4.2.2007, 17:18
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Citim: Roman descendants found in China?
By Richard Spencer in Liqian, north-west China, Last Updated: 12:36am GMT 04/02/2007
Villager Cai Junnian with his green eyes and ruddy complexion
Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.
Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.
They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair mixed with traditional Chinese features.
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Rome to China map, Roman descendants found in China?
The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.
In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome's eastward expansion.
But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...2/wroman02.xml | |
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