The Lost Legion in China

[nskripchun]

Since there's a thread about Rome & China, I'd thought I'd dig out this interesting story...


http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/dna-tests-for-chinas-legionary-lore/2007/02/02/1169919531024.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/02/wroman02.xml

DNA tests for China's legionary lore
Richard Spencer in Liqian, China
February 3, 2007

RESIDENTS of a remote Chinese village are hoping 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 around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi Desert, more than 300 kilometres 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 blond hair - mixed with traditional Chinese features.

"I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, 1.8-metre frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced colleagues.

Studies claiming 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.

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 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 by the Parthians, an empire 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. Professor Dubs theorised that they made their way eastwards as a mercenary troop, 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.

Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said he was surprised to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair.

"We shaved it off a month after she was born, but it just grew back the same colour," he said. "At school they call her 'yellow hair'. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don't know about our ancestors."

The hypothesis took almost 40 years to reach China. During Chairman Mao's rule, ideas of foreign ancestry were not welcome and the story was suppressed.

The blood tests are part of a project by scientists and historians after local authorities loosened control over genetic research. The results will be published in a scientific journal. But Professor Xie Xiaodong, a geneticist from Lanzhou University, cautioned against over-enthusiasm.

"Even if they are descendants of the Roman empire, it doesn't mean they are necessarily from the Roman army," he said. "The empire covered a large area … so anything is possible."

The issue has split the university's history department. Professor Wang Shaokuan said that the Huns themselves included Caucasians, Asians and Mongols.

[nskripchun]

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=37148

THE LOST LEGION

The battle of Carrhae ended 53 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, in the last day of the month of may, with a shameful disaster for the Roman army. Seven legions having the strength of 45,000 soldiers were humiliated and routed by 10,000 Parthian archers.

Carrhae, an ancient biblical city now known as Harran, is located on Turkey’s oriental border.

The commanding officer of this unfortunate expedition was Marcus Licinius Crassus, a 62 years old tribune who had organized that campaign eager to gain glory and wealth, even though he was already one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome.

Perhaps he did it just because he envied the military successes of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, and foolishly thought that he may equal them, even though Pompeius Magnus and Caesar were war professionals while Crassus was a mere amateur. His only triumph had been the bloody defeat of Spartacus, but achieved with Pompeius’ help: in fact he had too little experience and genius to embark on a large-scale operation abroad.

The Republican government loathed to let him depart with such a sizeable army as there was no real emergency in the east, but Crassus eventually enlisted the support of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, who did not fail to see the opportunity to free themselves of a powerful competitor whilst waiting to settle the score with each other.

During the hot public debate in the Senate a tribunus plebis named Ateius attempted to stop him. Plutarcus writes that, when he realised that his efforts were in vain and that he would not receive enough supporting votes, he lit a brazier and, while throwing grains of incense into the flames, started to curse Crassus and evoke the infernal gods. Judging from the name and the behaviour of this man, we can guess that he was of Etruscan descent.

Some metropolitan legions grouped in Rome and marched through Campania and then met at Brindisi with the others coming up from Calabria and then left in spite of the stormy sea. Not all the ships reached the other shore.

Crassus had fortune, the blind goddess, on his side during his youth: he came out unscathed from the civil wars; then was implicated in the Catiline conspiracy but bore no consequences; he paid the debts of a spendthrift Caesar whilst being tightfisted himself and with his family.

But things had changed and while aging he became a blunderer, making mistakes which were numerous and serious.

For instance, in a speech to his soldiers he proclaimed that he would destroy a bridge “so that none of you will be able to return”. Noticing their dismayed expression, Crassus corrected himself by explaining that he was referring to the enemy, not his own soldiers.

He ordered the distribution of lentils and salt to the troops, oblivious of the fact that this was the meal offered at funerals.

The worst possible omen occurred when Crassus dropped on the floor the slippery entrails of a sacrificial animal that were placed in his hands by a haruspex. (a soothsayer) Crassus attempted to correct this mistake by crying, “Fear not, despite my age, the hilt of my sword will not slip out of my hand”.

On the day of the battle, Crassus wore a black tunic, instead of the purple one de rigeur for Roman generals. Even though Crassus quickly returned to his tent to change, he left his officers speechless. We can still imagine those officers crossing their fingers (“fare le corna”, forefinger and little finger raised, a very efficacious propitiatory gesture of Etruscan origin) and grasp a certain part of their body.

Moreover, Crassus refused to listen to his veterans who were in favour of marching on the coast and avoid the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the arab Arimanes and his six thousand horsemen, who had secretly sided with the Parthians and abandoned the Romans few minutes before the battle.

Crassus, facing the enemy, ordered his soldiers to form a square, packed like sardines, instead of scattering them so that they ended up being slaughtered by enemy arrows before they could even attempt a response.

The Parthians were using reflex bows: those with recurved edges, such as the ones used by Mongols and Chinese. These bows doubled the propulsion power of the arrows enabling them to be shot to a distance of up to 400 metres – so that they were as lethal as Kalashnikov bullets. This kind of bow was a Chinese invention, and was further perfected by the Chinese themselves in the 16th century, with their arrows capable of reaching up to 600 metres.

Seeing the danger, Crassus’ son, Publius, attempted a sally with a thousand gaulish cavalrymen, but half of them were slain and ran through with arrows and the remainder were taken prisoners. The head of Publius was put on a spear and shown to the Romans and to his father, and on this tragic occasion we can see the only glimpse of roman greatness in Crassus, who for a while ceased to act like an old fool, as he told his soldiers to keep up the fight and that the death of his son was only his private injury, not theirs.

At nightfall, Crassus accepted to negotiate with the enemy but was caught instead in a trap and his head was also cut off. 20,000 Romans died that day, 10,000 were taken prisoner, and the remainder managed to escape and return to Italy.

This setback was partially redressed by Marcus Antonius few years later and a diplomatic solution with the Parthians was reached under Augustus in 20 BC when a peace treaty was stipulated and the lost insignia were retrieved. The Parthians agreed on the return of the eagles and the banners of the seven Roman legions, but when Augustus sought the return of the prisoners abandoned in 53 BC they maintained that there were no prisoners to repatriate.

The Parthian practice had always been to shift prisoners caught in the west to Turkmenistan in the east. By so doing they would secure their loyalty against their worst enemies - the Huns - and this is probably what happened to the unfortunate Romans whom the Parthians had caught. The Roman historian Plinius also upholds this theory in explaining the disappearance of so many men.

What happened then to those 10,000 legionaries? No plausible answer could be found for two thousand years until an American sinologist, Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, announced a possible answer during a conference in London in 1955 called, “A Roman City in Ancient China”.

Dubs had found out that in the annals of the Han dynasty there is the record of the capture of a Hun city, by the chinese army, in 36 BC named Zhizhi, now known as Dzhambul, located close to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.

It made a deep impression on Dubs that the Chinese recorded that they found palisades of tree trunks, and that the enemy had used a previously unseen battle formation at the gates of the city, namely a testudo of selected warriors forming a cover of overlapping shields in front of their bodies in the first row and over the heads in the following rows. These facts are reported in the biography of Chen Tang, one of the victorious Chinese generals, written by the historian Ban Gu
(32 – 92)

Many prisoners were taken during this battle and it appears that the Chinese were so struck by the military skills of those warriors that they moved them, after enlisting, further east, in a place that by imperial decree was named Li-Jien (which sounds in Chinese as the word “legion” and is the name by which the Chinese called Rome) in Gansu province. The legionaries numbered 145, and formed a garrison protecting the inhabitants from Tibetan raids. It was uncommon for Chinese to name their cities after barbarian names: the only two other known cases, Kucha and Wen-Siu, occurred where large colonies of foreigners had settled.

The difficulty was to locate this outpost, as the name Li-Jien is not found on modern maps any longer. Dubs claimed to have found it, and identified the location as Zhelaizhai, not far from Lanzhou.

Subsequent archaeological expeditions made by Chinese, Australians and Americans teams appear to support the choice of this Chinese city even though the smoking gun which may finally solve the mystery has yet to be found.

During excavations in 1993 some fortifications were unearthed as well as a trunk fixed with stakes, possibly dating back to the time of the arrival of the legionaries. The trunk was a kind of hoist used by the Romans to build fortifications, but was unknown in China. It is now on display in the Lanzhou museum.

The physical features of the inhabitants, in some cases, are also strange. A certain Sung Guorong, for instance, seems to confirm the hypothesis advanced by Dubs. He has been interviewed and filmed by several journalists: he is 46 years old, 1.82 meters tall, blond, with an aquiline nose and big blue eyes, and he loudly proclaims that he is a Roman, not a Chinese. He also claims that there are at least 100 people that look like him in the area.

Not that real Romans had such features, but certainly among the Latin legionaries there were some german as well as gaulish auxiliaries. Perhaps one of Mr. Song’s ancestors is one of those 500 gaulish horsemen that were captured during Publius Crassus’ tragic sally. Lanzhou University has conducted DNA tests on the population of Zhelaizhai and findings show that 46% of them have genetic sequences that are similar to Europeans.

...

www.icc.org.hk/PDFs/Lost_Region.pdf

[theme]

Meh.

You wanna explain what the story is about before we go through this essay?

[Anansasem]

Interesting, I've never heard of this before. Though, with the accelerated migration patterns of humans over the last 8,000 years, coinciding with the dawn of large communities and nations, there are likely thousands of 'foreign' groups in perceived homogeneous areas.

Hell, Southeast Asia wasn't originally populated by those with the current features in that area. Like Japan they were 'taken over,' in a way until the descendants bore little physical similarities to the original inhabitants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito
Really, all of Southeast Asia is like that 'Roman' town in northern China.

Still, thanks for giving this story. It's nice to hear about specific historical events like these, as well as seeing others post on the History thread.

[Subwaybrum]

i've seen the documentary on discovery channel about this. I cant seem to find it anywhere on the net to show you guys, but from what i saw from the show, i don't like this. Seems like a lot of assumptions were made (some in my opinion, mildly racist) and some of the local chinese are depicted as wannabe romans. :mad:

[ZhuBaJie]

all i gotta say is, there must have been a lot of inbreeding if the genetic traits of 145 Romans from 53 BC persist today.

[Unconcerned Citizen]

all i gotta say is, there must have been a lot of inbreeding if the genetic traits of 145 Romans from 53 BC persist today.
or the first generation got very, very busy with the breeding. An early population boom can have a huge impact on isolated populations. If they were fit, young soldiers, it's possible.

In any case, I'm really doubtful about this. A tall stature and light hair are not Roman features. The average legionary would've been dark-haired and only slightly taller than the average Chinese man. Besides, how does the word legio turn into li-jien? The Romans didn't speak English...:D

[minbo]

As the article notes, Romans were not known for their blond hair or blue eyes. There is no reason to come up with tenuous theories. Their genetic history is easily explained (and easily provable) within known cultural/ethnic facts for the region. Those people are most probably descendants of Tocharians, who did have blond and red hair, blue eyes and are known to have lived in Xinjiang in large numbers. The Yuezhi, or Moon People are thought to have lived in large numbers in Gansu (where this town suspected of being Li Jian is located). The Yuezhi are thought to be the descendants of the Tocharians, or possibly the same, simply documented by the Chinese with a Chinese name. Remnant population groups who retained ethnicity, language and culture were documented within the boundaries of modern China as recently as 6th century CE.

So to sum up:
1) Go with a very speculative theory based upon tenuous history that is biologically impossible and not supported by archaeological evidence
2) Use something that is biologically possible, based upon a much larger body of historical documentation and is supported by archaeological evidence by several expeditions in the area

I know which option I would put money on.

[RebelAzn]

What difference where these people are from? They are now in China so they are Chinese as far as I am concerned. There are plenty of Europeans with Asian blood in them due to Mongols raiding Europe, so what is the big deal?

[minbo]

Ehh, looking over my response it may come across as a bit harsh. I don't mean to be harsh to anyone, except perhaps Dubs and Richard Spencer. Spencer for writing a crap fluff piece and Dubs for promoting dubious science outside of the peer review system before he has any results from his archeology that may support him.

[ChÈ]

Roman legionaries were not always recruited from Italy. Many were recruited from Germany, Holland and Gaul and were tall, blond and blue eyed.

[minbo]

During the Late Republic period which is the time period of this article, Roman Legionaries were entirely Roman citizens, Roman Citizenship having been granted to all provinces in Italy by the Marin reforms which also created the standing professional Roman Legion.

The non-citizen members of the Roman Legion were Auxiliaries. Auxiliaries were not trained or drilled to fight as legionaries and fought with their own weapons and skirmishing tactics under direction of the Legion.

[Fossil]

Some Gauls where Roman citizens even at this early stage. The Boii tribe, From whose the city of Bologna is named, had been granted Roman Citizenship for their loyalty during the Punic wars. And only half the Roman army was Roman anyway .The rest where so called Aux ilia, mercenaries that could come from anywhere.
But the chances are these people are more likely descended from some nomad tribe then the Romans, but you can never know who you can find in your family tree if you go back far enough.

[minbo]

I did not know that about the Boii. From what I read, the Boii sided with Carthage during the Punic wars, showing Hannibal the way through the Pyrenees and the Alps and fighting alongside him.

As some of the Boii settled the Po Valley in Italy, it would make sense to me that during the Marin reforms, the group in the Po valley would have been granted Roman citizenship with the rest of Italy and may have been loyal to Rome while their counterparts outside of Italy allied with the other side.

[Anansasem]

but you can never know who you can find in your family tree if you go back far enough.
You may not realize how true that statement is. Every human being on the planet has a common ancestor in less than the past thousand years. It's speculated we're all related within the range of the 83rd cousin denomination.

By the way, I vaguely remember situations in which the Roman Legions would recruit the aid of locals. Much the same way the U.S. did with the Hmong, though they'd often assimilate some into the Legion with the promise of citizenship and a soldiers stipend after a set term. I remember this was common when they invaded Britain, with it's 'pale-eyed-barbarian-animals.'

[Fossil]

Aux ilia. who where local mercenaries the Roman hired I believe got Roman citizenship if they served for 25 years. Have to reread up on the subject as it been more then I few years since I really study Roman history.
Rome was by ancient stander pretty generous about granting citizenship, and it was one of their great strength, as it meant that there where plenty of people who had a investment in the Roman Empire and a lot of people who could serve in the Legion