This Man Fled Pompeii as Mount Vesuvius Erupted. Archaeologists Found Him 2,000 Years Later, Holding a Bowl to Protect His Head and a Lamp to Light His Way (www.smithsonianmag.com)

submitted 3 days ago by cm0002@lemy.lol to c/archaeology@mander.xyz

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[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 20 points 3 days ago

Researchers used A.I. and photo editing tools to create this digital reconstruction of the older victim's escape.

What has the world come to.

[-] Flagstaff@programming.dev 8 points 3 days ago

Laziness, really.

[-] Elilol@fedinsfw.app 21 points 3 days ago

Awesome article, the AI rendering sucked.

awe

[-] ProfThadBach@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

I thought the same thing and the AI looked like Eric Idol. It is really sad seeing a magazine like the Smithsonian using AI slop.

[-] Elilol@fedinsfw.app 4 points 2 days ago

Listen we found a person holding TWO items and made a drawing, LOOK!:

Person holding one Item

-Smiles in ignorant-

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah I wouldn't mind if an actual artist has uses some slop generator to help them in some aspect of doing the depiction, but this was clearly just some prompt into a chatbot and no actual artist even touched it. Don't think they even used "photo editing tools" except perhaps for cropping.

Like you say, no lamp. One item. And such a nice clear day you can see all the way to the mountain in the described "darker than dark"-darkness — for which he was supposed to have the lamp for.

[-] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Half of the article was spent justifying their use of AI for this purpose.

[-] Elilol@fedinsfw.app 2 points 2 days ago

Proof of good writting Amiright

[-] omgboom@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

So did he survive?

[-] Malyca@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

He's tall

this post was submitted on 01 May 2026

90 points (96.9% liked)

Archaeology

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About

Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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