About two-thirds of the inhabitants of one of the Chinese villages are possibly descendants of ancient Roman soldiers. Genetic tests have confirmed at least 56% of residents are European, writes the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph
Lician village is located in northwestern China, at the edge of the Gobi Desert. Many residents of Litsian have an atypical appearance for the native Chinese - they have blue or green eyes, long noses and even blond hair, which raised suspicions about their European origin.
Tsai Junnian, nicknamed Tsai Luoma, or Tsai The Roman, like many of his fellow villagers, agrees that he descended from ancient warriors.
In these places, the Great Silk Road once passed. Archaeologists intend to work there to find facts indicating contacts between ancient China and the Roman Empire, said the head of the recently established Center for Italian Studies at Lanzhou University in Gansu Province.
It is assumed that the ancient Roman soldiers settled in these places in the 1st century BC. The fact is that in 53 BC, the battle of Carrhae took place between the army of the commander Marcus Licinius Crassus and the army of the Parthians, which outnumbered him in number, which came from the territory of present-day Iran. The Parthians stopped the advance of the Roman Empire to the east: Crassus's legion was defeated. True, the Battle of Karrah took place in the area where the Turkish city of Harran is now located, on the border with Syria.
Thousands of Romans died in that battle, Crassus himself was executed. But some of the soldiers, escaping captivity and execution, moved east, hoping to escape from the enemy by flight. The Daily Mail even gives the exact number of these soldiers: 145.
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In 36 BC, they were hired to serve the Xiongnu people, taking part in the battle with the Chinese, and they captured them. In the Chinese chronicles there is a mention of the capture of a military unit, resembling in its structure the outlines of a fish. Perhaps we are talking about the phalanx used by the Roman legionaries. Subsequently, the Romans were released from captivity and settled in the steppes of western China, founding Litsian.
This theory was first put forward in the 1950s by Professor Homer Dubs, who studied Chinese history at the University of Oxford. But other experts believe that the current inhabitants of the village may not be descendants of the ancient Romans, but of other soldiers of the Xiongnu army, among whom there were Europeans. For example, the theory of the ancient Roman origin of modern Chinese is rejected by the anthropologist from the University of Siena, Maurizio Bettini.
“For it to be indisputable, you need to find items such as coins and weapons, typical of Roman legionaries. Without evidence of this kind, the story of the lost legions is just a legend,”he said.
The discovery of such objects has not yet been reported, but archaeologists have already started excavating ancient burials and found in one of the graves the remains of a man whose height reached about 180 cm. This also indicates the possible presence of ancient Romans in those places.
By the way, in the 2nd century AD, under the Emperor Trajan, the Roman Empire reached the peak of its territorial power, while the Han Empire began to decay. According to most historians, the only direct connection between these empires was the Great Silk Road. Therefore, skeptics point out that along it, there may indeed be burials of ancient Romans and other Europeans who died on the road.
Many scholars regard Professor Dubs' theory as "interesting and provocative," but criticize it for being too hasty. Yang Gongle, a professor at Peking University, also notes the lack of evidence for the "ancient Roman" theory. According to him, Litsian was founded in 104 BC, i.e. half a century before the appearance of ancient Roman soldiers in those places.
