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Chinese in Roman Britain
#16
it seems a similar finding was in Italy in 2010:

http://www.romanhideout.com/News/2010/20100210.asp
Luca Bonacina
Provincia Cisalpina - Mediolanum
www.cisalpina.net
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#17
It's no surprise. DNA analysis isn't great though in terms of burials to identify a people with an ethnicity. The only real way to tell is through skull morphology (which just says what mix of caucasoid, negroid, and mongoloid they are) and the cultural context found in the burial.

These people were likely "Asiatic", and everyone automatically assumes "Chinese!" However, they are probably a Turanid admixture so they could be from as far west as the Ukraine to as far East as Mongolia/China.

@Alanus

They can't be associated with any of the Sarmatian/Alanic units in the Notitia because these skeletons date at the latest to the early 4th century AD.
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#18
Evan,

Your last point is true... but a little exclusive. Chances that they were related to the Taifali would be minimal, since the defeated Taifali were relocated in north-central Italy around 378-79. However, Europe must have had an earlier Alanic presence in members of the Roxolani and some early Sarmatian tribes. That gene pool could easily give us Asiatic variations and haplogroups like Q, A, and D. I don't find anything unusual in these "discoveries" of Asiatic types in Europe, considering the Eastern presence would have begun sometime in the 1st century BC to the first century of the common era.

I do find it annoying that these archaeologists (or whatever they are) automatically assume that a Chinese individual should get lost and wander across the expanse of 6,000 kilometers to enter Italy or Britain as a "slave. They should know about the Eastern Asiatic background of other groups, since archaeology was designed to enhance historicity. Wink
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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#19
The grave finds at Vagnari in Italy were mentioned in a thread a few years back.

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/thread-16390.html

The body found at Vagnari was probably a slave as it had another body buried on top of it and had DNA that belonged to Haplogroup D which the author said has origins in East Asia but not necessarily China.

This was an article on Vagnari find from 2010.


In regards to East Asian slaves reaching Rome, I suppose it is possible. One source of slavery was the former Greek city of Tanais on the Sea of Azov, which was known as a trading post used firstly by Scythians and then later on Sarmatians and Alans before it was devastated by the Goths in around 330AD. Strabo described Tanais below although I think some of the Eastern nomadic groups were more sophisticated than Strabo believed & brought more than skins & slaves. Dyes, foodstuffs, leathergoods & weapons would have been popular barter items. It is possible that some of those slaves reached Rome and maybe Britain especially if they had certain skillsets like iron-working in the case of the Italian body as Vagnari was supposedly an iron-working region or maybe horse handling, there could be numerous reasons.
 
as a common emporium, partly of the Asiatic and European nomads and partly of those who sailed the Bosporus-the former bringing slaves, hides and other such things as nomads possess, and the latter exchanging wine and other things of civilized life.

The Aorsi and Alans traded and negotiated deals with Sogdian merchants who brought goods including slaves, from India and China to the shores of the Aral Sea which the nomads controlled at various times.

Rome also traded with the Kushans via the Indian Ocean after the Kushans defeated various Saka and Indo-Parthian kingdoms around the Indus and being Yuezhi there was probably a high Asiatic admixture as discussed in the thread Origin of the Alans. There are a few Roman sources mentioning Kushan ambassadors like Aurelius Victor during the reign of Antonius Pius and Dio Chrysostom during the reign of Trajan who wrote about the appearance of foreign peoples in the city wearing ‘the turbans and trousers’ of Persians and Bactrians. Not absolute proof but it is possible that Asians were present at Rome but highly unlikely in Britain unless a slave. Smile 
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
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#20
Christopher Atwood theorizes that the transmission of the name "Ounni" (Hun) to Byzantine Greek from Baktrian Greek "Ounna" was achieved via a trade relationship between the Huns and the Baktrian Greeks and the transmission of the word via trade with their outposts on the Eastern Black Sea coast, and that this relationship may have been partially responsible for Hunnic movement West and South as well.

Such a trade route could have been a transmission route for slaves as well.
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#21
'In regards to East Asian slaves reaching Rome, I suppose it is possible. One source of slavery was the former Greek city of Tanais on the Sea of Azov, which was known as a trading post used firstly by Scythians and then later on Sarmatians and Alans before it was devastated by the Goths in around 330AD. Strabo described Tanais below although I think some of the Eastern nomadic groups were more sophisticated than Strabo believed & brought more than skins & slaves. Dyes, foodstuffs, leathergoods & weapons would have been popular barter items. It is possible that some of those slaves reached Rome and maybe Britain especially if they had certain skillsets like iron-working in the case of the Italian body as Vagnari was supposedly an iron-working region or maybe horse handling, there could be numerous reasons.'

We must not forget the Bosporan Kingdom in what is now the Crimea region as another contact point for Asiatic peoples and the Roman Empire. We know the Roman's supplied Carroballista to the Bosporan's for use against the Goths for example.
Adrian Coombs-Hoar
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#22
(11-02-2016, 02:51 PM)ValentinianVictrix Wrote: We know the Roman's supplied Carroballista to the Bosporan's for use against the Goths for example.

Or to the Chersonese to use against the Bosporans (Sarmatians)?

But the brief and interesting (if perhaps dubious) account in Constantine Porphyrogenitus doesn't state where the artillery came from - it could be that the Chersonese just mounted their own mural artillery on wagons!
Nathan Ross
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#23
 I think a lot of the slaves, from these Northern Black Sea City states were bought by the local land owners to work their landholdings whose grain was exported to firstly Greece and then Rome but some slaves with certain skill sets found employment as translators or scribes and perhaps some were used for prostitution. 


  Another avenue into the empire for either businessmen or slaves would have been sea travel via the Indian Ocean. The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt built numerous Red Sea ports which were used by Roman and Greek seamen for trade with India and the Kushans and goods transported to Alexandria and then through the Mediterranean to Rome. Foreign traders more than likely would base themselves in Roman Egypt near the Red Sea ports. There is evidence that there were many foreign traders, mainly Arabian and Indian merchants present at Alexandria as Dio Chrysostom mentions in his discourses.

For I behold among you, not merely Greeks and Italians and people from neighbouring Syria, Libya, Cilicia, nor yet Ethiopians and Arabs from more distant regions, but even Bactrians and Scythians and Persians and a few Indians, and all these help to make up the audience in your theatre and sit beside you on each occasion.

 One traveller that possibly did make its way to Rome from China was the pandemic known as the Antonine Plague. The Hou Hanshu records the arrival of a virulent pandemic that swept through northern China in 162AD and wiped out or debilitated over a third of the Han army stationed on China’s northern border. 

 In 165AD Roman troops captured Seleucia after invading Parthia and occupied Babylonia but an unknown disease broke out among the troops during the winter months and the lethal illness soon reached high levels of infection forcing the Roman army to abandon the war and retreat back to Syria. The returning troops spread the disease in the main cities of the empire. Whether they are separate outbreaks (supposedly smallpox) or whether this pandemic travelled east overland from Northern China through Central Asia via the land route on the silk caravans or whether it was spread by sailors or goods travelling the Indian Ocean on the seasonal monsoon winds, it could have spread not only via Egypt but also the Persian Gulf ports like Charax and then Seleucia, we don’t know, probably both. Smile
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
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#24
Ancient Chinese Found at Lindisfarne

A recent article in the Daily News has announced the amazing find of 2,000 oriental artifacts at Lindisfarne. The estimated 3,300-year-old relics included thousands of egg rolls in a huge bronze container, a bone with ancient script, and the skeletal remains of a Chinese woman.

   
"The egg rolls were perfectly preserved," gasped Prof. Ewing Hartley of Dublin College, "perhaps because they were stored in a covered bronze container." According to Hartley, the rolls were found in heavily congealed pork fat.

   
The bronze container has been dated to c. 1,300 BC. Notice the tight-fitting cover.

   
Fifteen feet from the container, archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a woman. "Definitely Chinese," claims Margaret Winthrop, a forensic reconstructionist at Dublin. Working with cranial measurements, Ms. Winthrop created this physical likeness of the ancient woman. "We believe she was the chef," Winthrop claimed.

   
Script scratched into the bone fragment has been deciphered by expert Wushu Wang at Beijing. "Simply amazing," claimed Wang, "It says-- 'Eat these while they're fresh. No MSG.' " 

"The idea of Chinese in Ancient Britain becomes poppy-cock. I'm absolutely blown away by this discovery," notes Prof. Hartley, "This is the biggest thing since the discovery of fire. Amazing! Lindisfarne was the home of a substantial Chinese population when we consider the number of egg rolls and size of the container."

   
The artifacts will be on display at Lindisfarne Castle until April 1st, when they will be shipped to Beijing for further study. Due to uncommonly wide interest, the traffic to Lindisfarne has increased by 600 percent. So, please be cautious in your travels.

Cool Wink Big Grin
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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