In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located east of the modern day city of Naples, erupted.

Vesuvius had erupted before, but this eruption was different.

It ejected an enormous amount of ash which completely buried several towns and cities below the mountain.

Almost 2,000 years later, the largest of those cities, Pompeii, was rediscovered

and when archaeologists found revolutionized our understanding of the ancient world.

Learn more about the destruction and rediscovery of Pompeii on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. The I've been asked why I talk so much about ancient Rome and there are two answers to that question.

The first is that Rome had an inordinate amount of influence on the Western world, which can still be felt today.

Everything from our alphabet or the months of the year all come from Rome.

Perhaps more importantly, we just know a lot more about Rome than we do about other ancient cultures.

The Romans tended to build in stone rather than wood,

so we have more ruins.

We have many texts and full books which were written by Romans,

which is much more than

we have from many other ancient civilizations. However we also have something else

a singular archaeological discovery of an entire Roman city that was better preserved than anything else from the ancient world.

Pompeii had its start in the 7th century BC is a Greek colony.

Located on the bay of Naples,

it was frequented by Greek and Phoenician sailors.

It later became an Etruscan city

and then was settled by the Samonites,

a people living on the Italian Peninsula. After the Romans defeated them in the Samonite wars,

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