Roman Decendants Found in China?

[Sequoia]

Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history’s most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity. Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features. “I really think we are descended from the Romans,” said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues.

“There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago,” he said. Studies claiming that Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impoverished county in which it is situated. The village is now overlooked by a pillared portico, in the hope of attracting tourists. A statue at the entrance of the nearby county town, Yongchang, shows a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony.

Even entrepreneurs have caught on: in Imperial City Entertainment Street there is a Caesar Karaoke bar. The town’s link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general. In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome’s eastward expansion.

<snip>

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome's eastward expansion.

But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

He said the "fish-scale formation" was a reference to the Roman "tortoise", a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above.

http://s8int.com/WordPress/?p=472

(Marcus Crassus was the one who defeated Spartacus.)

The alien posting had me looking up the Taklamakan Mummies and found this.

[dropkickpa]

1. Cool!

More and more we are finding that people wandered much further than ever before believed in ancient times!

[kwassa]

2. Wouldn't Greeks be more likely?

Alexander the Great's conquests extended much further east, and I have heard of descendants in northern India.

[malta blue]

7. That would be my impression as well.

I recently saw a program on the Amazon warriors and the search for a green-eyed blond on the steppes of Mongolia, IIRC.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Most likely source for Western features in China:

Many of you probably saw the Nova program on the mummies of the Chinese dessert, people with red hair and Caucasian features, wearing European-style clothes, found naturally mummified in the dry air of Xinjiang Province.

The standard explanation for these non-Asian mummies is that they are the remains of Tocharians, an Indo-European ethnic group that died out or was absorbed by the East Asian population. (Remnants of their language have been found in China, and it is believed that they died out over a thousand years ago.)

We don't know what the Indo-Europeans called themselves, but it is believed that the original tribe was living somewhere around the present-day Ukraine when they began splitting off in different direction. Some went west, with the result that everyone in Europe except the Finns, Hungarians, Estonians, Sami (Lapps), Turks, and Basques speaks an Indo-European langauge. English, French, German, Russian, Greek, and Albanian are all Indo-European languages.

Another group went south into central and southern Asia. The languages of Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India are all distant relatives of English. Farsi, Pashto, Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali are examples.

Finally, another group went east into China, but they died out or were absorbed. They were the Tocharians. They are the most likely source of any Western features in a Chinese population.

[Aristus]

4. Andre Norton and Susan Shwartz wrote a speculative novel on the subject.

It's called "Empire Of The Eagle", and takes Crassus' defeat at Carrhae at the starting point. I'm reading it right now. It's poorly paced and the writing is only so-so, but at least it covers an interesting and intriguing topic.

[Sequoia]

5. Neat. I sure liked the actor who played him in "Spartacus"

who later played Spock's father in Star Trek. He died about a year ago. I'll have to check that book out. Thanks.

[Redstone]

6. I wouldn't doubt it. There were SO many "lost legions" back then.

Pretty fascinating stuff; thanks for posting it.

Redstone

[Sequoia]

8. Funny how one thing leads to another: word orgin

"Parting Shot" from Parthian Shot when the Parthians pretened to flee but then turned around and shot their arrows at the Romans.



The modern term "parting shot" is probably a bastardization of "Parthian shot", which itself was used up to the 20th century to describe a barbed insult or bon mot given as the speaker departed:

Battle of Carrhae:

When Publius urged them to charge the enemy's mail-clad horsemen, they showed him that their hands were riveted to their shields and their feet nailed through and through to the ground, so that they were helpless either for flight or for self-defence.

Crassus himself was tortured by having molten gold poured down his throat (an ironic jest at his notorious greed) and decapitated after the battle. His head was sent to the Parthian king, Orodes II (who allegedly permitted its use as a stage prop).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae

See what happens when you invade someone elses country for glory. Too bad our "deciders" don't learn from ancient history.