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The last Romans are still around

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Re: The last Romans are still around

#231

Post by BetaDeltaAlpha »

Amezarak wrote: post #149
derdi wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None 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 d…

This is a silly argument. Biology is inherently messy and “ethnicity” is just a fuzzy clustering. You can make the exact same argument about “species” - because that too is a human abstraction that breaks down in biological reality because there are no clear lines.

> You can make the exact same argument about “species”

There's a clear line in this case: A species is a group of any living beings that can produce fertile offspring.

Donkeys and Horses are separate species because they breed and produce Mules which cannot reproduce.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#232

Post by userulluipeste »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #30

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…

Dacia (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

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.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#233

Post by tremon »

carlosjobim wrote: post #144
le-mark wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

Their 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.

The 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.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#234

Post by prox »

tar0m wrote: post #218
prox wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the first word means Senate, does any of the Roman municipal bodies consider them to be a Senate like body? As a Roman, how do you relate to the far past? I mean you must have grown up with so many reminders of the Roman legacy in day to day affairs.

Interesting questions. For the "senate" part, I'm not sure but I would lean towards no. SPQR is mostly a symbol nowadays and doesn't necessarily refer to its original meaning. The modern political status of Rome is messy, with some degree of independence by virtue of being the capital, but not nearly enough when you compare it to other Western capitals. It's an ongoing debate. In terms of the far past, well... there…

Thanks a lot for talking me through the experience of Roman living history you could say. I read a part of “Ad urbe condita” by Livy and amazing how direct the book is on its history.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#235

Post by Amezarak »

BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #231
Amezarak wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly argument. Biology is inherently messy and “ethnicity” is just a fuzzy clustering. You can make the exact same argument about “species” - because that too is a human abstraction that breaks down in biological reality because there are no clear lines.

> You can make the exact same argument about “species” There's a clear line in this case: A species is a group of any living beings that can produce fertile offspring. Donkeys and Horses are separate species because they breed and produce Mules which cannot reproduce.

Nope, not only is that not the definition of species, it’s not even true in the case you mention - mules are sometimes fertile.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#236

Post by Amezarak »

derdi wrote: post #152
Amezarak wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly argument. Biology is inherently messy and “ethnicity” is just a fuzzy clustering. You can make the exact same argument about “species” - because that too is a human abstraction that breaks down in biological reality because there are no clear lines.

> This is a silly argument. My main argument was that the OP's supposedly clear-cut genetic category was not defined. You also seem to be saying that it's not clear-cut and defined. So why are you saying that my argument is silly, as opposed to the OP's? > “ethnicity” Neither the OP nor I mentioned this word, of course. You're shifting the goalposts. One could pick out a certain set of genetic markers, and one could…

Virtually nobody really uses that definition of species because it’s totally untenable in practice - you’d put every species of wolf, dog, and coyote in the same bucket, for a simple example, but it gets much worse than this. Ligers are sometimes fertile, are lions and tigers the same species? Are vast swaths of the current catalogue of hominids the same species? When you get into fish and birds this becomes even more nightmarish. Let’s not even talk about plants. Further complicating this is that “ability to interbreed” is not even transitive!

Or consider looking at it from the other direction - it only even seems to make sense if you have some preconceived notion about species anyway. If two humans are infertile or have an infertile child, does that make them different species from each other? Of course not.

I’m not making a novel argument, Darwin goes in-depth on this very topic in the Origin of Species.

“Species” and “ethnicity” (to which “ancient Roman” belongs) are in fact identical concepts; the only difference is the zoom setting on populations, which in both cases varies for any specific example but generally is farther out for species and closer in for ethnicity. In both cases they are arbitrary lines drawn around real clustering of population genetics.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#237

Post by Mr_Minderbinder »

flohofwoe wrote: post #210
TonyStr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Roman Empire lives on today. Turkey is the legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire

Maybe in Erdogans dreams ;) (

That claim rests on their being the successor to another state (the Ottoman Empire) whose claim rests on the right of conquest. “Roman Emperor” was one of the titles of the Ottoman sultans and it received some recognition from both their subjects (who continued to call themselves “Roman” for centuries) and other states.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#238

Post by gwerbin »

pm3003 wrote: post #192
gwerbin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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.

Research 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 wher…

[dead]

Re: The last Romans are still around

#239

Post by derdi »

Amezarak wrote: post #236
derdi wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a silly argument. My main argument was that the OP's supposedly clear-cut genetic category was not defined. You also seem to be saying that it's not clear-cut and defined. So why are you saying that my argument is silly, as opposed to the OP's? > “ethnicity” Neither the OP nor I mentioned this word, of course. You're shifting the goalposts. One could pick out a certain set of genetic markers, and one could…

Virtually nobody really uses that definition of species because it’s totally untenable in practice - you’d put every species of wolf, dog, and coyote in the same bucket, for a simple example, but it gets much worse than this. Ligers are sometimes fertile, are lions and tigers the same species? Are vast swaths of the current catalogue of hominids the same species? When you get into fish and birds this becomes even mor…

OK. You don't agree with the OP's "arbitrary lines", I don't agree with the OP's arbitrary lines, I still don't understand why you felt you needed to attack me for this. But I hope you have a lovely day.

Re: The last Romans are still around

#240

Post by pjio »

onraglanroad wrote: post #223
pjio wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that the "Heiliges Römisches Reich" (literal translation "Holy Roman Realm") considered itself the successor of the Roman Republic. The English referred to the Roman Republic by what it was in the modern sense: an empire. Therefore its self-proclaimed successor got translated as "Holy Roman Empire", which, unlike the original, it is not.

It's a little odd to blame this on the English translation since Voltaire was, naturally, writing in French: "Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire."

Fair point, the original sentence is French and not English. Both are closer to Latin than German, so the mistranslation might be more on the German side.
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