Valens and Valentinian I.
The team also found evidence of a less severe quake that occurred perhaps 25 years before the final one in 365. Soren said the team was beginning to excavate another house that seems 'a bit more elegant and better built.'
The excavation was co-sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the Cyprus Department of Antiquities and two Tucson, Ariz., organizations -- the Hellenic Cultural Foundation and Fine Art for Fine Causes.
