A DNA study of inhabitants of ancient Rome found some surprising results, and helps chart mass migration dating back 9,000 years.
Surprise. :)
romans: conquer a shitload of the known world, including parts of africa and the middle east
romans: institute a policy that says that conquered peoples are allowed to gain citizenship by military service, but also can’t serve in their home areas (because armed native soldiers + angry locals = revolt), thus requiring everyone who wants to be a citizen to work abroad for years of their lives, creating diversity.
racists: a single black person in an educational video about rome is unrealistic and i feel attacked.
And a lot of times legionaries settled down not far from where they served once their service was up. Some brawny Libyan kid signs on with the legions and gets stationed on the Rhine frontier. He learns to fight but also how to build roads and walls. After his service is up, he finds work as a mason, settles down with a sandy-haired German lass, and has a couple half-Libyan, half-German kids.
It ends up being a multi-generational thing when one of the kids also signs on with the legions. He gets stationed in Iberia, protecting Rome’s silver- and steel resources. He falls in love with a Celtiberian woman and has a couple quarter-Libyan, quarter-German, quarter-Celtic, quarter-Iberian kids.
Libyan kid’s grandson keeps the family tradition going by also signing up for the legions. He gets assigned to the Parthian frontier and after retirement settles down with a Syrian woman to raise a bunch of eighth-Libyan, eighth-German, eighth-Celtic, eighth-Iberian, half-Syrian kids.
And this is just from the legions. This isn’t counting trade fleets and caravans, the tourist industry, the slave-trade, or migration to Rome and provincial capitols for jobs or political reasons.
Stop clutching your pearls, racists. The Roman Empire was problematic in many ways, but racism wasn’t one of them. (They did occasionally act bigoted toward people of a specific nationality, but that was about culture, not about appearances.)
A poster boy—literally—for this diversity: black Egyptian kid grows up in Thebes (where there were a lot of people of color due to Ethiopia being next door), joins the Roman army, rises to command his largely-black home legion, and is sent with them to Gaul to deal with an uprising.
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