<P> The eruption destroyed the city , killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash . Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger , who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder , an admiral of the Roman fleet , who tried to rescue citizens . The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748 . The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for more than a millennium because of the long lack of air and moisture . These artefacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana . During the excavation , plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies . This allowed archaeologists to see the exact positions the people were in when they died . </P>
<P> The eruption destroyed the city , killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash . Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger , who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder , an admiral of the Roman fleet , who tried to rescue citizens . The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748 . The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for more than a millennium because of the long lack of air and moisture . These artefacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana . During the excavation , plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies . This allowed archaeologists to see the exact positions the people were in when they died . </P>
when did they find the ruins of pompeii
when did they find the ruins of pompeii
in 1599
in 1599