111–120 of 245 posts
Rome was an extremely militaristic society so they needed soldiers and what I understand is that your status in the military largely dictated your status in society. They requited soldiers from all of their empire thus all backgrounds within (late period).
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 B…
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!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though
Ethnicity 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…
Ethnicity is entirely arbitrary, that's why it should be avoided.
For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Ehy aren't they Asians or even Africans?
There is culture that you can tie to a group of people at a certain time and that group frequently has similar lineage. That's usually what people mean by ethnicity. They're using physical characteristics due to lineage that is associated with a culture and they call that ethnicity.
In this context of of Romans, there is really no ethnicity that should map to the cultural identity of "Ancient Roman" as the empire had many subjects across it's empire.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Senatus Populus ... Que Romani! The senate and people of Rome. Italy, per se, is a modern construct but the capital is still Rome and I think it fair to draw associations to the old empire. I love seeing the SPQR logo and I think it is a really useful link to the past.
Fun fact: The -gh endings of many English words share a proto–Indo European root with that enclitic¹ -que in Senatus Populusque Romani. I remember being skeptical of this when I first heard it assuming that the person was arguing for a shared Latin heritage until I dug in and discovered that it actually went back to PIE.² ⸻ 1. For the non-linguists here, an enclitic is a suffix added to a word that either functions a…
Of course, I only did a cursory examination, so there might be other examples not mentioned in the articles I found, but that's what I learned in about half an hour. Still, very cool fun fact, thanks!
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 B…
Why is genetics more important than any other tie to the Roman empire?
Identity-building projects need simple stories, genetics (or history generally) rarely gives them.
My name is Roman (father was Italian born in Rome and identifies as a Roman) and I always find it interesting that people try to speak something that sounds like Russian to me. Never thought about the fact they might think I’m Romanian and are speaking Romanian!
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 B…
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