Newly Discovered Pompeii Graffiti Reveals Horrifying Secret About Brutal, Bloody Gladiator Fights 2,000 Years Ago

Newly discovered 2,000-year-old graffiti suggests that brutal gladiatorial battles in Ancient Rome were not just a sport for adults.

Archaeologists believe the drawings were made by children as young as five, suggesting they took part in bloody gladiatorial battles in the city.

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The new charcoal wall drawings were found in the courtyard of the Insula dei Casti Amanti in Pompeii, the Italian city that fell victim to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The simple engravings depict men with shields and spears fighting animals and each other.

“We came to the conclusion that the drawings of gladiators and hunters were most likely made based on direct vision and not from pictorial models,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.

“Probably one or more children who played in this courtyard, among the kitchens, latrines and vegetable growing beds, witnessed fights in the amphitheater.

“[They came] in contact with an extreme form of spectacularized violence, which could also include executions of criminals and slaves.”

The scenes look crude enough to have been drawn by a small child, with arms and legs sticking straight out of the head.

They were also found very close to the ground, at the height of a child.

A telltale sign is the outline of a small hand, which is about the size of a five-year-old child.

Experts believe the children drew what they witnessed in an effort to process the trauma of what they saw.

“Evidently it is an anthropological constant that is independent of artistic and cultural fashions,” said Zuchtriegel.

“The drawings show us the impact of this on the imagination of a boy or a girl, subject to the same stages of development that they still encounter today.”

The excavation of Insula dei Casti Amanti also discovered two skeletons, a man and a woman, who were believed to have been seeking shelter together in a corridor at the time of the eruption.

The Insula dei Casti Amanti, known as the Island of Chaste Lovers, is made up of several houses and a bakery.

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Where was Pompeii and how many people died?

Pompeii was an ancient city in Italy that was nearly wiped off the map by a catastrophic volcanic eruption.

In 79 AD, the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman city under a thick carpet of ash.

Where was Pompeii?

Pompeii was once a very prosperous ancient Roman city on the Gulf of Naples in the Italian region of Campania.

It was home to 11,000 people and boasted a complex water system, amphitheater, gymnasium and even a port.

How was Pompeii destroyed?

On August 4, 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted in one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in human history.

It hurled rocks, ash and volcanic gases as high as 21 miles (34 kilometers) into the sky, at tens of thousands of cubic meters per second.

The thermal energy released was said to be a hundred thousand times greater than that of the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima-Nagasaki.

However, the city was preserved under volcanic debris for centuries until it was discovered in the late 16th century.

How many people died?

The volcanic debris resulting from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius turned people to ash wherever they were.

Experts now believe the volcano’s heat boiled people’s blood, causing their heads to explode.

It is believed that around 2,000 people were killed in Pompeii, which had a population of 11,000 at the time.

To this day, about a third of the lost city still needs to be cleaned up.