Ancient World Review

Roman Legionaries In China? (UPDATE)

Comment: This theory is speculative, but the idea that Roman soldiers ended up in China isn't totally implausible. The general scenario of how it could have happened goes like this:

In 53 BC, the Roman politician and general Marcus Crassus (115-53 BC) was killed at the Battle of Carrhae when he led his army into a trap during his ill-advised invasion of Parthia, an empire which bordered on China:

"At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han dynasty of China, became a center of trade and commerce." (Wikipedia)

This map shows the location of Parthia when it was part of the Median Empire around 600 BC. Parthia is in the upper part of the yellow region just to the right of the Caspian Sea.

Crassus' invasion of Parthia was a complete disaster:

"In a slaughter known as the battle of Carrhae the Romans lost nearly their entire army and Crassus was killed. [The story is that the Parthians captured Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.] The remaining 10,000 or so Roman legionaries were captured." Source: War History Online.

The Parthians apparently used their Roman prisoners as border guards along the eastern frontiers:

"The Parthians had a standard practice of employing captured soldiers as border guards. By transferring the 10,000 legionaries to the eastern borders they prevented any realistic chance of escape for the Romans who likely would have simply accepted their new lot in life. Record of the soldiers vanish for about 17 years when the battle of Zhizhi was fought as a Chinese army under Chen Tang assaulted a border town known today as Taraz, located in Kazakhstan near the border of Kyrgyzstan." (War History Online)

According to the story, some of these former Roman soldiers and Parthian border guards fought as mercenaries at the battle of Zhizhi. They were either captured or defected to the Chinese, who were impressed by their fighting abilities and -- like the Parthians -- stationed them in a border town to guard the frontier:

"Anywhere from 100 to 1,000 or more soldiers established themselves in this town that was known by the Chinese as Liqian/Li-Jien, which is pronounced as 'legion'." (War History Online) "...It seems these Romans lived peacefully in Liqian, and 2,000 years later we have DNA evidence that over 50% of the villagers in modern day Liqian have Caucasian ancestry including green and blue eyes, increased average height and other distinguishing characteristics such as distinctly Roman noses."

If this story is true, then these Roman soldiers who fought under Crassus at Carrhae (and their descendants) had an extremely wild and strange destiny, to say the least. But is the story true?

First of all, there's no doubt that the inhabitants of the region of Liqian, China, have some kind of European ancestry. According to Wikipedia, "The area of the former Liqian city is known for the distinctive physical appearance of its inhabitants. The population has higher frequencies of traits prevalent in Europe, such as aquiline noses, blonde or light-colored hair, blue or green eyes, and relatively fair skin tones."

Who were these Europeans and where did they come from? The idea that they were Roman soldiers or their descendants isn't all that farfetched, but it's still controversial:

"A hypothesis by the sinologist Homer H. Dubs, according to which Roman legionaries clashed with Han troops during the battle and were resettled afterwards in a Chinese village named Liqian, has been rejected by modern historians and geneticists on the grounds of a critical appraisal of the ancient sources and recent DNA testings of the village people. However, this hypothesis has been supported by prominent scholars like Lev Gumilev."

There's also a theory that the people of Liqian may be descended from some of Alexander the Great's soldiers, but it seems more likely that their ancestors were Caucasoid Indo-Europeans who lived in the region long before the Romans:

"People with normatively Caucasoid traits and/or who spoke Indo-European languages lived in areas that are now part of Gansu and Xinjiang centuries before the Romans, including the Yuezhi, Wusun, Basmyls, Tocharians, and some prehistoric Siberian populations." (Wikipedia)

You can always trust the experts to mess up a good story, but I've got to admit that some of these Chinese do look like they have Roman ancestry. The people in Liqian are trying to use their supposed relationship with the Romans to boost their tourism industry and who can blame them? Whether the story is true or not is a different matter altogether.

First Fireworks Came From A 2000-Year-Old Chinese Quest For Immortality

History of fireworks begins at around 4:12.

"One thousand years before the first Fourth of July, the first fireworks exploded. It didn't rain twinkling stars or light up the night sky — but to the complete surprise and misfortune of one Chinese chemist, it did go 'bang.'" Source: Live Science.

"This 'bang' was the product of an ancient quest for immortality, according to Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A History (Routledge, 2016) . In early-ninth-century China, alchemy was all the rage. The goal of alchemy was to produce a substance that would prolong life, or even cheat death. Alchemy never did uncover a death-defying concoction. But it did produce an explosion that would change the way we celebrate holidays worldwide.

Note: "Whereas European alchemy eventually centered on the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, Chinese alchemy had a more obvious connection to medicine. The philosopher's stone of European alchemists can be compared to the Grand Elixir of Immortality sought by Chinese alchemists. However, in the hermetic view, these two goals were not unconnected, and the philosopher's stone was often equated with the universal panacea; therefore, the two traditions may have had more in common than initially appears." (Wikipedia)

Microorganisms Threaten Ancient Painted Sculptures In China

"The biodeterioration of cultural heritage is a ubiquitous and inevitable phenomenon that has attracted conservators, archaeologists and scientists who are involved in the conservation of cultural heritage and relics." Source: PLOS One.

"... In this study, the Maijishan Grottoes, a famous Buddhist cave temple located on the ancient Silk Road in China, was selected. The Maijishan Grottoes are known for their beautiful scenery, numerous caves, precious artwork and long-spanning history. The site was added to the World Heritage List in 2014 as one of the key historical sites of the 'Silk Roads, the Route Network of the Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor.' The priceless painted sculptures that are preserved in the caves of the Maijishan Grottoes are severely threatened by multiple factors, including the poor stability of the mountain rocks, frequent earthquakes, water seepage, microclimate change and human disturbance, in addition to microorganisms."

Note: "Cave shrines in China probably served two purposes: originally, before Buddhism came to China, they may have been used as local shrines to worship one's ancestors or various nature deities. With the coming of Buddhism to China, however, influenced by the long tradition of cave shrines from India (such as Ajanta) and Central Asia (primarily Afghanistan), they became part of China's religious architecture. " Source: Wikipedia.

The Sky Caves Of Nepal

Video from 2014.

"Mustang Caves or Sky Caves of Nepal are a collection of some 10,000 man-made caves dug into the sides of valleys in the Mustang District of Nepal. Several groups of archaeologists and researchers have explored these stacked caves and found partially mummified human bodies and skeletons that are at least 2,000–3,000 years old. Explorations of these caves by conservators and archaeologists have also led to the discovery of valuable Buddhist paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and numerous artifacts belonging to the 12th to 14th century. The caves lie on the steep valley walls near the Kali Gandaki River in Upper Mustang. Research groups have continued to investigate these caves, but no one has yet understood who built the caves and why were they built.^" Source: Wikipedia.

Video from 2012.

Note: Back in 2011, National Geographic announced that "The remains of 27 ancient men, women, and children" had been discovered in these caves. Several of the bodies had been defleshed and "many of the bones bear cut marks that point to a previously unknown Himalayan death ritual." Defleshing or excarnation "refers to the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial, leaving only the bones." (Wikipedia)

According to Mental Floss (2016), "[s]cientists recently sequenced the whole genomes of eight individuals found in these ancient chambers, revealing the secrets of the first inhabitants of the Himalayas." The DNA analysis revealed that "the first inhabitants of the Himalayas came down from the north, from East Asian populations of the Tibetan plateau. Their genetic profile most closely resembles modern-day Sherpa and Tibetan populations."

Video from 2011.

Massive Pyramid, Lost City & Ancient Human Sacrifices Discovered In China

"A 4,300-year-old city, which has a massive step pyramid that is at least 230 feet (70 meters) high and spans 59 acres (24 hectares) at its base, has been excavated in China, archaeologists reported in the August issue of the journal Antiquity." Source: Live Science.

"The remains of numerous human sacrifices have been discovered at Shimao [the name given to the city]. 'In the outer gateway of the eastern gate on the outer rampart alone, six pits containing decapitated human heads have been found,' the archaeologists wrote."

Remains Of Extinct Gibbon Discovered In Ancient Chinese Royal Tomb

"About 2,300 years ago, the grandmother of China's first emperor received an elaborate burial outfitted with a macabre menagerie of buried animals — notably, the remains of an ancient, extinct gibbon that was previously unknown to science, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.

"The discovery is remarkable because the ape — a gibbon the scientists named Junzi imperialis — is the first ape on record to go extinct since the last ice age, the researchers said."

Note: "In 2004, archaeologists excavated the tomb attributed to Lady Xia, the grandmother of the emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C. to 210 B.C.), in the Shaanxi province of central China. But the tomb contained more than Lady Xia's burial; it also included 12 pits filled with animal remains, including the skeletons of a leopard ... a Eurasian lynx ... an Asiatic black bear ... a crane ... domesticated mammals, birds and, surprisingly, a mysterious gibbon." (Live Science)

Buddha's Cremated Remains Found In China? (2017)

"The cremated remains of what an inscription says is the Buddha, also called Siddhārtha Gautama, have been discovered in a box in Jingchuan County, China, along with more than 260 Buddhist statues." Source: Live Science (2017).

Comment: There's less to this story than it would appear. According to Live Science, "The archaeologists aren't sure whether or not the statues were buried at the same time as the cremated remains..." and "... did not speculate on whether any of the remains are actually from the Buddha who died around 2,500 years ago."

The archaeologists went on to note that "previous archaeological discoveries in China have also revealed human remains with inscriptions that claim that they belong to the Buddha ... These include a skull bone, supposedly from the Buddha, found inside a gold chest in Nanjing." As noted in the video, "experts" have also claimed to have found the remains of the Buddha in India.

I'm not surprised that the archaeologists who found these cremated remains refused to speculate about whether they actually belonged to Siddhartha Guatama. After all, how could they possibly know? It's not like we have DNA samples from the Buddha that could be used in the identification. The transcriptions aren't that useful, either, since so many other alleged burial sites with similar transcriptions have been found elsewhere. Some of them, at least, have to be fake, but since it's unclear whether the Buddha actually existed in the first place, it's quite possible that all of them are completely bogus. 

Ancient Greeks Helped Make Chinese Terracotta Warrior Statues?

Video from 2013.

"Western explorers settled in China more than 1,500 years earlier than experts had believed, new research has revealed, after archaeologists found the famous Terracotta Warriors could have been made with the help of the Greeks." Source: The Telegraph (2016).

According to the Archaeology News Network (2016), "experts believe that the 8,000 statues may have been crafted under the guidance of ancient Greek sculptors in 3rd Century BC."

This means that "close contact existed between the First Emperor's China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road," according to one Chinese archaeologist.

Ancient Octagon-Shaped Tomb Reveals Morbid Tales From Mongol-ruled China

"Archaeologists in Yangquan, China, have discovered an octagon-shaped tomb with walls covered in murals that dates back some 700 years, when the descendants of Genghis Khan ruled China." Source: Live Science.

"The pyramid-shaped roof of the tomb is decorated with images of the sun, moon and stars, archaeologists said. And one of the murals depicts the story of parents attempting to bury their young son alive."

Human Ancestors Left Africa Earlier Than Thought?

I'm not sure how accurate the dating is in this 2015 video.

Ancient tools and bones discovered in China by archaeologists suggest early humans left Africa and arrived in Asia earlier than previously thought. " Source: Science Daily.

"...The artefacts show that our earliest human ancestors colonised East Asia over two million years ago...The artefacts include a notch, scrapers, cobble, hammer stones and pointed pieces. All show signs of use -- the stone had been intentionally flaked."

Note: As far as I can tell, no human or prehuman remains were discovered at this site, but I'm guessing that these stone tools -- if they are stone tools -- were made by Homo Erectus, currently believed to have migrated into Asia around 1.9 million years ago.

Homo Erectus is known to have been a tool maker. For instance, back in 2013, Live Science reported that some very old stone axes were discovered in Ethiopia. These tools, associated with Homo Erectus remains, were around 1.75 million years old.