The cities Pompeii and Herculaneum were part of the Roman Empire until its destruction by the Volcano eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. After volcano eruption, both the Roman cities remain as abandon for almost as many years until it was founded (Pompeii) after excavation by the architect Domenico Fontana in the 16th century (1748).
The destruction and volcano explosion comes from a report by Pliny the Younger, who was staying in the Bay of Naples when Mt. Vesuvius exploded. According to Pliny the Younger, the eruption lasted 18 hours which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum with ash, volcano rocks, and other volcanic materials and killing thousands of people.
North Africa used to be a fertile grassland, even swampy in some spots, 12,000 years ago. By 1000 BC (actually quite a while before) it had dried up into what is the the largest desert i the world: the Sahara.
