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This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity. On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cl
by A_D_E_P_T 4mo ago
This is strictly about linguistic similarity and not genetic similarity.
On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap. Romanians cluster with their Balkan neighbors, (1) on account of massive Slavic migration from around the 7th century AD, and (2) on account of strong historical and genetic evidence to suggest that the Roman colonists sent to Dacia were largely recruited from neighboring Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.
Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!
- dhosek 4mo agoI still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.
- rnewme 4mo agoArrived in Europe?
- gwerbin 4mo agoThe scale and distances of migrations throughout Europe in the 4th-5th centuries are hard to comprehend, as well as the rapid transformation of the societies of the groups that migrated. It has the same feel to me as a major geological event, like the breaking apart of Pangea.
- pm3003 4mo agoResearch on this topic has been very active since the late 2000s (before that scholars on the topic had been very few). It seems that the scale of the migrations are much better understood now (100k-300k people over 3 centuries). But as you say, the rapid transformation of the societies of the groups that migrated at the time is very hard to comprehend, but also the changes of those where they migrated, in cases where it was more of a fusion than an invasion / displacement. I think it is a very interesting point to offer to those in Europe minimizing the current migration waves (often for noble reasons of reducing racism and countering far right ideologies). It's no use denying that welcoming tens of millions of people from other cultures over a few decades has and will have very deep social and political effects.
- gwerbin 4mo ago[dead]
- Quarrel 4mo agoThe earliest Roman records of Slavs are of the Veneti, who lived in roughly western Ukraine, Belarus, south-east Poland. Very much in Europe. Then, like now, they were the people east of the German speakers.
- pm3003 4mo agoThere are Germans from Slavic / protoslavic descent in North-Eastern Germany aside from the small Slavuc speaking minorities. Some location names and family names (Wend, Wenden, etc) are very telling in this regard. I like this direct link to ancient history.
- tremon 4mo agoIt's an open question whether the Veneti themselves were ethnically Slavic though. We know of the earlier Gallic Veneti, which were a Celtic seafaring tribe that settled multiple locations along the European coastline. The Italian region Veneto and the city Venice can also trace their names to an ancient group called "Veneti", and they seem to have spoken a mix of Italic and Celtic. In contrast, the Slavic language seems to have originated much further east. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetic_language : A 2012 study has suggested that Venetic was a relatively conservative language significantly similar to Celtic, on the basis of morphology, while it occupied an intermediate position between Celtic and Italic, on the basis of phonology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Proto-Slavic#Pre-Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Proto-Slavic#Pre-Sl... : The most archaic Slavic hydronyms are found here, along the middle Dnieper, Pripet and upper Dniester rivers [..] inherited Common Slavic vocabulary [includes] well-developed terminology for inland bodies of water (lakes, river, swamps) and kinds of forest (deciduous and coniferous), for the trees, plants, animals and birds indigenous to the temperate forest zone, and for the fish native to its waters The fact that the Slavic language seems to have developed inland but the Veneti mostly settled coastal areas puts a big question mark under the Veneti == Slavs link.
- maratc 4mo agoThis might be a by-product of how you define what “Europe” is, though.
- seliopou 4mo agoWhy is genetics more important than any other tie to the Roman empire?
- anon84873628 4mo agoDon't know why this was down voted. Most people ruled by the Roman empire weren't ethnic Romans. Even in the early days it started as a mix of Italic tribes like the Latins and Sabines. And in 212 AD the edict of Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the empire. I imagined this was sort of the whole point of the article.
- benj111 4mo ago>Don't know why this was down voted I have noticed a trend of challenges to unspoken assumptions being down voted. I don't know if it's being read as being argumentative/low effort. I agree with you and the parent. How do you define ethnically Roman? Those from the city of Rome? Some average of the empire? What about when it split in 2? Is ethnicity even important? What ethnicity do you have to be, to be USian??? British?
- frollogaston 4mo agoAmericans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- trashb 4mo agoEthnicity is hard to define and a term that spurs a lot of debate. Therefore I think it is best avoided in serious discussion. For America (and in extension the american continent) it is quite clear who is ethnically native, actually it is probably one of the clearest examples there is partly because it is near in history. And already it gets messy when you dig deeper because of limited record keeping etc. Broadly in the Americas anyone that was there before Columbus is considered native. Anyone that came after is considered migrant. Anyone born into native heritage can be considered descendant of native and thus native themselves. British ethnicity is a thing though British ethnicity is messy and quite complex, are we talking before or after migration of the vikings? Before or after roman rein? Are we considering Ireland or Scotland separate? What about intermixing with neighboring countries through trade? Before, in or after British colonial empire?
- senkora 4mo agoSince PCA maps are fun to look at, here’s one for modern-day populations: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1n8xjl6/genome_ancestry_clusters_of_presentday_europeans/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1n8xjl6/genome_anc...
- reconnecting 4mo ago[dead]
- le-mark 4mo ago> Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots I’ve often wondered what the ethnicity of ancient Romans actually was. Looking at pictures of Greek Cypriots on google was enlightening. The “Roman nose” is quite prominent for many people!
- pm3003 4mo agoHalf of Italy was ethnically Greek / Hellenized (Kai tu teknon!).
- carlosjobim 4mo agoTheir ethnicity would of course be Roman, and sub-tribes of Romans. Or am I missing something? We can't apply modern ethnicities as the template to fit ancient ethnicities. It can only be the other way around.
- tremon 4mo agoThe point is that "Roman" is no more an ethnicity than "American" is (as referring to "citizen of the USA" here, not Native American). Roman was a cultural identity, not a genetic one.
- salemh 4mo ago[dead]
- noIdeaTheSecond 4mo ago"On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap" Can you help me understand how do I look for Romans on a PCA map? For contemporary nations I think I can manage but for Romans I don't
- A_D_E_P_T 4mo agoRome through the ages: > https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826 The data suggests that Republican Rome was a mix of the local Copper Age populations of central Italy and incoming Bronze Age nomadic populations from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. This doesn't map neatly to any modern population, but is fairly generically "Iron Age European." The Imperial Era was more cosmopolitan, with massive genetic inflow from the east Med: > During the Imperial period (n = 48 individuals), the most prominent trend is an ancestry shift toward the eastern Mediterranean and with very few individuals of primarily western European ancestry (Fig. 3C). The distribution of Imperial Romans in PCA largely overlaps with modern Mediterranean and Near Eastern populations, such as Greek, Maltese, Cypriot, and Syrian (Figs. 2A and 3C). This shift is accompanied by a further increase in the Neolithic Iranian component in ADMIXTURE (Fig. 2B) and is supported by f-statistics (tables S20 and S21): compared to Iron Age individuals, the Imperial population shares more alleles with early Bronze Age Jordanians (f4 statistics Z-score = 4.2) and shows significant introgression signals in admixture f3 for this population, as well as for Bronze Age Lebanese and Iron Age Iranians (Z-score < −3.4).
- derdi 4mo agoNone of these statements are meaningful without a definition on your part of what it means to be "Ancient Roman" in a genetic sense. Do you mean, say, a handful of villagers living in the area of today's Rome on 21 April 753 BCE? I'll grant you that those were possibly a homogeneous bunch. Anything later? Definitely not. Trying to pretend that there is something like a clear genetic definition of "Roman" is... what do you call it? Racism. But don't worry, not the "bad" kind, just the "scientific" kind.
- roysting 4mo ago[flagged]
- derdi 4mo agoYou're right! To the Romans, every Roman citizen was a Roman. There was no "genetically Roman" category. The OP's "genetic" category is indeed a "made up concept", as you say! And the reason they made it up is the reason I stated above.
- pm3003 4mo ago>It’s like how peasants used to say that the King is a divine representative of God, because that was the king and the system’s con job back then, to make the dumb peasants obedient through religion. Well no one really knows because most of this comes from the writing ruling classes. If we're talking Middle Ages and the Modern Age, France offers an interesting example : absolute monarchy by divine right came very late (17th cent) and was almost never fully accepted. The system relied greatly on religion (which kept one's standing within a social class), weak origin stories (the Franks came and conquered the Gallo-Romans/ my ancestor fought in the crusades, which is why you're a serf), and a very strong system of local rights and privileges (I'm a legitimate ruler because I keep your right to hold poultry markets on Sundays, which the next village doesn't have). The divine dimension you refer to was a constant effort in France and England (where the king was not a religious ruler) well described in "The Royal Touch" by Marc Bloch.
- pm3003 4mo agoWell we've got to define something ... I'd opt for something like Latium natives of 750-300 BCE, adding Etruscans. My point is to exclude Magna Graecia, because it would make it harder to make an ethnocultural statement or conclusion.
- bloppe 4mo agoRome was famously multi-ethnic. This is sort of like asking who are the "ethnic Americans". It's just the wrong question to ask.
- carlosjobim 4mo agoWhat do you mean? Native American Indians are exactly ethnic Americans. The rest are from other ethnicities. Just as there were (are) ethnic Romans.
- rodric 4mo agoWhile I can appreciate this, it was not the historical point of view of the people calling themselves Americans. “What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” ~J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, 1782 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/letter_03.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/letter_03.asp
- carlosjobim 4mo agoDoes it matter much if they called themselves American? The tribes and nations on the continent were certainly more related to each other than to the arrivals from other continents. Just as European tribes and nations were more related to each other than to faraway peoples. And African tribes and nations. The "American" described in your quote there by Crevecoeur is not an American in any ethnic sense. Any modern non-native person calling themselves an American, can only do that in a cultural and ideological sense. Which is of course immensely strong by itself. Just as Catholic, Protestant, Communist, and other non-ethnic labels people have identified with.
- rightbyte 4mo agoDoesn't "Roman" imply Roman Empire, not the city, though? Those principal component analysis mappings are also quite susceptible to heavy leaning on a posteriori interpretations.
- romanusrome 4mo ago[dead]
- userulluipeste 4mo agoDacia (Felix) was the Roman Empire's richest region in gold, and this was a very advertised fact. Emperor Trajan's triumphal entry in Rome had in full display the spoils of war, and it was the richest in gold and silver in the entire Roman Empire's history. It's expected that, after "pax romana" went into effect, there to occur a gold rush like the one that happened in USA, drawing massive immigration to the region from all over the empire. Here's one of the gold mining settlements, founded at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro%C8%99ia_Montan%C4%83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro%C8%99ia_Montan%C4%83 Considering that Dacia Felix was the last incorporated roman province, so the pool of potential immigrants was literally from the Roman Empire at one of its largest territorial extension and thus -- of the highest ethnic diversity. The fact that the region got mixed up genetically and now resembles that of the rest of the Balkan peninsula could be explained by later events. There was massive Slavic migration to the region, then there was significant depopulation of the plains surrounding Carpathian Mountains when Mongols invaded (and periodically raided the region for loot and slaves), and then there was also a massive wave of christian refugees fleeing from the Ottoman Empire expansion to the (still christian) areas north of Danube.