The last Romans are still around | Hacker News Reader

The last Romans are still around

signoregalilei.com

129 pointssurprisetalk229 comments

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 Balkan provinces (like Moesia and Pannonia), rather than from the city of Rome.

Genetically, the nearest populations to Ancient Romans are Cypriots and certain other Mediterranean types, including Anatolians. But it's not neat; there's no clear unambiguous descent. A lot can happen in >1000 years!

I still find it somewhat fascinating that the Slavs arrived in Europe during recorded history.

Arrived in Europe?

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 where it was more of a fusion than an invasion / displacement.

I think it is a very interesting point to offer to those in Europe minimizing the current migration waves (often for noble reasons of reducing racism and countering far right ideologies). It's no use denying that welcoming tens of millions of people from other cultures over a few decades has and will have very deep social and political effects.

The earliest Roman records of Slavs are of the Veneti, who lived in roughly western Ukraine, Belarus, south-east Poland.

Very much in Europe.

Then, like now, they were the people east of the German speakers.

There are Germans from Slavic / protoslavic descent in North-Eastern Germany aside from the small Slavuc speaking minorities. Some location names and family names (Wend, Wenden, etc) are very telling in this regard. I like this direct link to ancient history.

It's an open question whether the Veneti themselves were ethnically Slavic though. We know of the earlier Gallic Veneti, which were a Celtic seafaring tribe that settled multiple locations along the European coastline. The Italian region Veneto and the city Venice can also trace their names to an ancient group called "Veneti", and they seem to have spoken a mix of Italic and Celtic. In contrast, the Slavic language seems to have originated much further east.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetic_language :

A 2012 study has suggested that Venetic was a relatively conservative language significantly similar to Celtic, on the basis of morphology, while it occupied an intermediate position between Celtic and Italic, on the basis of phonology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Proto-Slavic#Pre-Sl... :

The most archaic Slavic hydronyms are found here, along the middle Dnieper, Pripet and upper Dniester rivers [..] inherited Common Slavic vocabulary [includes] well-developed terminology for inland bodies of water (lakes, river, swamps) and kinds of forest (deciduous and coniferous), for the trees, plants, animals and birds indigenous to the temperate forest zone, and for the fish native to its waters

The fact that the Slavic language seems to have developed inland but the Veneti mostly settled coastal areas puts a big question mark under the Veneti == Slavs link.

This might be a by-product of how you define what “Europe” is, though.

Why is genetics more important than any other tie to the Roman empire?

Don't know why this was down voted. Most people ruled by the Roman empire weren't ethnic Romans. Even in the early days it started as a mix of Italic tribes like the Latins and Sabines. And in 212 AD the edict of Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the empire.

I imagined this was sort of the whole point of the article.

>Don't know why this was down voted

I have noticed a trend of challenges to unspoken assumptions being down voted.

I don't know if it's being read as being argumentative/low effort.

I agree with you and the parent. How do you define ethnically Roman? Those from the city of Rome? Some average of the empire? What about when it split in 2? Is ethnicity even important? What ethnicity do you have to be, to be USian??? British?

Americans are whatever, British ethnicity is a thing though

Ethnicity is hard to define and a term that spurs a lot of debate. Therefore I think it is best avoided in serious discussion.

For America (and in extension the american continent) it is quite clear who is ethnically native, actually it is probably one of the clearest examples there is partly because it is near in history. And already it gets messy when you dig deeper because of limited record keeping etc.

Broadly in the Americas anyone that was there before Columbus is considered native. Anyone that came after is considered migrant. Anyone born into native heritage can be considered descendant of native and thus native themselves.

  British ethnicity is a thing though

British ethnicity is messy and quite complex, are we talking before or after migration of the vikings? Before or after roman rein? Are we considering Ireland or Scotland separate? What about intermixing with neighboring countries through trade? Before, in or after British colonial empire?

You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate.

Ethnicity is entirely arbitrary, that's why it should be avoided.

For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Ehy aren't they Asians or even Africans?

There is culture that you can tie to a group of people at a certain time and that group frequently has similar lineage. That's usually what people mean by ethnicity. They're using physical characteristics due to lineage that is associated with a culture and they call that ethnicity.

In this context of of Romans, there is really no ethnicity that should map to the cultural identity of "Ancient Roman" as the empire had many subjects across it's empire.

  You seem to be taking ethnicity pretty serious for a guy who says it should be avoided in serious debate.

I take language and debate serious.

  For example, the genetic line of what your calling the clearly Native Americans traces back to Asia. You've arbitrarily decided that their ethnicity is defined at a certain time in their lineage. Why aren't they Asians or even Africans?

Yes I have arbitrarily decided, based on the later influx of people (in my view) other ethnicity from other continents. It is a divide I used as an example, there are more divides.

Ethnicity is arbitrary precisely because it is not clear what the boundaries of it are. I used Native Americans as an example, we all trace back to a few individuals in Africa. However Ethnicity is not just the genetics, it also includes culture, language, history, traditions and more. and it includes a component over time for example: "They have been living like this for x amount of years"(since after a war or similar displacement event) can be a divide in ethnicity.

You could subdivide ethnicity all the way until you reach the lineage and environment of a single individual. There are lots of ethnic differences between Native American tribes for example.

are you an alt account for benj111?

No i don't know who that is.

you havent stated it directly, but you are asserting that "ethnicity" is equivalent to "a set of humans with a membership rule" with the most important part being legibility

and that you can create subsets and most importantly, union any two ethnicities together to get a subset.

ethnicity does not have that latter property though, so starting from the largest group and subdividing does not work.

"the americas is really big" is actually describing "there are many ethnicities in the americas that cannot be unioned together"

the union rule for ethnicities is that you can union two ethnicities and get an ethnicity only if there's significant overlap in genetics, language, culture, traditions, geography, etc.

there arbitrariness in setting that line, but its not approximately zero, as you've been suggesting, and we can tease that out with sniff tests. You maybe just dont know much about native americans, but you'd never put inuit and maya in the same ethnicity.

seriousness in debate and language would be to take curiosity in why the critiques think that size does matter, rather than asserting that it doesnt.

In the same fashion we can declare pretty much all words messy, simply because their meanings are context-dependent. It's true even for majority of hard science terms. However, it doesn't make that postmodernist way of cancelling words any less absurd as it makes all discussions impossible.

As a good example you yourself use "native" which is as messy, and complex as "ethnicity". You arbitrarily chosen Columbus arrival as definition point, which can make you feel comfortable in the moment, but it's neither universally accepted, nor universally applicable. Using the same logic it must be banished from serious discussion.

The points I've chosen as examples above are not arbitrarily. They correspond with an influx of people that may be considered of other ethnicity, for example from another continent or culture. You describe the ambiguity of what you interpret as a border for "change of ethnicity" is precisely the problem with the term. Unless you create a consensus about the use in the specific discussion you may be misinterpreting what is being said.

The meaning of any natural language term is up to discussion some more then others.

Native is a lot more clear if used to refers to where a single person was born.

Comparing Britain and the Americas is a category error. Even comparing England to the USA would be incorrect.

I didn't compare the Americas and Britain.

Right, nobody did

The americas are really big. Grouping every person "pre columbus" into a single bucket is wrong

Its as good as you are going to find in grouping people by ancestry.

  The americas are really big

The size doesn't matter.

  Grouping every person "pre columbus" into a single bucket is wrong

Wrong for what? To make a distinction between to generalized groups can be a very useful abstraction in language, debate and science. "pre columbus peoples of the Americas" is already way more defined then "ethnically american" which was the main point I am making, "ethnic" is a vague term.

1700ad is a good cutoff for the modern definition of Britain, which is when the island was unified under a single government. Norman Conquest was pretty transformative I heard, and by then the conquerors had already been assimilated, but idk how much that really matters since William wasn't like Tamerlane.

Caesar saw Europe differently back then but surprisingly not that different by geography, "omnia Gallia" divided by rivers plus Germany, Britain, and Spain. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT-R1QU...

Ok. So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person?

Surely 'ethnic americans' are Native North Americans?

This is the thing. Ethnicity gets wrapped up in a value judgement. We don't want to talk about ethnic Americans, but are willing to talk about ethnic Britons. Which then implies some rights those ethnic groups should have. But I would dare say the majority of 'ethnic Britons' wouldn't identify as British.

So I'd rather not use it in a way that conflates nationhood with ethnicity.

English, Welsh and probably some kind of Scottish ethnicity are probably a thing. DNA + history + cultural habits including language.

But on this topic the concept of German ethnogenesis is very interesting. The formation of Gothic identity and communities even more, though sources are extremely scarce and it's more of a mystery.

> So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person?

...yes?

id put the a cree person as ethnically cree

dene for sure crosses borders

native american is a group of ethnicities reasonably unrelated to "american" so its not particularly useable as "ethnic americans" when its could be just as useable as "ethnic canadians"

> Ok. So is a french person more British than a 5th generation black person?

Yes

> Surely 'ethnic americans' are Native North Americans?

Yeah but they're normally called Native Americans

British ethnicity is complicated. English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish? If Northern Irish then loyalist or republican? Do you count the Cornish separately? Germanic or Celtic? Norman ancestry.

Its not defined by genetics. A very high proportion of "white British" people I know (that is of those who have told me!) turn out to have all kinds of ancestry (Indian, Romany, and Polish examples come to mind) in recent generations.

Genetics do not refine race/ethnicity, culture and cultural definitions do. Americans have definitions even the culturally similar British do not understand (e.g. hispanic, white passing black). I am defined differently in different countries: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different

Also some rulers of the Roman empire weren't ethnically Roman/Italian, even if you don't count after the capitol was moved to Constantinople, but especially if you do.

It isn't, but OP doesn't say it is either. I think it's a worthwhile point to make that exceedingly few nations, cultures, ethnicites etc. correspond cleanly to equivalent groups that existed ~2000 years ago.

Identity-building projects need simple stories, genetics (or history generally) rarely gives them.

Probably Georgia as a political entity, Armenia, Cambodia and Vietnam as nations probably.

I know other examples of relative ethnic stability: most of Northern Europe broadly has the same ethnic geographic boundaries as 1500 years ago (excepting the slavic / proto slavic things), the Basque, the Sardinians, Bretons and Bearnese, Tirolians, Kabyles, Laz "Greeks" (vanishing since WWII).

By some measures also Egypt (coastal cities excepted) and Iran.

Since PCA maps are fun to look at, here’s one for modern-day populations:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1n8xjl6/genome_anc...

> 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!

Half of Italy was ethnically Greek / Hellenized (Kai tu teknon!).

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.

"On a genetic map, a PCA plot, Romans and Romanians simply don't overlap"

Can you help me understand how do I look for Romans on a PCA map? For contemporary nations I think I can manage but for Romans I don't

Rome through the ages:

> https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826

The data suggests that Republican Rome was a mix of the local Copper Age populations of central Italy and incoming Bronze Age nomadic populations from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. This doesn't map neatly to any modern population, but is fairly generically "Iron Age European."

The Imperial Era was more cosmopolitan, with massive genetic inflow from the east Med:

> During the Imperial period (n = 48 individuals), the most prominent trend is an ancestry shift toward the eastern Mediterranean and with very few individuals of primarily western European ancestry (Fig. 3C). The distribution of Imperial Romans in PCA largely overlaps with modern Mediterranean and Near Eastern populations, such as Greek, Maltese, Cypriot, and Syrian (Figs. 2A and 3C). This shift is accompanied by a further increase in the Neolithic Iranian component in ADMIXTURE (Fig. 2B) and is supported by f-statistics (tables S20 and S21): compared to Iron Age individuals, the Imperial population shares more alleles with early Bronze Age Jordanians (f4 statistics Z-score = 4.2) and shows significant introgression signals in admixture f3 for this population, as well as for Bronze Age Lebanese and Iron Age Iranians (Z-score < −3.4).

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 do you call it? Racism. But don't worry, not the "bad" kind, just the "scientific" kind.

Well we've got to define something ... I'd opt for something like Latium natives of 750-300 BCE, adding Etruscans. My point is to exclude Magna Graecia, because it would make it harder to make an ethnocultural statement or conclusion.

Consider this: We do not, in fact, have to define something. We don't have to define an artificial genetic category just so we can then categorize people into artificial genetic buckets.

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 do a clear-cut classification based on those. I'm firmly of the opinion that one should not, but in any case, that would be about genetics (as the OP and I discussed), and not about this word that you are trying to drag into this to deliberately muddy the waters.

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

Proof by analogy is fraud, as they say. Even if the analogy holds. This one doesn't: There are fairly good ways of defining species objectively. For example, as the second sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species says: "It can be defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction." I'm sure that there are a few exceptions around the edges, but this is much more clear-cut than any human divisions that you're trying to drag into this.

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.

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.

No, I have no problem with OP's arbitrary lines - they are meaningful even though reality necessitates any such lines of this type (categorizing individuals) be drawn arbitrarily. What I have a problem with is people moralizing about science - we shouldn't even think about things because they make you uncomfortable.

There is an is-ought distinction. We can reason, investigate, and speculate about the ancient Roman people and their distinctiveness and what populations today have the closest genetic distance without there being any implication whatsoever socially or legally.

> 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.

Rome was famously multi-ethnic. This is sort of like asking who are the "ethnic Americans". It's just the wrong question to ask.

Kind of. The empire was multi ethnic and so are modern Americans however often the question is about the foundation. Who are the descendants of the foundational Romans. Did they get diluted into oblivion? For Americans it’s easier as we can trace descendants of the founders of the nation. Of course Britain itself is the result of many waves of immigration, the neolithic, the celts, picts, romans, jutes, angles, saxons, norsemen, etc.

And according to Vergilius (aka Virgil), the foundational Romans were immigrants from Asia Minor. In this allegory, the "native Italians" are the Etruscans and Sabines (among others), and the Aeneid was the Roman version of manifest destiny.

Verily! The composition and control over Asia Minor was very different from today. There was lots of movement around the Caspian sea, Asia Minor, the Volga, the crescent, etc in those times.

What do you mean? Native American Indians are exactly ethnic Americans. The rest are from other ethnicities. Just as there were (are) ethnic Romans.

While I can appreciate this, it was not the historical point of view of the people calling themselves Americans.

“What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”

~J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, 1782 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/letter_03.asp

Does it matter much if they called themselves American? The tribes and nations on the continent were certainly more related to each other than to the arrivals from other continents. Just as European tribes and nations were more related to each other than to faraway peoples. And African tribes and nations.

The "American" described in your quote there by Crevecoeur is not an American in any ethnic sense. Any modern non-native person calling themselves an American, can only do that in a cultural and ideological sense. Which is of course immensely strong by itself. Just as Catholic, Protestant, Communist, and other non-ethnic labels people have identified with.

"American" is a poor demonym because "America" is both North and South America. USian would be a better fit and "Native USian" would naturally include all indigenous and non-indigenous people in the US.

If you’re following this line of reasoning then even the “native” Americans aren’t actually native because they migrated here too. Further, the concept of “America” referring to what is geographically the United States today isn’t a concept that was held be tribal peoples. It wouldn’t have ever made sense to describe them in this context as the original Americans because they never held such a concept themselves.

Also, tribal peoples, whether that’s in Europe or elsewhere are defeated and destroyed and swallowed up by other tribes and civilizations and over the long arc of history lose the status of being original as they are absorbed into a new entity. You can’t describe or study a Roman people as if they are “native” but not extended that same viewpoint to the modern day United States, for example, because both have absorbed other peoples who were native.

America is a real physical landmass. Two actually. "American" is to be understood as those ethnicities from that physical and very much existing landmass. Whether they called it America or not, which they of course didn't. The same thing for discussing Australian native ethnicities for example.

Otherwise we have to argue that dinosaurs didn't exist, because they had never heard about Pangea.

> Also, tribal peoples, whether that’s in Europe or elsewhere are defeated and destroyed and swallowed up by other tribes and civilizations and over the long arc of history lose the status of being original as they are absorbed into a new entity.

Well it's not true, because of genetical heritage. It still exists, and now in modern times we can study the human genome better than ever. It is messy, it is overlapping, but it's not unworthy of study and curiosity. They weren't swallowed up and disappeared, genetically speaking. Very rarely would a genocide be complete, because conquerors would take the women at least from the conquered.

Being ethnically Roman was not the same as being a Roman citizen or Roman subject. The tribes which ethnically were Roman can be found listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_tribe

Here is more about Roman citizenship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship

Just like in ethnical nations today, you can become a citizen by virtue of birth ethnicity, or by other procedures. And just like a foreigner cannot belong to any ethnicity or nation just because she has citizenship today, neither could they in Roman times.

> America is a real physical landmass. Two actually.

America refers to the United States of America in virtually all context in the everyday English speaking world.

> "American" is to be understood as those ethnicities from that physical and very much existing landmass. Whether they called it America or not, which they of course didn't. The same thing for discussing Australian native ethnicities for example.

Let’s put it another way…

The people who live here now are the natives over the long arc of history. You’re only focusing on a small sliver of time in a very constrained historical environment.

If you say the native Americans as they are called are the only “real” natives so to speak you have to apply that standard everywhere. And if you think that the disruption of native lands in the past was bad, you’d also have to believe that continuing to bring more people to America is also bad, ergo immigration to the Americas is immoral.

> And just like a foreigner cannot belong to any ethnicity or nation just because she has citizenship today, neither could they in Roman times.

This is untrue in the western world, specifically the Anglo-American world. It’s difficult for most of the world to understand our societies and I think this is a good example of how things get confused. I can’t, as a white American, become “Chinese”. But a Chinese man or woman can certainly become an American and belong to our nation. There is no question about that.

There is far more human genetic diversity within Africa then there is in the rest of the world combined.

Also, your notion that certain people are inherently tied to certain places is only true if you accept arbitrary cutoffs for arrival time. The Lakota migrated from the Great lakes to the western planes in the 1700s, but it's hard to imagine them without their horses (which came from the old world) and bison (which they never would have hunted in ~Michigan). More time has passed since the arrival of the Spanish in Tenochtitlan, than between the arrival of the Aztecs (who probably migrated there from ~Arizona) and the Spanish. And of course, All the Native Americans descended from tribes that crossed the Bering straight from Russia, and every human's ancestors lived exclusively in Africa for a very long time. Anglo Saxons, Gaels, Norse, etc were constantly on the move within Europe before any of them crossed the Atlantic. Israelites displaced Canaanites before being displaced by Romans, then Arabs, then "coming back" after WW2. At any point in time, in any location on earth, the ethnic groups considered "native" almost certainly descended from people who were not considered native within at most a couple hundred years. Many white people can trace over 2 hundred years of ancestry in the new world. To say that's not enough to qualify as "native" is to have an incoherent conception of nativeness.

English doesn't help. I realize I myself used the term "Native American" while trying to argue that the term is out of date, but our language just was never equipped to describe these kinds of long term, highly chaotic processes.

This is exactly the kind of interesting and wonderful discussions which people loose out on when they claim that the entire world is a melting pot and no ethnicities exist etc etc. Which you still do, even though you have good knowledge of anthropology.

There is nothing arbitrary about making cutoffs. It is difficult and undefined and subject to splendid complexity. After all its people we're dealing with here, so of course it is complex. But there are obvious external differences and similarities between people, and denying this takes a level of warping one's mind which would permanently damage the mind. For no benefit to anybody. There's also history, archeological evidence and genetic evidence.

What I notice in this discussion is people demanding exact limits everywhere, and throwing everything away when there isn't any. But there are some very exact limits, and the discovery of the New World is one of those. The people who were there before were more related to each other than they were to the arrivals.

> Many white people can trace over 2 hundred years of ancestry in the new world. To say that's not enough to qualify as "native" is to have an incoherent conception of nativeness.

"Native" isn't any badge of honour. Saying somebody is native to the land while the other is not doesn't mean anything to their qualities.

With the research into people's heritage and history, the goal is to go as far as you can before the mists of time become too thick. Beyond that, there's not much we can do but speculate blindly.

> There is far more human genetic diversity within Africa then there is in the rest of the world combined.

I've heard this before, but it just doesn't match up with what we can see and experience in physical reality. So they've measured in the wrong way quite frankly. The difference between people (everybody in the world) is in their genes, but you can probably not measure just quantitively. Especially since humans share an astonishing amount of DNA with beasts and with plants.

I can paint a house red and a house blue, and then a scientist will say that they are more similar in colour to each other than the red house is to a rose, because he just measures the chemicals in the paint.

Or, to loop back to the core of this conversation. There is no exact definition and clear boundary as to what is a boat and what is not a boat. There is no exact limit possible to define between a person being beautiful or not, but you can still point out a lot of measurements of all kinds, and most importantly everybody knows it when they see and experience it.

I wonder how large the spread of ethnicities is in Native American Indian populations. Just for fun, let's estimate our answer based on data from 1600, just pre the mass European arrival on the continents (plural).

Ok, but the vast multitude of Native American tribes absolutely identified as distinct ethnicities from one another. If you were to apply this to the Romans, then "ethnically Roman" would include Greeks, Celts, Berbers, and dozens if not hundreds of other ethnic groups, each of which was represented in all the social strata of the Roman state at various times.

Certainly, as does everybody, all the way down to the core family level. Persons make up families, which make up clans, which make up tribes, which make up nations, which make up races. You are part of subdivisions within subdivisions, by heritage. Different persons give different value to each subdivision - or no value to them at all.

The native Americans would absolutely consider themselves as more similar to each other than to the European and African arrivals. Just by matter of undeniable physical features.

As for the Romans, it is within the mists of history and mythology (Rape of the Sabine Women), but nobody can deny that there was an original people there in Italy, and other peoples who became citizens and/or subjects of Rome weren't ethnically Roman.

Your clean-sounding taxonomic framework tends to be much, much messier in practice, but ok. As so often happens, I think this boils down to a vocab disagreement. Normally, you would refer to the ethnolinguistic group as "Latins". "Roman" is much more closely associated with the populus romanus, which was defined by citizenship.

It is messy, but that's why it is beautiful and interesting. It couldn't be any other way, seeing as it takes a man and a woman to make a child.

Once you loose the knowledge of your ancestry that connection is lost forever, until the end of time.

I think the equivalent of various native tribes would be Romans, Etruscans, Samnites, Greeks etc. The core "Italian" Romans were themselves a mix of various Italian populations and they even fought the social wars to gain equal rights. And outside of that we have the Celt, Iberians, Berbers, Mainland Greeks, Anatolians, Illyrians, etc.

Broadly speaking you cannot draw an equivalence between Roman Empire and Americas because the dominant ethnicities in US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and other countries are from outside. But IMO this would be the closest analogy.

The equivalent would be if the Italian Greeks had become the dominant ethnicity in Italy and absorbed the Romans, Samnites, Etruscans, etc into their culture.

The deleware people are distinct from aztec people who are distinct from taino

There is no such thing as "ethnic American"

"America" is a place name created by Europeans and "Americans" an identity created by their descendants.

So there's no "ethnic" Americans because its an invented social identity.

No, the landmass physically exists and people existed there before European discovery, no matter what you call the place. They were and are the native people of America - hence the "Americans". As opposed to the people who came there recently from Europe, Asia and Africa mainly.

Doesn't "Roman" imply Roman Empire, not the city, though? Those principal component analysis mappings are also quite susceptible to heavy leaning on a posteriori interpretations.

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.

Just wait for Hollywood to create a film about Roman mythology and not cast a single Roman!

But less tongue-in-cheek, the other thing is that the legacy of the Romans is pretty much all around us. The Roman Calendar (with July and August both referencing a Roman leader), the Latin alphabet (with the additional letters like 'y' being added later on to support Greek), the roads we can travel, etc.

It's not only July and August; January, May, June, and Mars, are named after Roman gods; February and April after Roman rituals; and September to December after Roman numerals (7 to 10th month, as they were when the calendar first started).

Yup exactly :) I named July/August for the connection to real people, but yeah it’s pretty much all around us.

Also the weekdays in many Latin derived languages.

Also the vast majority of the rest of the vocabulary in those languages

>Mars

While not technically incorrect(?) I'm guessing you meant March?

Maybe they're French and forgot to translate that month (in French March = mars)

Yeah, freudian slip.

Every modern law system has its roots in Roman one.

> *English Common Law* has entered the chat

This brings to mind the wonderful Econtalk episode about Bruno Leoni [0]. The beginning of the podcast describes his untimely passing, which almost seems a Cohen brothers movie plot.

  So, we pore over Supreme Court cases on the First Amendment, for example, to 
  try to interpret what tests we will use to determine whether something is 
  going to be unconstitutional law. Leoni didn't want that. He argued that--and 
  again, he was proud of the Roman law contribution. He said that the Roman 
  jurist was a sort of scientist: that the object of his research was a 
  solution to cases that citizens submitted to him for study. So, an 
  industrialist or a scientist might look to a physicist to engineer a 
  technical problem. So, private Roman law was something to be described or 
  discovered, not something to be enacted. So, over time, these principles 
  emerge.

0. https://www.econtalk.org/the-underrated-bruno-leoni-with-mic...

Interesting. As an unhappy user of the court system I have made these same points. Although I linked it back to the enlightenment.

The law should be akin to the scientific method. Unfortunately like science it is full of humans, so reputation is important, etc, etc. unfortunately the judiciary is far worse than the scientific community.

Still romanian. "The common law—so named because it was common to all the king's courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066" [1]

France (and Normandy) was conquered by Rome before it was granted to Rollo, a Viking. A few generations later, his descendant William the Conqueror claimed the English crown. Just like what happened with Gauls and Romans, the conquered people adopted large parts of the language and customs of the conqueror. That's why the English language is ~25% of Roman origin for it's vocabulary. I suppose it is the same for English common law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#History

After 2000 years everything mixes together at least somewhat so trying to draw hard lines is an exercise in pointless semantics, but it's worth acknowledging that as a system, common law is pretty distinct from the Roman tradition of civil law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)

Also lb for Pounds come directly from Rome

And pre decimalisation. In the UK Pence was shortened to 'd' which I understood to refer to the Roman Dinari.

It's denarii, barbar.

Sorry, Denarii. Barbar seems to refer to Denarii minted by barbarians? but the AI result didn't come up in English?

Ps And don't call me Barbar.

Barbar, likely short for barbarus which in this context likely means foreigner. It can also mean cruel, uncivilized or savage but I'm taking the not-roman approach here.

I'll add "unable to understand context" to my list of frustrations about LLM usage.

They're always British in film for some reason

Not in the underrated movie The Eagle! In that one, the soldier from the world's dominant global empire has an American accent, and the actual Briton slave has a British accent.

I should watch that one. Not that surprising since it's a British film. There's also Waterloo which cast English as English, Scottish as Scottish, French as American, and German as idk foreign, plus tons of extras either yelling in French or saying nothing in Russian.

And of course there's Death of Stalin where everybody just uses either their own accent or they're Jason Isaacs who went for over the top Yorkshire.

I love creative accent work in movies. I recently watched Pride and Prejudice, and Donald Sutherland clearly isn't doing an English accent but it works somehow.

Because of the allusion to British Empire?

It's probably because anything set in ancient or medieval times in American film uses British accents. You'll seen it for Rome, Sparta, Macedonia, and even Persia.

I'm a bit surprised that the "people from modern Rome" only got an honorable mention. After all, Rome still sees itself as the successor of the Roman Empire. When first visiting it, I was surprised to see the famous SPQR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR) acronym all over the place - on trash cans, manhole covers etc. etc.

when you see something histórical in Europe ask chatgpt if its something actually ancient that lasted until today or It was a xix century tourist marketing stunt made by the burgoisie

Of course the manhole covers aren't ancient, but they're a sign that Rome still sees itself in the tradition of the Roman Empire.

Or alterntively, that it's a relatively modern addition to add to it's mystique for tourism purposes. When did SPQR get added to the manhole covers and does anything else in Rome use similar signage?

As a Roman, this is a bit painful to read. I will play fair and assume you are not trying to say that the only thing there is to my city is tourist attractions.

The answer is no (and you can easily look this up). SPQR has been used continually since the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, by the Fascists and into the modern era by the current administration. You will find it everywhere, even far removed from tourist areas, and there is absolutely no mystique to it. It just means "this is public property of the city". You will also find it on the city's website and on pretty much all symbols of the city. Some of those manhole covers even predate the era of mass tourism... I had one in my yard on the outskirts of the city when I was a kid.

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 are reminders of it in every nook and cranny of the city. It's beautiful and you only realize this when you leave for a bit and then come back. Most people are just used to it. Personally, I feel a sense of continuity: you can read about some obscure anecdote in a history book and then walk over to the place where it happened. Or you walk by a building and find a plaque describing some event from 5 centuries ago. Many Roman roads and neighborhoods still exist today and have kept their original names. If you go to a big concert, chances are the venue will be the Circus Maximus. I think most residents don't realize how crazy that kind of continuity is. It's not just the Ancient Romans either: there's plenty of stuff from the Middle Ages, when Rome was essentially the capital of a theocratic state, very different in spirit from the Roman Empire.

The most interesting thing for me is looking back at the ancient Romans and realizing how much of a different mentality they (probably) had, compared to today. At least in the early and middle stages of the empire, they were efficient and ruthless, but also cosmopolitan and had a very clear notion of the public good. They had enormous resources and they would use them, for example, to build gigantic villas for the top guys, but also to build public housing for workers that they knew they needed. Today we don't have that kind of "laser focus", as we would call it. Modern Rome is messy and decadent, we can barely paint a few bike lanes and keep the wild boars off the streets. Times change :')

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.

Although .. ancient Rome did have manhole covers -- of stone. I wonder if any are left; working or not.

The coat of arms of the city has been using SPQR since the medieval period

Senatus Populus ... Que Romani! The senate and people of Rome.

Italy, per se, is a modern construct but the capital is still Rome and I think it fair to draw associations to the old empire.

I love seeing the SPQR logo and I think it is a really useful link to the past.

Fun fact: The -gh endings of many English words share a proto–Indo European root with that enclitic¹ -que in Senatus Populusque Romani. I remember being skeptical of this when I first heard it assuming that the person was arguing for a shared Latin heritage until I dug in and discovered that it actually went back to PIE.²

⸻

1. For the non-linguists here, an enclitic is a suffix added to a word that either functions as a separate word (here -que means “and”) or as a grammatical modifier like the possessive ’s in English.

2. Proto–Indo European for those of you who don’t do acronyms.

It seems this -que was already a relic at that time, or maybe sort of literary, because it coexisted with et (as in etc, et cetera, &c), which still exists e.g. in French. Or maybe one is from antic Latin and the other is from "vulgar"/late Latin ?

I think PolyMathy on YouTube went into this topic, and it is part of Greek.

It was probably this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5CUiP5oiH0

There were a number of different ways to write and in Latin. The Vulgate Bible, apparently unhappy with all the vav-connectives in its Hebrew sources uses them all.

This piqued my interest with the -gh endings, so I did a little investigation. What I found wasn't "many", apparently the only really attested example in Modern English is "through" and pretty much every other instance has died out. With a side note that the -kWe ending, also became "hw-" prefixes in English question words and possibly also the ge- prefix on collective nouns (also long since lost in English, but still present in German) which no survives only in the "i" in "handiwork", originally "hand geworc".

Of course, I only did a cursory examination, so there might be other examples not mentioned in the articles I found, but that's what I learned in about half an hour. Still, very cool fun fact, thanks!

I think the implication was a focus on the more strongly conserved folksy cultures and stuff. Whereas modern Romans are more... Italian. That having perhaps transformed to a great degree than others in the roughly two millennia.

I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta.

Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.

If you feel daring, there's a group of people publishing ancient roman recipes up to Renaissance ones (and a bit later as well) in italian and English https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/recipes/

Only loosely related, but on the topic of deep historical namings: Mayonnaise comes from, and derives its name, from Mahon on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic islands. That in turn is named after Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal Barca, "the" Hannibal who almost destroyed Rome. Mago was also a Carthaginian general, fighting alongside Hannibal.

So whenever you dip your french fries in mayo, you are celebrating the epic struggles of Carthage and Rome from two millenia ago. Bon appétit.

Allow me to recommend the AMAZING "Tasting History" YT channel, by Max Miller. He does history research into many different periods so he can cook the most authentic dishes, and has done a bunch of episodes on Greek and Roman culture.

There was a Roman recipe of what we call now burger.

Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).

The citizens of Byzantium identified as being Romans. Interesting, many Greek Christians still did at the time that the modern Greek state was created. When told they are "Hellenes" they responded that they have always been "Romioi".

"Where are the Romans now?" "You're looking at them." - Tony Soprano

Besides Romanians, there are several more eastern european romance-language-speaking peoples ("Vlachs") like Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Istro-Romanians. I think they might also deserve a mention.

Romanian is isolated now, but even quite recently there where languages forming a bridge between Romanian and the rest of Romance languages. For example Dalmatian, whose last speaker died in 1898. Now, most people think of Dalmatians as the dogs.

Talking about Vlachs, Welsch is a derogatory noun for Romance language speakers around the French-German border.

If we include the word Latin, then we have speakers of Ladino (also called Judeo-Spanish) and Ladin (natively called ladino). The first is derived from Old Spanish and spoken by Sephardic Jews everywhere but in Spain where they were expelled from. The latter is spoken in Northern Italy, specifically in South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno.

The names are funny just because you can imagine asking someone speaking a language derived from Vulgar Latin what language they're speaking (or writing), and them answering as a fish would when asked about the water.

Depending on who's legal fiction you believe, the Roman Empire was only dissolved in 1806 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsdeputationshauptschluss

That’s the German Holy Roman Empire, not the classical Roman Empire.

After refusing to be conquered, the Germanic tribes took it very serious to pretend otherwise.

What have the Romans ever done for us?!

"We don't need their culture. We have culture at home. Culture at home: ..."

In the Legal Fiction they are the descendants of Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor, and thus were the direct descendants of the Roman Empire.

Didn't they elect the Kaiser until 1806?

Yeah, but every empire worth its salt needs a good 'garage story' ;) (like the Romans claiming to be descendants of Trojan war refugees)

You could just as well say 1922 because the Ottomans also claimed to be the successor to the Roman Empire, or alternatively 1917, because the Russian Empire did too.

The more realistic alternatives are 'around 480', 1204 or 1453 :)

Neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire

Voltaire gets quoted so often without ever mentioning that the German word "Reich" has a different meaning than the loose translation "empire". A "Reich" is not necessarily an empire, so no news here.

The Holy Roman Empire considered itself a successor to the Roman Empire, so in this case, it is an exact translation.

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.

Almost every single statement in this sentence was wrong. It was founded as the Sacrum Imperium -- literally the Holy Empire. "Heiliges Römisches Reich" was a later German translation of the Latin term for it. Charlemagne explicitly had himself crowned as the emperor. It was never in any sense a republic and it never pretended to be.

In the Latin phrasing, which they likely used, the word "Imperium" appears. Good point. Still, the original meaning of "Imperium" was slightly different than what it is today. So my point goes more like this: The Germans didn't claim to found an empire in the modern sense, so it's not that surprising that Voltaire pointed out, it isn't one.

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.

The Reich was ruled by a "Kaiser" which its the translation for Emperor from Caesar in Latin, Augustus was Imperator Caesar Augustus.

France in German is Frankreich, the Frankish Reich. But no Kaiser here, though we had an imperator at some point.

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.

Feel I should mention the Istro-Romanians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanians), a small group of Romanian speakers who settled in Istria (now Croatia) some centuries ago. Mostly gone now but one grandmother was from one of the Romanian speaking villages.

My name is Roman (father was Italian born in Rome and identifies as a Roman) and I always find it interesting that people try to speak something that sounds like Russian to me. Never thought about the fact they might think I’m Romanian and are speaking Romanian!

I don’t know, I do associate the name Roman with Russia just because the only Roman I can think of is Roman Abramovich.

Romanian sounds like Latin, not like Russian :)

Well. The Latin version of Roman is Romanus, which is believed to have descended from Romulus, one of the two legendary founders of Rome.

The popularity of Roman in Eastern and Western Slavic cultures is likely due to the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. Roman is also a rather popular name in Spanish speaking Latin American countries (Román) and is not entirely unknown in Germany (same spelling).

Like others stated, it's more likely they assume you have e.g. Russian roots, as among Slavs that name is the most popular in territories where Cyrillic is the primary script.

Romanian sounds way more like Italian than any Slavic language.

I feel like that wasn't nearly as interesting as the title promised. The stuff that I find fascinating about modern Europe against the Roman Empire is how it carved out the modern dividing lines in some areas, or seeded cultural roots that would become their own thing over time (the British being a pretty interesting one). But its all so long ago that all of the other influences that happened over time are probably bigger hallmarks than their Roman roots (like the British again, being invaded by the normans and vikings).

plus roads

There are probably a number of more Roman cultural hallmarks around than what are mentioned in the article but they don’t have something that sounds like Rome in the name. Some tenuous stuff here that is quite random, but hey I clicked.

I don't know why people are so confused about where the Romans are. There is a guy named Harun Osman Osmanoğlu and he's the current Caesar of Rome. It's pretty simple.

You are mistaken. Karl von Habsburg is the Caesar of Rome.

Actually, it's a finance bro named Jean-Christophe.

I think even in the Roman times anyone could be "Roman". The way I understand it being Roman was not a measure of your ethnicity but a measure of your devotion to the empire.

Rome was an extremely militaristic society so they needed soldiers and what I understand is that your status in the military largely dictated your status in society. They requited soldiers from all of their empire thus all backgrounds within (late period).

That's not true. Roman citizenship was sacrosant, there was even a war during the late Roman Republic time between the Romans and allied Italians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9387_BC) fought over it. During the Roman Empire, Caracalla extended citizenship to everyone mainly to spite the Senate.

Can you provide another source for that?

  There are two threads in the ancient accounts: one depicting the struggle as one for Roman citizenship and another as one against Roman domination.

The war in article you link seems to be fought over the Italian towns wanting to maintain control over their lands and people, not religion.

The following two articles barely mention religious status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_ancient_Rome

I think there is no denying that religion was important in Rome. However what I can gather the Military was more important for citizenship and status.

Military service was one of the main ways to upgrade your social status.

  For non-citizens, the reward of Roman citizenship after 25 years' military service offered social transformation, not only for themselves, but their families too.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/introduction-legion-life-...

I was using the word 'sacrosanct' in a figurative way.

The Roman empire was large and diffuse enough, and enough people had local power that it was becoming increasingly difficult for Romans to hold power by force alone. At some point, you need _just enough_ people who feel like they have a stake in "the system" that they participate in supporting it rather than tearing it down.

For a much more convincing chronicle of people identifying as Roman well into the modern era, see https://open.spotify.com/episode/66SexoFR9AvdKaDzWaqR8w

As an American with mostly Western European ancestors (according to a popular DNA testing site), I've always considered Romans as some distant/tangentially related group.

It was surprising to find out that I have "ancient" DNA matches with a couple of Roman and Etruscan individuals.

Small world!

My grandfather was a smith in deep rural Spain. He made and fixed many roman ploughs, well into the 70s. They were called that because they were pretty much the same tool the Romans used.

So the romani arrived in the balkan in the 10th century and in western Europe in the 13th century are romans but not the Italians outside Rome

when visiting the jewish temple in rome someone asked if the roman jews were sephardic or ashkenazi. the answer was 'neither' as there have been jews in rome since before rome and they never left and didn't see themselves as part of the diaspora

God punished the Romans by turning them into Italians

> This root word also survives in the names of other Roman border regions across Europe, like Wales, Cornwall, and Wallonia.

... and the Polish term for Italy - "Włochy".

and Walnut!

Welsch along the Franco-German border (derogatory).

I’m still around

No mention of the Romansch, that's quite disappointing. But learning more about Romania and Romanian culture still made for a wonderful read, kudos to the author.

They’re literally the 2nd group mentioned?

Uh? They're the second group they talk about, just after the Romanians.

REG: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

To me, what would suck the most is living in a place after the Romans where you can see signs of their civilization but you're living a rural peasant life.

In many ways, that's how a lot of people feel in modern Britain: everywhere you see signs of XIX century grandeur, but "on the streets" life can feel depressingly backwards.

Brewing alcohol was known to hunter-gatherers. Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities). Medicine/education, that's the Greeks.

> Irrigation, sanitation and water-systems were invented in Mesopotamia (as were cities)

This is sort of like saying computers were invented in Mesopotamia because they did math.

Roman water and earth-moving civil engineering was absolutely cutting edge to the degree that the projects they undertook would have been unfathomable to their Bronze-Age predecessors.

> Medicine/education, that's the Greeks

Egyptians, Shirley?

(Although they're such abstract concepts, I'm sure everyone had them to some degree).

The idea entered our collective subconscious and is still going strong:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-father-in-law-is-a-builder...

Imagine growing up in Cairo.

I 100% deserve getting flamed a bit for skimming and shooting off a comment when not paying enough attention.

I am not my grandfather, and neither current descendants of Romans are Romans.

Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks. Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces. That's because it was only used by slave scribes. The nobility that could write, did so in Greek.

Yawn. More rewriting of history to try to remove successful cultures.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Are you not entertained?

> a slavery based society

As opposed to the Greeks, Parthians, Ptolemaic Egypt and Judea? Unless you mean "fully dependent on slave labour" - then I guess we can mention Sparta and Athens.

> that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks

What does "little" mean in this context? This is a very fuzzy concept but this doesn't sound right.

Sparta is known for little other than their military prowess, which was a necessity for managing their much larger slave population.

Athens had a rather strange system of slavery. The majority of slaves, owned by State, earned wages and worked and lived unattended. It was much more similar to indentured-servitude.

My point was that Sparta was far more dependent on slave labour for its existence than either Rome or Athens.

>Don't glorify Rome too much. It was a slavery based society that progressed sciences, technology and civilization little from what they inherited from the Mesopotamian's/Greeks.

It progressed civic life, institutions, law, infrastructure, and other things, a lot. Modern law is a heavy percentage ancient roman law in basis.

Slavery-based society doesn't say much for 2 millenia ago. Most where. The US had slavery until less than 2 centuries, and Jim Crow and other such things until less than a century. And still has things like forced prison labor, so let's cut the Romans some fucking slack.

> forced prison labor

I'd rather work than be in a cell.

If it is forced it is not what you would rather do.

You should read a day in the life of ivan denisovich. In my understanding, the whole book is making your point

I'd rather have a civilized prison system with human conditions, instead of an medieval revenge, profiteering, racism and exclusion, a prison-labor complex, and the death penalty - all created, ran, and cheered by bigoted Old Testament-types of human scum.

Especially if I get far far worse crime outcomes than countries with much healthier prison systems.

But, hey, that's just me.

I'd be content with a prison system that keeps the criminals away from victimizing more people.

Humane prisons aren't incompatible with public safety from violent offenders.

If anything, those countries have so much better outcomes, that it's not even funny...

People say that in support of the current us system that achieves the opposite, getting far worse outcomes.

Probably because what they really want is not safety or justice or rehabilitation, but retribution, revenge, and a non-criminal way to express their sadistic tendencies on some group, and since that group is prisoners anyway, so few care, even better.

So look at the US recidivism rate and understand that our mostly suffering inducing system does not do that

Slavery was legal in most society's 2 millennia ago but most society's were not built to be depended on slavery the way it was in Sparta, Rome and the American South.

They swept it under the carpet, keeping the benefits, but keeping it a side part of their economy. Kind of like a modern country depending on unprotected labor and even child labor in the third world for its minerals or even for its Nikes.

And a lot the later 19th-20th century "englightened" countries that didn't have explicit slavery in their midst, have enslaved and exploited whole countries as colonies.

It was one of the most influential civilization in all of recorded history. It's not about glorifying it, or justifying it. I think that a lot of people see it much more "civilized" than many others, before and during it. And perhaps after it too.

What civilization would you glorify?

It’s ironic that the civilizations that directly contributed to us sitting here believing in egalitarian democracy, get far more hate for it than the ones that never evolved into egalitarian democracy at all. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and some people can’t see it.

I was talking about its economic system, not politics.

> progressed sciences, technology and civilization little

Roman engineering was pretty darn solid.

- Go stand in the Hagia Sophia and tell me the Romans did little to improve architecture and engineering.

- I won't defend the Roman record on slavery, but I will point out that the Greeks (particularly the Spartans) were slave societies too.

- The Greeks were significantly more xenophobic and sexist than the Romans. If you washed up on the shores of ancient Greece, you could never have become a citizen. The Romans were far more tolerant and inclusive.

- Putting spaces between words was a medieval innovation. The Greeks wrote in much the same way as the Romans, and that was thanks to the Phoenicians!

- Romans revered Greek culture because their city started in a period when Greek colonies were spreading Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean and, specifically, in Italy itself. Greece was to Rome as Rome was to medieval Europeans: A colonizer.

----------

No ancient society smells of roses if you look close enough. However, it's also rare to find ancient societies that expanded and persisted for centuries without being innovative and progressive. The Romans were both awful and great, much like the Greeks, Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians, etc. before them.

Sparta is not exactly known as the pinnacle of civilization. As for the rest of your comment, you make some good points.

Sparta is quite possibly the pinnacle of horribleness for civilization, which is why I think they emphasized that it particularly was a slave society (80%+ slaves and a majority of the remainder were non-citizens).

Also, our own society right now will be someday considered barbaric by our descendants. I don't know what for, but you can bet your bottom dollar it will happen. We should show the people of the past some grace, the same way we might hope the people of the future will show us some grace.

Eating meat. Changes in moral perception generally are downstream of changes in technology. E.g. the modern conception of women being equal participants in the economy arose alongside the growth of the knowledge economy, where your average worker was sit in front of a computer instead of bolting doors to a car frame on an assembly line. I strongly suspect that once lab grown meat becomes ubiquitous, our killing and eating animals will come to become regarded as barbaric.

What a ridiculously myopic take. Slavery was the norm in most places in most of human history. Pick a continent: there was slavery there at one point or another, and often over extensive periods.

> Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces.

Without spaces, Japanese could never develop a great civilization. Pfff

> Heck written Latin didn't even have punctuation marks, not even spaces. That's because it was only used by slave scribes. The nobility that could write, did so in Greek.

Greek of this same era did not have spaces either, as a look at any reproduction of an ancient manuscript will tell you.

Rome was not at the spear tip of sciences and arts (it also the reason why roman elites liked greek arts so much - they had time and money for such activities) - but otherwise the impact of roman empire is huge and long-lasting. Law, engineering, political system were incredible. In fact, reading about political struggles in ancient Greece requires a good amount of explanation of the political system, but it is shocking how modern political struggles in Rome feel.

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