DNA to Test Theory of Roman Village in China

Reverse Gear writes "Many of the inhabitants of a lonely village in north western China seems to have distinctive western features. An old theory from the 50s suggests that a Roman legion lost in what is now Iran in the year 53BC lost their commanding officer. They traveled east, so the legend goes, working as mercenaries until they were caught by the Chinese 17 years later. The Chinese described them as using a 'fish-scale formation', which could be a reference to the well-known Roman phalanx technique called the 'tortoise'. The remainder of the legion, it is suggested, may have intermarried with the villagers in Liqian. Scientists are now trying to verify the fascinating theory by testing the DNA of the inhabitants of the Chinese village."

Re:Not the first indication of Europeans in China.

[meringuoid]

Strikingly well preserved mummies from the Takla Makan desert region have strongly European characterstics such as red hair and blue eyes dating from as far back as 3800 BP.

Yeah, but that proves little; Taklamakan is a Soft Place. Those guys could have wandered back from 6000 AD for all we know, stopping for a picnic with Fiddler's Green along the way.

Re:How can they test?

[Bob54321]

There are genetic markers that separate the Asian and European populations quite well - much study of the difference between these populations has been part of the HapMap [hapmap.org] project.

I haven't read the article... but I don't think they will use the standard 13 markers used for e.g. paternity testing. More likely to use the chips that contain more than 500000 markers to get a good coverage of the genome. Assuming only one Roman was in an individual's ancestry, after ten generations 0.5^10*500000 = 488 markers would be from the Roman. Only one needs to distinguish Asian/European ancestry for some sort of proof. It would still be difficult to make an definitive statement about Romans but give the good circumstantial evidence I don't think the burden of proof will be too high.

Re:How can they test?

[Bob54321]

Replying to my own message I know... but going away and thinking about this some more, they will probably try looking at the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is passed down intact in the male line so will give a very strong European signal if a Roman ancestor was a direct male only ancestor. I'm guessing the mitochondrial line which is passed down in the female line would be no good as not many Roman solders were female...

Re:Unclear

[pixiepaws]

Check out a book called "Black Horse Odyssey" by David Harris (isbn 1-862452-270-8) it was first published in 1991 by the Wakefield Press. The Roman troops in question were the remnants of a Roman army led by Crassus (the guy who finally wacked Sparticus) that was defeated by the Parthians in 53BC. A portion of the captives were transported to the Sogdian Rock (a fort taken by Alexander the Great many years before). Sometime later a Chinese army entered that part of the world and captured the Rock but they were impressed with the Romans fighting ability (the fish scale formation) and they took 280 or so of em back to China where they ended up on frontier duty for the Chinese. David Harris was put onto the case when he saw some images of come Chinese military art that was done in the style of Roman art. Also the buildings in the area are proportioned after from practice rather than Chinese.

Re:But...

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

Unlike their earlier Greek counterparts, Roman soldiers were forbidden from interfering with each other and were also forbidden from interfering with themslves (THAT was a death penalty offence). The chances of any Roman soldier passing up the opportunity of getting jiggy with the local ladies is teeny-tiny.

Re:Macedonians in Pakistan

[bloobloo]

If you're going to quote Wikipedia, at least look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalasha_of_Chitral [wikipedia.org]

Re:Unclear

[Cinnamon Whirl]

On a similar note, (though lesser scale) there are stories of the remnants of the Spanish Armada sailing around the north of Britain and back down through the Irish sea. Many of the ships were wrecked on the coast of both northern Ireland and west england, leading to settlements of Spaniards in both countries.

Re:Liqian == Legion?

[Heian-794]

Not sure how well Slashdot handles Chinese, but the characters are . ("Li" is the 'li' meaning 'beauty' on the right, with the horse radical on the left, and means 'black horse'. "Qian" is the 'gan' meaning 'dry' on the right, with the 'leather' radical on the left. The simplified form is this: .

Given that it's only really the English pronunciation of "legion" that resembles the Chinese word (which is pronounced like English 'li-chien' would be; Wade-Giles romanization is li-ch'ien with aspirated ch), the resemblance is probably a coincidence. Then again, I have no idea how western Chinese people would pronounce those characters, so it may indeed be a corruption of "legion". I hope it is; that would be fascinating!

Re:Not the first indication of Europeans in China.

[arivanov]

Not surprising.

The outer Mongolia is the region to which every single major Eurasian human migration can be traced. Before DNA techniques, language techniques and historical references have been used to trace these migrations.

Most of that has now been confirmed using DNA. There was a number of waves going as far back as the Dorian invasion which overthrew the bronze age greek civilisations and established what 500 years later became the golden age greece. This was followed by gotts, westgotts, barbarians, huns, bulgarians, etc. All of them displaced from outer mongolia a few centuries before they ended up in Europe.

The early waves were speaking indo-european languages and with distinct caucasian appearance. The last ones (huns and pra-bulgarians) were speaking languages from the Turk language group and were of mongoloid appearance.

So finding a blond or even a redhead in mongolia is not suprising. After all Chengis Khan was a redhead.

Re:How can they test?

[duffbeer703]

The term "camp follower" derives from the collection of merchants, the ancient equivalent of "contractors", family and prostitutes that followed legions.

Re:Unclear

[stephencrane]

Cecil Adams ("The Straight Dope") published an article in the late 80's debunking this oft-repeated idea.

Re:Latin Joke

[kernel_pat]

Essentially meaning "Me love you long time, SUKI SUKI five dolla" but the Roman equivalent

Re:Liqian == Legion?

[jamar0303]

"Riken"? That last one uses Japanese kanji, which are slightly different from Chinese writing (uses a mix of Simplified, traditional, and some character forms unique to Japanese). For that matter, all 3 links give the traditional/Japanese characters for the name.
This [china-world.info] gives the Simplified characters for the name.

Re:Unclear

[xocp]

How about a free link to Xenophon's Anabasis [gutenberg.org]. No need to buy a book that was written over 1500 years ago. Talk about expired copyright...

Re:First they conquered Europe...

[bogjobber]

The proto-Indo-European language/culture (or Indo-Iranian or Arya-European; there's not a clear distinction, especially among non-linguists) most likely started in Central Asia and worked its way both west into Europe and south into Northern India/Pakistan/Afghanistan. The split occurred before recorded history, and it's extremely difficult to tell exactly when and where it happened linguistically without other clues. I'm not sure if any languages in East Asia are from the Indo-European family, but I would imagine there was at least some small amount of cultural exchange. The Aryans migrated all over the place.

Re:Put your 50BC brain in gear

[bogjobber]

And you are thinking with a 2007AD brain that his been conditioned with a false sense of intellectual superiority and incorrect popular myths. Pythagoras first speculated that the Earth was round in ~550 BC. Both Plato and Aristotle (schooled in the Pythagorean writings) wrote that the Earth was round. Eratosthenes (~240 BC) came up with a decent estimate of the Earth's circumference. So, yes, the Romans knew that the Earth was in fact spherical. If there was anybody with a decent education (and if it was a whole legion, then there certainly was) they would not have thought the Earth was flat.

IRAN

[legonis]

"Parthians, an empire occupying what is now Iran." Iran existed way before 53BC. Parthians, Persians and Medyans were all iranian tribes of that era. Parthians took over the country after 200 years of Greek's army power (Alexander the great invasion). From wikipedia.org : "The name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and literally means "Land of the Aryans." They started to call Iran Persia, after 553BC when Cyrus the great became the emperor. On the other hand, Iran is a term that used to refer to that land before the Achaemenian empire and during the Medyan dynasty.