> I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans > Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same

> I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans > Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same? Let me rephrase - the reason you see italian looking romanians is because some romanians are descendants of italics and hispanics. Italians, better yet their ancestors, were brought in along with anatolian greeks, ilyrians, celts, syrians, thraco dacians, semites, north africans, etc as colonists during the first invasion of the province of dacia. The list of legions deployed into Dacia seem to indicate that they have also included some italics and hispanics. The second invasion, during Constantine the Great covered the south of Romania and likely led to another batch of colonists. The north west of Romania, around Maramures, had another batch of italian colonists, "the old romans" (christan romans) that fled persecution by langobards. The final somewhat relevant batch of italians moved to romania around the start of the great italian migration. Having said that, the south of Romania also has significant influence, and a different skin tone, due to the influence of the eastern roman empire, followed by the byzantine empire, and then the ottoman empire. The central european part, transylvania, is lighter in tone due to the presence of dacians, celts, gepids, ostrogoth, visigoths, west slavs, huns, and maghiars. The celtic presence was so intense that celtic villages are somewhat frequently discovered in the region. Fun fact is that a german ethnic was the first to mention the name of Romania, for the territory that modern Romanians inhabit - Martin Felmer, Prima Linae i believe, 1779. Moldavia, including the Republic of Moldavia which was part of the Dacian Province, and Scythia, had a stronger slavic influence and is reflected in people's looks. It also has a strong turkish influence due to the ottoman empire, slavic due to the russian empire, jewish due to a significant jewish presence until the second world war. Then of course, all regions have a Roma influence, as those people, as the article points out - albeit a bit off in regarding to whom enslaved them (Romania was not a country back then, the regions were either Austrian-Hungarian, Ottoman vassals, or in the Russian Empire) - were distributed as slaves throught. Bottom line is that it is difficult to pin point a specific romanian look. But those that look italian look so because of the above reasons. Those that are not "citizens of Rome" even if they arrived hundreds of years ago, look, speak, and think, according to their own culture.