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Stranger things have happened. Like the viking buddha: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/20
by hprotagonist 6y ago
Stranger things have happened. Like the viking buddha: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viking-age-buddha/ http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki...
material goods travel farther than the people who made them. And we are increasingly finding that it was the case that ancient and medieval trade routes were generally longer and more robust than we had once believed.
- supernova87a 6y agoReportedly there are villages along the Silk Road in remote western China, where some people are blond haired, blue eyed, descendants of lost (or decided-to-settle) traders or soldiers from centuries ago. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8154490/Chinese-villagers-descended-from-Roman-soldiers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/815449...
- hprotagonist 6y agothe "roman lost legion" thing is probably mythical. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-needed-to-explain-chinese-blondes https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/no-romans-need...
- supernova87a 6y agoAh, interesting. Well, yes, UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source.
- mattlondon 6y ago> UK Telegraph isn't the most reliable source. Why not? As far as I am aware it is a legitimate and decent journalistic news source. It might have a political leaning, but for this sort of reporting I don't think it would give their preferred political party and leverage.
- OJFord 6y agoTaking you very literally I don't know what the most reliable source is, nevermind claim it to be the Telegraph, but I'm not really sure what the implication is, or perhaps rather its reasoning? It's a perfectly respectable paper; (along with The Times) a paper of record.
- zipwitch 6y agoThat lost legion probably is. The ones Publius Quinctilius Varus lost (along with his head) are quite well documented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
- Waterfall 6y agoThere's even a village of Jews that was intergrated into society. East Asia likes Jews for whatever reason, even Japan an axis power didn't give them up.
- supernova87a 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jews_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jews_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MApRCy3xq6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MApRCy3xq6c Quite remarkable and unusual.
- DonaldFisk 6y agoThe idea of a lost Roman legion in China isn't taken seriously by scholars. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian Further west along the silk road from Gansu, the earliest documented inhabitants of Xinjiang were the Tocharians. They had brown, red, or blond hair, spoke two different Indo-European languages (Tocharian A and B), and were Buddhist. They're a more likely source of blond hair in western China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies
- dghughes 6y agoThe Tarim mummies. Many centuries ago about 3,800 years ago. I remember seeing one that had a large pointed felt hat like a stereotypical witch would wear. Being blond haired and blue eyed doesn't mean much though since there are some non-European cultures where it exists. Solomon Islands people, and I've known blond Lebanese people, supposedly there are some blond north African people too.
- Tagbert 6y agoThere were people (Tocharians for one) in Central Asia and Western China who descend from Indo-European migrants from the Black Sea area.
- jeffchien 6y agoThe Silk Road also had Romans and other Mediterranean cultures exporting "sea silk" generated by Mediterranean mussels eastward, even to China [1]. The Greeks, Romans, and Arabs called it "sea wool", which may have caused some Chinese to believe that it came from some sort of "sea sheep" or mermaids. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_silk#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_silk#China