I went down a rabbit hole of DNA studies trying to understand why people on tumblr seem to think the Romans were not white, and here are a few thoughts:
in Europe, ‘white’ isn’t a thing
in the sense that there are so many shades of white, it doesn’t really mean anything
like, Spanish white and Swedish white are different things, but we wouldn’t consider either ‘non-white’ or ‘whiter’
you can generally tell where someone’s from, but there are people who ‘look out of place’ a bit everywhere
either because recent or century-old migrations, or because of a previous population that lived there and then the borders moved or something
and: in a nutshell, Italian geography discourages friendships
that means that before the Romans came along, people generally kept to themselves, so there’s more genetic diversity the farther back you go
at some point in the Neolithic, there were non Indo-European tribes living in Italy, but we don’t know exactly where they came from
the Indo-European people, on the other hand, probably invaded from the North
except for the Etruscans, because as it turns out, Herodotus was right (AGAIN! HAHHAHAHAHAHA SUCK IT HATERS) and they actually came from somewhere in modern Turkey
which still doesn’t mean they weren’t white, btw
even today, there’s plenty of people in the Middle East who look like this:
[top to bottom: a Kurdish fighter; Iranian politician Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; Syrian writer Samar Yazbek]
so the notion of ‘race’ as it’s understood in the US doesn’t really work elsewhere
if it even works in the US, that is
so anyway, from what we know from literary sources, the Romans weren’t incredibly dark
(btw people abroad, and especially Americans, tend to have a fixed idea of what Italians look like and act like)
(but most of the Italians who emigrated to the US came from four Southern regions - Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicilia - and because Italy basically became a united country, like, 20 years ago, it’s still a very diverse nation)
(so what you think of as a ‘typical’ Italian is probably the great-grandnephew of a ‘typical’ resident of one small village in Sicily)
and the ‘typical’ Roman you often see in movies, with tanned skin, dark eyes and curly black hair, probably wasn’t a ‘typical’ Roman at all
those traits are way more common in some areas of the South - where about 37% of the population has Greek DNA because ancient colonies
so while blond hair probably wasn’t really common (we can tell because it was greatly admired and sought after, and people generally like what they don’t have), neither were darker skin and black hair
in fact, a lot of politicians and other VIPs are described in the texts as having light eyes (light blue, green and gray) and some had blond or red hair
others died their hair blond with pigeon poop, but that’s another story
so the bottom line is - like modern inhabitants of Italy, ancient Romans were white, but in many cases you could probably tell from where their family came from, and some were ‘whiter’ than others depending on their ancestry
that said, the European past was a lot more diverse than our instinctive perception of it
there was a lot of trade going on, slaves from conquered lands, wealthy and poor people roaming about, and units of foreign-born Roman soldiers in unlikely places, so that’s something to keep in mind.
As a bonus for reading this far, here is a smiling wolf.
(Also please stop saying those guys are chads, daddys and DILFs. Most of them were dangerous sociopaths who’d feed you to their pet eels if they could.)
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