Ancient World Review

Roman Legionaries In China? (UPDATED)

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."

It's possible that the people of Liqian are descended from Caucasoid Indo-Europeans who were living in the region long before the Romans went to war with Parthia:

"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.

Did The Chinese Reach Ancient America?

Video from 2016.

"Petroglyphs found across North America have suggested that ancient Chinese explorers made contact with Native Americans. Yaoliang Song, a professor at the East China Normal University in Shanghai who has studied petroglyphs as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, recently announced that he supports the interpretation that the petroglyphs are of ancient Chinese origin." Source: Ancient Origins. (This is the 2016 article reviewed in the video.)

"John A. Ruskamp Jr., Ed.D., has led the  research on the petroglyphs  over the past few years, enlisting the help of experts such as David N. Keightley, Ph.D., who is considered by many to be the leading analyst in America of early Chinese oracle-bone writings."

I have no idea what to make of this. The theory is controversial, naturally, and I'm not sure where it stands as of 2020. If prehistoric Chinese mariners did reach the Americas it would have required a long, dangerous voyage, but we know that ancient Austronesians were island-hopping across the Pacific back then so I suppose it's possible. The similarity of the petroglyphs found in Arizona and New Mexico with the written characters in China is a matter of interpretation, but they do look similar even if they're not exactly the same:

"These ancient scripts were not 100 percent uniform, some variance was employed by each artist. But Ruskamp has determined that the glyphs are close enough to known examples of ancient Chinese script that it is more than 95 percent likely the similarity is due to direct contact with the Chinese and not due to chance."

The petroglyphs in question here are a couple thousand years old. I'm not sure if anyone has dated them more precisely than that, but Ruskamp has said (according to Ancient Origins) that the Chinese oracle-bone writings they supposedly match are from the Shang Dynasty ( app. 1600-1050 BC).

Note: This theory shouldn't be confused with the 1421 Theory, which argues that a Chinese fleet reached the Americas around 70 years before Columbus. This idea, proposed by British author Gavin Menzies, has been widely dismissed as pseudo-history, but I can't comment on it because I haven't read Menzies' book.

China Orders Erasure Of Genghis Khan From Chinese History

Video from Oct. 16, 2020. Closed-captions helpful.

"The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to erase the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan from Chinese history according to a report this weekend by human rights magazine Bitter Winter." Source: Breitbart (Nov. 10, 2020).

"'...During the past month, fourteen stone tablets summarizing the life story of Genghis Khan and his achievements were painted over or destroyed in Genghis Khan Square in the Hailar district of Hulun Buir prefecture-level city, in Inner Mongolia. Protests of the local population were ignored,' Bitter Winter revealed on Nov. 7.

"'In a middle school in Hexigten Banner under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Chifen, also in Inner Mongolia, portraits of Genghis Khan and slogans promoting Mongolian culture have been replaced with the portraits of characters of Han Chinese history and slogans promoting Han culture,' the magazine reported.

"The History Museum of Nantes, France abruptly canceled a long-planned Genghis Khan exhibit on October 13 after the Chinese Cultural Affairs Bureau demanded that the museum alter the exhibition’s title, removing the words 'Genghis Khan,' 'empire,' and 'Mongol.'" [see top video]

Note: According to RFI, "Bertrand Guillet, Director of the museum, said in a statement that the Chinese also wanted 'control over all our productions, texts, maps, the catalogue, press releases.'"

How long will it be before the Chinese pull this statue down?

Comment: The censorship of history is all too familiar in the United States and Europe (and to anyone who's ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four). The US federal government hasn't been quite so blatant as China in its attempts to erase "problematic" history, but members of congress have already called for the removal of Confederate statues in Washington D.C. and if the far left gets into power it won't be long before the Taliban-like destruction of statues, monuments and the censorship of textbooks and museum displays becomes national policy. It's already happening on the state and local level, of course. This is an incredibly dangerous trend because the intent isn't just to erase history but to erase the people who made it.

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." -- George Orwell

The Mysterious Longyou Caves In China

Video from 2019.

"Longyou Caves is a complex of 24 artificial caves, constructed into the sandstone geology of Fenghuang Hill in the Zhejiang province of China." Source: Heritage Daily.

"The caves were discovered by accident in 1992, when local farmers drained several ponds revealing five large manmade caverns and 19 smaller caves.

"The five caverns, independent from each other measure between 18-34 metres [59-111 ft], reaching heights of up to 20 metres [65 ft] with supporting pillars and distinctive shapes remarkably curved with shaking imprints across the cavern walls and ceilings."

These chambers are really gigantic. According to Wikipedia, their average floor area is over 11,000 square feet and some of the caves are almost a hundred feet high in places.

Views of caves start at around 4:29.

"First discovered in 1992 by a local villager, 36 grottoes have now been discovered covering a massive 30,000 square metres. Carved into solid siltstone, each grotto descends around 30 metres [app. 98 ft] underground and contains stone rooms, bridges, gutters and pools. There are pillars evenly distributed throughout the caves which are supporting the ceiling, and the walls, ceiling and stone columns are uniformly decorated with chisel marks in a series of parallel lines. Only one of the caves has been opened for tourism, chosen because of the stone carvings found inside which depict a horse, fish and bird." (Ancient Origins)

These chambers date back to at least 200 BC and nobody knows how they were constructed. No tools have been discovered at the site. There are no signs of the huge amount of material that must have been excavated and the amount of manual labor required is mind-boggling:

"Taking into account the average digging rate per day per person, scientists have calculated that it would take 1,000 people working day and night for six years to complete. These calculations are based purely on hard labour, but what they haven’t taken into account is the incredible care and precision of the sculptors, meaning that the actual workload would far surpass the theoretical estimation. As for how they were constructed and what tools were used, it is still unknown." (Ancient Origins)

Related: The Ancient Man-made Longyou Caves Surrounded In Mystery (Interesting Engineering).

Next video (2017) discusses the possibility that the caves were built to serve as water reservoirs.

Everything about these caves is a mystery. We don't know who built them or why or how they worked in the dark. No one knows what the symbols carved on the walls and pillars mean. And it's unclear how the caves could be so well-preserved after thousands of years of submersion:

"One of the most interesting and challenging questions is how the caves have been able to keep their structural integrity for more than 2000 years. There are no signs of collapse, no piles of rubble, and no damage despite the fact that in some areas the walls are only 50 centimetres thick. Over the centuries, the area has gone through numerous floods, calamities and wars, the mountains have changed their appearance and exposed stones have been weathered, but inside the caves, the form, patterns and markings are still clear and precise – it is as though they were built yesterday. " (Ancient Origins)

Alternate-history researchers, naturally, point to the Longyou caves as evidence of ancient high technology and the extreme age of the human race.

Video from 2020. Closed-captions helpful.

Related: Still Unknown: The Strange Story of China's Longyou Caves.

Stone Circles In China's Gobi Desert May Have Been Used For Sacrifice

Video from 2015.

"Mysterious stone formations found in China's Gobi Desert may have been built thousands of years ago by sun-worshipping nomads who used them for sacrifice, a local expert has announced." Source: Archaeology News Network (2015).

"About 200 of the circular formations have been found near Turpan City in the northwestern part of the country, China Daily reported."

The Eastern Jesus

Video from 2018.

"Over the past few years, the authorities in Beijing have given churches across the country orders to 'Sinicize' their faith. According to detailed five-year plans formulated by both Catholic and Protestant organizations, much of this process involves the predictable palaver of state control: 'to actively practice core values of socialism, love the motherland passionately, support the leadership of the Communist Party, obey the law and serve society.'" Source: New York Review Of Books.

"But the authorities want more than just political control; they want a say over Christianity’s spirit, too. According to one document, 'Chinese styles' are to be promoted in the religion’s 'building, painting, music, and art,' and also in Christian liturgy and theology. Other documents speak of reflecting Chinese traditions, but what this means isn’t exactly clear — perhaps filial piety, ancestor worship, and explicitly rejecting foreign influence."

Evidence Of Human Sacrifice Discovered At The Neolithic Site Of Shimao In China

Video from Aug. 10, 2020.

"Shimao ... is a Neolithic site in Shenmu County, Shaanxi, China. The site is located in the northern part of the Loess Plateau, on the southern edge of the Ordos Desert. It is dated to around 2000 BC, near the end of the Longshan period [next video], and is the largest known walled site of that period in China, at 400 ha [app. 988 acres]. The fortifications [double stone walls] of Shimao were originally believed by to be a section of the Great Wall of China, but the discovery of jade pieces prompted an archaeological investigation." (Wikipedia)

This is a spectacular Stone-Age site. According to Archaeology World, "The digging had revealed a 230 feet high pyramid surrounded by more than six miles of protective walls and an inner sanctum containing jade artifacts, painted murals, and gruesome evidence of human sacrifice." Around 80 human skulls, mainly of young girls, were discovered buried in six pits beneath the city's eastern wall.

This isn't a recent find. According to a 2013 AFP report, the sacrifices may have been conducted as part of religious or foundation ceremonies related to the construction of the city walls:

"There may have been an outbreak of mass violence or ethnic conflict in the region at the time since 'ancient people were prone to use their enemies or captives as sacrifices...'"

Video from 2018. Shimao was discovered in 1976.

"Shimao now is the largest known Neolithic settlement in China and none of the ancient Chinese texts mentions a city residing so far north of the 'cradle of Chinese Civilization'. It had an expanse of [approximately] 1000 acres and is larger than the Central Park of New York City.  Its art and technology had influenced the northern regions and the future dynasties of China." (Archaeology World)

"Along with other discoveries at prehistoric sites, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the origin of the Chinese civilization.

"According to the leader of the dig at Shimao, 'Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century.'"

Human Sacrifice Victims In Ancient China Faced Slavery Before Death

Video from 2015?

"At an ancient site of human sacrifice in China, war captives may have been kept as slaves for years before they were killed, a new study finds." Source: Live Science (2017).

Archaeological excavations in China have revealed "that an extraordinary number of ritual human sacrifices were conducted during the Shang dynasty, which spanned from the 16th century B.C. to the 11th century B.C. It is the earliest dynasty in China for which archaeologists have evidence. For instance, sacrificial pits are common across the entire site of the last Shang capital, Yinxu, which researchers discovered in 1928 in central China's Henan Province. Scientists have estimated that over the course of about 200 years, more than 13,000 people were sacrificed in Yinxu, usually males ages 15 to 35, and that on average, each sacrificial ritual there likely claimed at least 50 human victims. The biggest sacrifice found so far killed at least 339 people."

Related: China's Bronze Age (BBC).

Ancient Chinese Manuscripts

American Philosophical Society Annual Meeting, April 2017.

"The history of China before the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 and the People’s Republic of China in 1949 generally is thought of in terms of a succession of dynasties, beginning with the legendary Xia dynasty (circa 2100 BCE - circa 1600 BCE) and the Shang dynasty (circa 1600 BCE - 1046 BCE), and ending with the Qing dynasty of 1644 - 1911. The oldest records of Chinese history date from around 1600 BCE. Presented on this timeline are manuscripts, books, and maps made in China and for the most part written in Chinese between circa 1199 BCE and 1931. These documents show the complexity and richness of Chinese civilization over a period of more than three millennia." Source: "Chinese Books, Manuscripts, Maps and Prints," World Digital Library (lots of images from ancient Chinese manuscripts can be found here).

Chinese Historian Describes The Byzantine Empire

This reading is from the great Voices of the Past channel. The excerpt is from the medieval Book of Tang, but I'm not sure if this is the old book or the new:

"The Old Book of Tang, or simply the Book of Tang, is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, it was superseded by the New Book of Tang which was compiled in the Song dynasty, but later regained acceptance." (Wikipedia)