N***** in a Woodpile.

Boromedic

Not to raise the dead or anything - although I clearly am! Saw this today and it made me think of this thread........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-commentator-gets-schooled-historian-diversity-roman/

Drew_TNBD

Boromedic said:

Not to raise the dead or anything - although I clearly am! Saw this today and it made me think of this thread........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-commentator-gets-schooled-historian-diversity-roman/

The interesting thing about that is... if the Romans really were so diverse.. how come:
"on average 25%-40% of the ancestry of modern Britons is attributable to the Anglo-Saxons."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35344663

And how come:
"Oppenheimer, basing his research on the Weale and Capelli studies, maintains that none of the invasions since the Romans have had a significant impact on the gene pool of the British Isles, and that the inhabitants from prehistoric times belong to an Iberian genetic grouping. He says that most people in the British Isles are genetically similar to the Basque people of northern Spain and southwestern France, from 90% in Wales to 66% in East Anglia."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_British_Isles



Those are huge numbers for supposed diversity. That BBC video that PJW complained about is a little imaginative in it's colour selection!!

Fretwired

Boromedic said:

Not to raise the dead or anything - although I clearly am! Saw this today and it made me think of this thread........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-commentator-gets-schooled-historian-diversity-roman/

Of course Britain was diverse. London boomed and traders came from all over and brought their slaves, many who were black. And the Roman military garrison at the fort of Burgh-by-Sands, on Hadrian’s wall in Cumbria, was the Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum which was raised in North Africa.

Boromedic

Yep, I remember doing loads on the Romans at school including trips to Hadrians Wall and York as I grew up in the north east so it was all close by. They didn't really cover diversity though and going back to stuff I said before they never really showed ethnically diverse Romans from what I remember but maybe they did and I just wasn't as alive to it as I am now. Then going on the points Drew posted maybe that's why because they left very little trace in the end even in our DNA, who knows? Although the retort in the Twitter feed listed Moors in garrison at Hadrians, maybe with the fall of the empire they left or were killed and kept to themselves rather than spreading their seed too much!!

Then of course after that our empire building had even more widening of the diversity of the country, although obviously that came with a lot of downsides too.

capo4th

Has he been found? 

Myranda

Takes a special kind of alt-right nut-job to argue Roman history with a Roman Historian when one side has access to centuries of aquired and discovered facts, understandings and evidence... the other has a loud voice and doesn't like darkies... 

As for the Angles and the Saxons - they invaded after the Romans left... and if they did much killing then maybe they killed off the peoples they didn't like (brown people?)... perhaps the ethnically diverse parts of the Roman occupation left with the Romans? Perhaps they faced persecution for being different and left? Perhaps they faced persecution for being collaborators and were chased off? 

If we're being told that at least one wealthy individual was black then it's not beyond the pale that some poor ones were too, and I suspect someone who has dedicated much of their adult life to Roman history might know more than we will after 5 minutes of Google-research...

We're fairly sure the Roman Empire included black citizens and travel was permitted between provinces, so even without the movement of troops and affluent camp-followers there could easily have been powerful black, mid-eastern or southern europeans moving to the UK to take over positions of influence that opened up when Britain became part of the empire, and afterwards to trade... so why is it strange to think that there were black people here...

Also also... the initial rant in the article was about a BBC show that had a roman soldier being black - that's not to say many, all or even most were black... just that the one hypothetical soldier they followed was - that's not being "ethnically diverse for the sake of it" and there WERE definitely SOME black soldiers... to assume that the BBC is suggesting huge swathes of the forces were black based on showing 1 black soldier is at best silly.

Boromedic

Yeah but it fits the narrative for the anti PC brigade doesn't it?

There needs to be a closing of the gaps again, I think most normal people are centre left or centre right but as soon as anyone utters a different argument you're either branded as an alt-right racist or a wacko left wing communist maniac. It's getting silly tbf, I've been guilty of questioning those with right leaning views but I wasn't calling them loony nationalists just querying their viewpoints and I'm still learning (as we all are hopefully), however I'm still more on the left side of the divide and a lot of the subjective experiences I hear from people don't always stack up to the commonly quoted facts or statistics. Who knows, can't we all just get along?!!

chillidoggy

capo4th said:

Has he been found? 

Sambostar? No, he's still missing in action.

Mind you, he could have gone back to Transylvania in disgust at all this Brexit malarkey.