Talk:Sino-Roman relations

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December 5, 2005

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[edit] Caspian castaways

The context claims these Indi as evidence for the Northeast Passage and the northward strait out of the Caspian Sea;

What does that mean? That there was a connection from the Caspian to the Arctic? --Error 9 July 2005 00:59 (UTC)

Most of the ancients believed there was such a passage, of those who thought about it at all. Septentrionalis 13:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

This article makes the case that they were actually Native Americans. Kuralyov 9 July 2005 01:07 (UTC)

[edit] Date wars

This page appears to have been originally written using AD/BC (except perhaps for the mention of Augustus). It concerns no religious topic, and the labels are essential for clarity. Changing to CE/BCE is the abusive form of political correctness; please just leave things alone. Wikipedia is inconsistent. Septentrionalis 13:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what article you're looking at, but this one was certainly started using BCE/CE, as can be seen quite clearly in the history [1]. It is User:Jguk who changed BCE/CE to BC/AD here [2]. Sortan 15:34, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Sortan is a sockpuppet used to troll on this issue, as a check on his user contributions will prove. Please do not feed the trolls, jguk 17:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Embassies and Silk Route

Just in passing, the embassies to China merely claimed to be embassies from Rome. There is no evidence they were embassies from Rome. Anyone mind if I change it to make that clear? The Silk Road never existed and so should not be referred to quite so often. And while I am here there is no reason to think the Xiongnu are Huns. Anyone object to a few minor changes? Lao Wai 17:18, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Roman soldiers in the East

This is a classic example of some reporters are trying to make some bread money.

The account of the so-called blue eye blond Roman legionary settled down in Northern China has been proved to be false. This report has been circulating on many Chinese newspapers in the last few years. The story was initially generated from a small village (Liqian) in Shanxi province. There’re many villagers who have some western facial characteristics such as blond hair and blue eyes. Some lousy reporters made a big deal out of it and fabricated a “Lost Roman Legion in China” story. But this story lacks many fundamental historical evidence to back it up and it is fatally flawed. According to the numerous well-known Chinese historians, the Liqian western looking villagers have absolutely no connection with Crassus' lost legion. Latin Romans rarely had blue eyes and blond hair anyway. This is more of a Barbarian character. The fish-scale formation was not adopted by Romans alone. The formation was used by many countries other than the Romans. It sounds so ridiculous that those reporters are trying to tie the name of Lixuan with Legio because the similarity on the pronunciation.

The bottom line is simple: both Parthians and Huns have their unique battle tactics which are almost opposite of Romans. Roman’s rely on their heavy infantry to fight set battles. However the eastern armys, like Parthian’s and Huns were calvary armies which were much more mobile. Very few Crassus' soldiers survived the battle of Carrhae, not to mention the extreme long and deadly expedition to the western border of Han Dynasty. It’s very doubtful that Parthians would’ve kept each surviving Roman century after their defeat. After all, preserving your captives’ ranks and units is like encouraging them to rebel. It’s even more doubtful the mobile Hun cavalry would adopt Roman heavy infantry battle scheme to fight Han cavalry. The fantasy story of Roman legions showing up on the river bank of Yellow river in their full segamentatas and red tunics and ready to battle the Han army is as laughable as “Alien vs. Predator”.

Romans and Ancient Greeks were known to be blond and blue eyed. Only after centuries of Asian and African intermarriage do Italians and Greeks look they way they do now. There is nothing inconsistent with the Romans in Liqian being blond and blue eyed. Also, the foundation ruins and DNA tests have also proven Roman links.

- Mediterranean people (especially ancient Greek and Roman) used to have blonde hair and blue eyes until the Moors got into Europe. Only then the Italians, Spanish and Greeks adopted those facial characteristics.

Romans and ancient Greeks were not known to be blond and blue eyed. In fact Romans specifically commented on the Gauls and Germans for being blond and blue eyed. Moreover the number of Arabs who invaded the Middle East was small. The majority of what we now call Arabs are probably locals who have become Muslims and Arabic-speaking - Greeks and Romans in fact. Greece and Rome both got heavy influxes of northerners - Germans in Italy, Slavs in Greece - so they may be more blond and blue eyed than they were. There is precisely no reason to think any Romans who may have made it to China were blond - you can start by finding out where this alleged unit was stationed as they recuited locally. Given their involvement in Persia, they were probably all Syrian anyway. What DNA tests? Lao Wai 10:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

To return to the subject once more, the sources that are provided, if read properly, do not prove what the article was claiming. Let me quote:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-08/24/content_3396301.htm

In 1955, Homer Hasenflug Dubs, professor of Chinese history at Oxford University, surmised that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 BC made their way east to today's Uzbekistan and later enlisted with the Hun chieftain Jzh Jzh against the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

Dubs derived his speculation from ancient Chinese Han Dynasty history annals, which described a battle between the Han empire and Jzh Jzh in western China.

The annals noted that about 150 men from Jzh Jzh's army took up a "fish-scale formation," which Dubs surmised to have been the Roman testudo formation.

Dubs then asserted that these men, captured by the Chinese, then settled and built their own town called Liqian (Li-chien) the Chinese transliteration of "Alexandria."

Thus the Han Shu says nothing of relevance - just that 150 men fighting in a Fish-scale formation, whatever that is, were captured. Dubs made the rest up.

http://www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/china.html

This idea was first proposed by Homer Hasenphlug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, who speculated in 1955 that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 B.C. made their way east to Uzbekistan to enlist with Jzh Jzh against the Han. Chinese accounts of the battle, in which Jzh Jzh was decapitated and his army defeated, note unusual military formations and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns. Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border guards, settling them in Liqian, a short form of Alexandria used by the Chinese to denote Rome. While some Chinese scholars have been critical of Dubs' hypothesis, others went so far as to identify Lou Zhuangzi as the probable location of Liqian in the late 1980s.

Ten years later, still no academic papers have been published on the subject, and no archaeological investigation has been conducted in Lou Zhuangzi', but the media and local government remain unfazed. County officials, sensing potential tourist revenue, have erected a Doric pavilion in Lou Zhuangzi, while the county capital of Yongchang has decorated its main thoroughfare with enormous statues of a Roman soldier and a Roman woman flanking a Communist party official.

Need I go on? No blond Roman soldiers, no Roman soldiers at all in fact, just the claim of one academic. Lao Wai 09:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

It's true that the Romans do seem to have been generally dark-haired and swarthy (as shown on mosaics and paintings). However, there were units of Gallic cavalry accompanying Crassus, who would have been blue-eyed and blond.

More than that, Cisalpine Gaul was a major recruiting center in this period, populated by Romanized Gauls.

[edit] Quote

I found a quote on another website that linked to this Wikipedia page, reading:

As for the king, he is not a permanent figure but is chosen as the man most worthy… The people in this country are tall and regularly featured. They resemble the Chinese, and that is why the country is called Da Qin (The "Great" Qin)… The soil produced lots of gold, silver and rare jewels, including the jewel which shines at night… they sew embroidered tissues with gold threads to form tapestries and damask of many colours, and make a gold-painted cloth, and a "cloth washed-in-the-fire" (asbestos)

Could anyone tell me where this came from so I can see the rest of it? KongminRegent 22:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You can find the whole account in the paragraphs on Da Qin in [3]. Regards PHG 23:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ban Chao in Parthia

"The Chinese army made an alliance with the Parthians and established some forts at a distance of a few days march from the Parthian capital Ctesiphon and held the region for several years. In 116, after the conquest of Dacia's gold and silver mines in year 106, the Roman Emperor Trajan advanced into Parthia to Ctesiphon and came within one day's march of the Chinese border garrisons, but direct contacts never took place."

I rode all the sources about the parthian empire, the campaigns of Ban Chao and the campaign of Trajan at 117, and there aren't any evidence about garrisons near Ctesiphon or Ban Chao army into parthian empire. So in few time i will correct it.

-Fco

I think I wrote this part, and took it from one of my history books. Unfortunately I did not take the reference at the time, so I'll have to look for it again. Normally you could add a {{Fact}} tag without deleting, until I can find again my source. Regards. PHG 20:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, now i can't see that portion of the text althought i didn't change it. -Fco

[edit] Removed

I removed some lines about Alexander for two particular reasons: 1. theories cannot be utilized as historical evidence. For example, there is no proof to demonstrate that the Romans utilized the Greek road to go to India (and later China.) 2. The article is Sino-Roman relations, not Sino-Graeco relations. The latter needs a separate article.

Lao Wai, about the theory of the Roman soldiers in the east, read this:

"The development and wide application of DNA technologies have opened a new approach for researchers like Xie, who are bent on unraveling the mystery.

DNA lends a hand

However, Xie and his colleagues are encountering tremendous complexities.

The area where Yongchang is located was a trade hub along the ancient Silk Road, where people of various ethnicities from as far as the Mediterranean came and went, Xie said.

Moreover, soldiers in the Roman legions were supposed to consist of peoples of different ethnic and national backgrounds.

Because the Roman Empire was at that time at the height of its power and splendor, it had conquered many countries and regions across Europe, Africa and West Asia, he added.

According to Zhou Ruixia, Xie's assistant, they will build up the genetic data from the local villagers with Caucasian features and compare the data with those of European as well as Western, Central and East Asians.

They will report their research results in academic journals in the United States or Britain.

Two years ago, Ma Runlin, a bio-chemist based in Beijing, also collected blood samples from Yongchang people for DNA analysis.

However, he has not finished his research yet.

In an e-mail to China Daily, Ma said he is collaborating with British researchers in the genetic study of the villagers' ancestry.

He does not know when he will finish the research.

"I have backache. I needed to input 1,000 lines of data with 16 numbers in each line yesterday ... We're doing the experiments at the fastest speed we can," the 26-year-old said. "Please don't push me any more."

Source: China Daily, 2005. www.chinaview.cn 2005-08-24 14:03:49"

So, before saying "no Roman soldiers at all in fact", we must wait for a DNA test.

Jack 23:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jinan?

Hi.

I noticed this:

"The Roman mission came from the south (therefore probably by sea), entering China by the frontier of Jinan or Tonkin."

What is being referred to here as "Jinan", anyway? The Chinese city, or the South Korean one? I'd vouch for the former, since the Romans did not know of the existence of Korea, nor did they know about the Pacific Ocean in the slightest and had no interest in finding out. 74.38.35.171 21:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Jinan is the Han dynasty name for the part of modern northern Vietnam the Han ruled. As they also ruled Korea. So Jinan is usually referred to as Tongking these days. At least in French and hence English. Obviously (Eastern Capital) it was not called that under the Han. Lao Wai 11:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Then why differentiate between the two if both are identical? 74.38.35.171 04:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what the original writer had in mind but I assume the intention was to say something like "Dacia, or modern Romania,...." So the Han referred to it as Jinan, but modern Vietnamese call it something else - although most of the world calls it Tongking which is just silly. Lao Wai 08:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Tonkin is named for Hanoi, which was called in Vietnamese Đông Kinh, meaning "eastern capital" (Like how Beijing in China means "Northern Capital".). Also, the Vietnamese name Bắc Kỳ, or "northern region". See the link. 74.38.35.171 01:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Roman coins in North Vietnam

I made a small edit to the following passage ({{ref}} -> {{fact}}) because the old template didn't seem to fit this context -- "eventually hundreds of Roman coins were discovered in North Vietnam in the 70s". J. Innes Miller notes that a "copper coin of the Roman Emperor Maximius (253-8) was found in the district of My-Tho in southern Vietnam" (The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969], p. 240), so this statement is not as improbable as it might seem at first glance. -- llywrch 22:42, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date Style

I just reverted an edit by 86.31.102.226 (Contributions) to return to the earlier dating style on this page.

Per the Manual of Style, "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change." Since there was no compelling reason for this change, I reverted it back and recommend 86.31.102.226 review the MOS before making such changes in the future.

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 18:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not Romans, but Yuezhi

Indeed, the Roman Legionaries where people of Mediteranean stock, most of them dark haired and brown eyed. During the time of the Carrhae Battle, the Roman Army had very few Gauls or central European recruits, so there is relative few chances to have blue eyed blonds among the Roman Legionaries at that time. It is more probable that the villagers from this remote area of contemporary China are inheriting the European racial features from the Yuezhi tribes which are well recorded Indo-European people, libing for centuries along the western frontier of Chinese Empire.

[edit] Need more Details

What did the romans learn about china from the first embassy and how did they communicate with the chinese to trade? the linguistic differences between latin and chinese are staggering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.35.9 (talk) 22:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusion

The page on Roman Commerce says in regards to trade with China:

["The Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han Chinese dynasty) recounted the first of several Roman embassies to China sent out by a Roman Emperor, probably Marcus Aurelius judging by the arrival date of 166 (Antoninus Pius is another possibility, but he died in 161. The confusion arises because Marcus Aurelius took the names of his predecessor as additional names, as a mark of respect and so is referred to in Chinese history as "An Tun", i.e. "Antoninus"). The mission came from the South, and therefore probably by sea, entering China by the frontier of Jinan or Tonkin. It brought presents of rhinoceros horns, ivory, and tortoise shell which had probably been acquired in Southern Asia.

The mission reached the Chinese capital of Luoyang in 166 and was met by Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty. About the same time, and possibly through this embassy, the Chinese acquired a treatise of astronomy from Daqin (Rome).

However, in the absence of any record of this on the Roman side of the silk road, it may be that the "ambassadors" were in reality free traders acting independently of Aurelius.

From the 3rd century we have a Chinese text, the Weilue, describing the products of the Roman Empire and the routes to it. [1]

Yet here on this article we have talk of Romans happily wondering about in Chinese cities mixing with the local populace to produce blonde blue-eyed Chinese children, its amazing how the Mediterraneans are so much like the Nordics. I don't know who or what to believe but logic tells me that 1) Rome didn't have any great relations with China to be worthy of a page, 2) any Westerners they did happen to meet weren't Romans or acting on behalf of the emperor 3) We have nothing to go on from the Roman prospective about this 4) We all like far fetched stories about how the Egyptians salied to the Americas to teach the Aztecs to build pyramids and how Altantis really existed etc but its probably false. This page in my opinion is fantastical, untill I see any book written about this page I refuse to believe it and will try and get it deleted. Smarred Wolet (talk) 12:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)