The Italian Genome-Fiorito et al 2015

[Angela]

“Owing to the limited time-depth of the Roman historiographical tradition, specific references to wartime enslavement are rare until the beginning of the third century BC: the true extent of the alleged mass enslavement ofthe inhabitants of Veii in 396 BC remains unknowable."

To continue:
Third Samnite War (297-293 BC)-58,000-77,000 individuals. (Once again, for those unfamiliar with the period, the Samnites were fellow inhabitants of the Italic peninsula.)

First Punic War (263-241 BC) 100,000 slaves.
http://www.kirkwood.k12.mo.us/parent...unic%20War.jpg

Acragas in Sicily (261 BC)-the sack and enslavement of the entire surviving population of one of the largest Greek cities in the western Mediterranean

Second Punic War (218-202 BC)-over 100,000. According to the poster Drac, there were very few actual Carthaginians in Spain, so if we follow his logic, the soldiers from Spain who would have been enslaved would primarily have been Iberians. I’m not so sr about that, but certainly when we get to the battles which were fought in France and Italy, most of the combatants would have been allied tribes from those areas, including my own Celt-Ligurians, who seem to have made a habit of choosing the losing side. The battles in southern Italy also often involved Greek city states who made the wrong choice, with the predictable consequences.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Second_Punic_War_full-en.svg/2000px-Second_Punic_War_full-en.svg.png

Celt-Ligurians (230-14 BC) 40,000

Celts at Telamon (225 BC) 40,000 Dead, 10,000 Enslaved

Epirus (between Albania and Greece-167 BC-150,000 captives

Macedonians (140 BC) Unknown numbers enslaved during the Macedonian Wars

Seleucid Empire in Near East (100-63 BC) Unknown numbers of slaves
Cimbri and Teutones (102-101 BC) 60,000 and 90,000.

Athens, Corinth-Unknown Numbers.

The “Gladitorial Wars” of Spartacus, commonly known as a slave revolt, were fought mostly by Thracian and Celtic gladiators, many of the latter presumably from Gallia Cisalpina, since this was before the major engagements in Gallia Transalpina. 6,000 of the rebels were reputedly crucified along the Appian Way, with the remainder re-enslaved.

Gallic Wars (58 BC to 50 BC)-this was the mother lode, up to ONE MILLION slaves, and thus the largest single recorded group by far.

Dacians (AD 105) 500,000

Jewish Wars 97,000

Parthians (198 AD) 100,000

I haven't given total numbers for some groups like the Germanic tribes, the Britons, the Iberians, because I'm not aware of reliable sources for them, but we know that the flow would have been there as the result of the wars of conquest fought on or near their territories.

Now, do I believe that these figures are rock solid? No, I don’t. I have about the same skepticism about them as I do about the figures for the total number of slaves. The point is that contrary to the assertions of our resident Spanish Nordicist, it should be clear that Rome was an equal opportunity enslaver. There is no indication whatsoever that the majority of slaves were sourced from the Near East or North Africa. It is quite the contrary in fact if you add up the numbers.

Nor have I ever seen anything in any volume on the history of the period or specifically on the history of slavery in the period to indicate that slaves from the Near East made their way to Italia in disproportionate numbers at the expense of Gauls or Germans or Dacians/Thracians or Greeks. The historian I cited upthread nicely takes care of all the nonsense theories about why the slaves so often had Greek names. Obviously, as we barely see a Gallic or German or Dacian or British name among the slaves, the slaves from these areas must have been given Roman or, more often, Greek names.

Now, conquest was not the only source of slaves, and the reason partly has to do with the lack of longevity among them.

(To be continued)

[Angela]

Scholars are hard pressed to get accurate data for the fertility of slaves both within slavery and after manumission.

The following is generally accepted among historians of the period:

"Owing to heavy disease loads, life was short even in the top echelons of Roman society. For that reason alone, slaves need not have lived significantly shorter lives simply because of the hazards inherent their legal status. However, the use of slaves in particularly unhealthy rural locales and especially their disproportionate concentration in large and therefore infection-rich cities may well have lowered their overall mean life expectancy even further, thereby impeding natural reproduction at or near replacement level."

Also, " Several factors militated against slave reproduction at or near replacement level: imbalanced sex ratios if and when they persisted; higher mortality in cities and mines and on malarial estates; family break-ups through sale or inheritance; and the manumission of slave women of childbearing age.”

Indeed, while the average life expectancy of the poor in the empire was, according to certain scholars from 20-30 years, that of slaves was under 20. Miners, galley slaves, and men being worked to death under insalubrious conditions in latifundia weren't procreating and keeping slave numbers stable. Only house slaves and commercial slaves would have fared better, but most of them were living in crowded urban environments and would have been subject to the periodic outbreaks of disease that entailed.

For the viewpoint of another respected historian, we have John Madden:
http://www.ucd.ie/cai/classics-irela.../Madden96.html
"However, on closer analysis, this reasoning is flawed. True, some of the more fortunate city slaves and certain rural ones as well enjoyed a secure home life. And undoubtedly these together with the many female slaves who had children by their masters (or other free men) will have contributed considerably to the number of new slaves entering the system each year. Nevertheless, the belief that the total slave-body was more or less self-propagating is unsound. There are a number of reasons for this.

"1. First of all it is clear that males were in the majority where work was difficult and weighty - in building, in mining, in numerous types of industry, in a wide variety of services such as loading and unloading at docks, portage, transportation, etc. In agriculture also male slaves would have been more in demand. Small landowners would have to be content with whatever slaves were available irrespective of their sex, while large landowners would undoubtedly have needed some female slaves e.g. for weaving, cloth making, cooking. However, it is clear from passages in Varro and Columella, where the question of which of the more reliable agricultural slaves should be allowed a female companion is treated, that permission for such a partner was a special concession. Varro recommended that praefecti ['overseers'], as an incentive to their faithfulness, should be granted female slaves with whom they could have children, while lesser slaves should have to do with less (Rust. 1.17.5,7). In Columella, on the other hand, it is the vilicus ['steward'] who should be given a female partner (Rust. 1.8.4). In the ergastula - the private prisons belonging to many Roman farms where slaves were forced to work in fetters - the inmates would have been very largely male. It is evident from this that among agricultural slaves males surely outnumbered females.

When we turn to domestic staff the evidence suggests that there too male slaves were more numerous. S. Treggiari in her analysis of the 79 members of the city household staff of Livia has noted that 77% were male (the percentage was similar among freedpersons and slaves). This is a very revealing figure since we would expect a domina to have a higher number of female staff than a dominus. And in her study of the city familiae of the Statilii and the Volusii Treggiari has shown that about 66% of the freedpersons and slaves were male, while of the thirty child slaves whose names were inscribed on the tombs of these two families 80% at a minimum were male. "

So, contrary to an assertion made upthread, the statements of Razib Khan in his comments about this paper are in total accord with the pronouncements of recognized authorities and it is those who assert the contrary who are obviously posting unsupported opinions motivated by repugnant world views.

According to a recognized specialist in this field, " I allow for a reproductive shortfall of up to 50% in late Republican Italy, at a time when the slave population was greatly expanding and dynamically unstable."

Note that this is at a time when military conquests were increasing the number of slaves.


So, how was the deficit at least partly made up?

Walter Scheidel makes short shrift of the role of pirates in supplying slaves. You may wish to read his explanations on page ten of his work:
https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdf...del/050704.pdf

Other sources included those enslaved as the result of conviction of crimes, among which were avoiding the census and the draft, freedwomen cohabiting with slaves, and ungrateful freedmen. Foundlings were sometimes enslaved, and poor parents sometimes sold either themselves or their children or both into slavery, and increasingly as time went on, but it's impossible to get completely accurate numbers for this local source of slaves.

"It is unlikely that Roman fathers ever had a formal right to sell their children; in classical law, family members could not be sold into slavery or pawned. As in the case of enslaved foundlings, the state favored a pragmatic compromise position: the sale of minors did not affect their status and was technically void; therefore, redemption remained possible, with or sometimes without compensation. This focus on redemption accounts for prohibitions of the sale of such slaves overseas.
30
As a result, there were no clear boundaries between sale, pawning, and lease: given the formal inviolability of free status, ‘sale’ might merely amount to an extended lease of minors in times of hardship. "


Bondage for debt, which could be for life given the life expectancy of the average slave, also increased as time went on and the Empire came under more stress.

Some of the short fall was made up because slave trading was conducted with peripheral areas once the maximum extent of the empire had been reached and no new conquests were filling the slave marts.

“The Black Sea region and the Caucasus had been well established as a major source of slaves since the archaic Greek period (see Chapter 6), and this tradition continued into late antiquity. Together with free Germany, that northeastern periphery must have accounted for most imports once the Roman empire had reached its maximum extension. Black slaves from as far away as Somalia and the occasional import from India made for comparatively rare but consequently high-prestige retainers.”

It should no longer need to be repeated that these slaves would have gone to wealthy estates in the provinces as well as Italia, whether the estates were owned by Italic Romans or Gallic Romans etc. The enslavement of foundlings, debtors etc. would have been the enslavement of locals.

[Angela]

Now, let's turn to the flow of genetic material from the slave population into the larger surrounding community anywhere in the Empire, which is the preoccupation of one of our posters. It is once again difficult to get precise numbers. In the case of the manumission of female slaves, for example, it's unclear whether slave women of child bearing age could be manumitted. The same author points out that:


"According to the Egyptian census returns, women were not normally manumitted prior to menopause, a custom that ensured that all their offspring remained the property of their owners. The price edict of AD 301 also indicates that a premium was placed on the reproductive capabilities of female slaves. By contrast, inscriptions from Italy and the western provinces frequently commemorate young and fecund freedwomen. Once again, we lack the means to decide whether we are dealing with genuine geographical variation or merely distorting recording practices that (in

the latter case) gave undue prominence to the experience of privileged and otherwise unrepresentative slave women. "


There is also the fact that a certain number of male slaves were castrated. This practice wasn't outlawed until the end of the first century, but the trade continued even after that. Many of the most wealthy and successful freedmen who surrounded the Emperors were, in fact, eunuchs.

Over and beyond that, even favored male slaves did not normally receive their manumission until they had outlived their usefulness.

Of course, there were especially favored young and nubile male and female slaves who were manumitted in time to marry into the surrounding community. That is known from inscriptions of such freedmen who acquired enough property to leave behind funerary artifacts.

The question is how much gene flow did that entail? Some, certainly, but how much? Without some ancient dna I don't see how we can get anywhere near precise figures. Even with it, there will no doubt be difficulties.

What is without a doubt is that contrary to the assertion of one of our posters there is nothing to indicate that this gene flow would have been disproportionately from Near Eastern, or even less, North African slaves. Quite the contrary, in fact, given the figures for the slaves from Gaul alone. Nor was there an embargo on traders from Germania, and Britannia, and Gaul, and Iberia. They were all Roman citizens after a certain point and free to travel and work in Rome. Only the most biased and agenda driven reasoning would harp on such denizens of Rome coming from the Near East, not that they too didn't exist, of course.

Also, there is the question of the "Italian cline". What was first postulated by this poster was that the "excess" CHG or "southern" ancestry in southern Italians and Sicilians, and even in Tuscans, was because of ancestry from the Near East during the time of the Roman Empire. In the Tuscans it's also purported to be from a massive invasion from Asia Minor.

I will give the Tuscans short shrift. Their admixture "components" are remarkably similar to those of the people of Albania, Kosovo, and the very northwestern parts of Greece. I'm not aware of those areas having been on the receiving end of a mass invasion from Lydia in Anatolia or being the epicenter of slavery from the Levant.

That there might have been an elite migration from the Aegean/northwest coastal Anatolia is certainly plausible. Given the PCA that was recently published of elite "Etruscans" showing them plotting with Southern Europeans, and not that far from modern Tuscans, I doubt anything more than that took place, but should the ancient dna prove that is the case, it is perfectly fine with me. I just want to be related to them even if that is unlikely. Their precise genetic make-up is immaterial to me. I just love their culture, and in additio I've been clambering over their remains since my father took me to visit them as a child.

Let us now try to get a handle on how much "excess" we're talking about for southern Italy compared to a place like Greece or Spain, for that matter. I see no need to go over the data for Greece. The level for even mainland Greece for CHG, after the impact of the Slavic invasions is roughly equal to that of southern Italy, never mind central and northern Italy, and the levels in the Balkans aren't much lower. I have posted the data before or people can access the spreadsheets for the various calculators.

Or, we can turn to Spain. The Lazaridis/Haak statistics obviously couldn't tell the difference between Anatolian Neolithic genes and CHG genes, and lumped them all in together as EEF, which is understandable as they are indeed similar. The Spanish except for Pais Vasco (as I already pointed out in another thread that information can be found in the supplement) come in at 81%. The Sicilians at 90%. Even if you take this at face value, does 8 or 9% make a difference as to whether you can be in the European club? Are the Finns going to be disqualified too? Their 8+% admixture isn't even "Caucasoid". Speaking of that, given that Near Easterners are indeed "Caucasoid", should the pertinent statistic for inclusion or exclusion, in addition to Siberian and East Asian be "SSA" percentages? I think all of Spain, not just southern Italy and Sicily might be in trouble on that one.

Do you see how ridiculous this quickly becomes? That's what makes me angry and causes me to respond even when the comments are obviously nonsensical. That, and the fact that dishonesty and lack of integrity are second only to cruelty in my personal list of detested traits.

See:

Attachment 7568

The major difference between Spaniards and Sicilians is because of a difference in the WHG number. That Iberian Neolithics had some extra WHG compared even to Remedello has been apparent for some time. Are we supposed to care?

Perhaps the most persuasive data comes from IBD analyses. I have made reference to Ralph and Coop before. Read it. They find no evidence of substantial gene flow into Italian populations after about 400 BC, which would let the Celts/Gauls and the Greeks in under the wire, but would exclude both slaves from later periods of the Empire and the Germanic invaders. Now, this was based on one set of data, and they might consider anything under 10% insignificant, but those are their findings.

See:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology...l.pbio.1001555

Razib Khan also has all the pertinent data, and has done an analysis in comparison to Levantines (Syria) in particular and sees no "recent" as in post Neolithic gene flow. He does see some gene flow from North Africa, but that makes sense given the Moorish occupation. The male uniparental markers likely to hail from there are under 7%, however. Dienekes found much the same in his IBD runs with Near Eastern and southern European populations.

Of course, analyses based on modern populations can only take us so far. What we need is a lot of ancient dna. I am totally open to whatever the ancient dna will show. Whatever our "mix", it's obviously the best. :)

Given these facts, I'm at a loss as to the reason why this poster is obsessed with making claims that the Italian genetic signature is due overwhelmingly to some non-existent disproportionality in the slave numbers from the Near East versus Europe during the period of the Empire. Well, I'm not actually at a loss. Anyone who has read his thousands of posts here knows that it is part of the longstanding "war" between Spanish and Italian Nordicists, skin heads, call them what you will, over who is least "southern". To say I find it disgusting is an understatement.

As to said poster's attempts at character assassination, I have no fears. His preoccupations and motivations are clear to anyone who has read his thousands of posts here on this site. I'm sure they can be found elsewhere as well, but since I'm not an habitue of those sites, I can't tell you what name he hides behind there. A word to those who would attempt to go there: if, like me, you don't have very sophisticated blocking programs, your computer will be infested with malware within a minute. My advice would be to follow my lead and not go there; it's not worth it.

I have made all these points before, and cited the relevant sources before. To say that I resent having to redo all this work because someone chooses to ignore the evidence time after time is an understatement. In the future, I will simply post a link to this thread. Any attempt to dispute this data without relevant contrary data will be summarily dealt with as an attempt to mislead other posters.

Now until after Christmas I'm out. Some of us do have a life outside of population genetics.

[Drac II]

what is a near - easterners ?

Linguists state Hattian and Hurrian was adapted and used by the Hittites ~1700BC , it is nothing except only indo-european. It is clearly stated as not being from the semitic language tree.
With this knowledge, then the hatti and hurrians are also clearly a non-semitic people mostly likely from the southern Caucasus area.
There are over 50 volumes of hittite script which have been studied in respect to language.

Are south -caucasus people near -easterners?

I doubt with this hittite knowledge , the percent of Anatolia being near-easterner is very remote

Near Easterner means anyone coming from the Near East, irrespective of ethnolinguistic affiliation:

[Drac II]

We can gather some information from ancient BC sources about the numbers and place of origin of some slaves back then:


https://books.google.com/books?id=7h...rs.%22&f=false

177 BC 5,632 Istrians

167 BC 150,000 Epeirotes (Greeks)

146 BC 55,000 Carthaginians

142 BC 9,500 Iberians

101 BC 60,000 Cimbri (Celts or Germanics)

The slave revolts that started before Spartacus included slaves from all over the empire that were in Italy at the time. In fact, the first of such revolts was started by slaves in Sicily, their leader being a Syrian slave named Eunus. These wars indeed ended up in a lot of slaves getting killed due to their uprisings against the Romans. But these are older events. We are talking about the later day slavery of the times of Nero, the Antonines and the centuries AD. As is shown by a bunch of historians already referred to, the slaves and free foreigners of these later AD times came predominantly from the East. Literary sources pointing to this are not "gossip" or whatever is it that our resident Italian Nordicist wants to dismiss it with, but statements by people who were actually there and saw what was going on with their own eyes. When authors like Martial, Juvenal, Petronius, Umbricius, etc. mention slaves and foreigners in Rome they usually mention people from Africa and the Near East, not Gauls or Germanics. These last ones are more rarely mentioned. This is not "gossip" but the Rome these fellows saw with their own eyes and wrote about. Curiously and ironically enough, a good number of "Roman" writers at these times were themselves non-Romans, and some of them were acting like they were more Roman than the Romans themselves and disparaging foreigners. Once again pointing at how common the non-Roman population had become in Rome itself. But since Angela can't argue against eye-witnesses who were actually there, she tries to reduce this to "gossip", as if they were talking from hearsay. The topic of the "corruption" of Roman society was in fact commonly attributed to the large influx of slaves and foreigners coming from the Eastern parts of the empire, as Cicero's grandfather already put it:

https://books.google.com/books?id=SM...ts.%22&f=false

"There was a widespread belief that traditional values were being undermined by foreign immigrants. The decadence that was perceived to permeate the Republic was attributed largely to slippery and corrupt Greeks and Asiatics who had come to Rome from the hellenized Orient. Cicero's paternal grandfather, for one, would have nothing to do with them and deplored falling standards of Roman morality. "Our people are like Syrian slaves: the better they speak Greek, the more shiftless they are."


The historian I cited in posts #164 & #155 takes care of the nonsense that Near Easterners did not have Hellenized names or did not know Greek. Even in one of Angela's very own sources the author implies that besides "fashion" the reason why so many slaves had Greek names was because many of them came from the Hellenized East:

"Greek names dominate the record not just because many slaves came from the Hellenistic East, but also because they were fashionable."

Notice the "not just" part. Scheidel is obviously not dismissing the important contribution of the many Hellenized slaves to the total number of Greek names among Rome's slaves.

People in those times often died at earlier ages, this is true even of free people, as Angela's own sources show, so it also applies to slaves. But so? Does this mean we must disregard everyone's role in the demographics of those times just because of lower life expectancy? Don't think so. By the way, we can easily apply the same "logic" to the Middle Ages and its also lower life expectancy. So say bye-bye to any alleged "Moorish influence". Sure, them "Moors" were also dropping like flies because of war, disease and famine, so forget about them having had any significant influence either.

Furthermore, even one of her own sources mentions manumission as a key factor in reducing the slave reproduction rate:

"Manumission was probably a more important determinant of attrition and thus slave fertility. The age-specific incidence of manumission of female slaves is of pivotal importance....
Several factors militated against slave reproduction at or near replacement level:imbalanced sex ratios if and when they persisted; higher mortality in cities and mines and onmalarial estates; family break-ups through sale or inheritance; and the manumission of slave women of childbearing age."

In fact, mortality rate is only one reason and not one that Scheidel gives the highest importance. As for the important factor of manumission, demographically speaking these foreigners were still there, but now were no longer slaves.This does not mean that the foreigners in question "disappeared" or died off, they simply became freedmen. So contrary to what Angela pretends, this in fact agrees with what I and a whole bunch of historians have said, not Razib Khan's rather simplistic and naive argument about most slaves simply dying off in the big cities. Manumission played a very important part.


The Late Republic was around 147–30 BC. Slavery continued for many more centuries after that. Not to say anything of immigration from free foreigners.


From Angela's own source we can deduce that the numbers of slaves imported into Italy were larger than those imported elsewhere, as common sense dictates, Italy being the center of the empire and thus demanding more slaves from other areas, not the other way around. Something she herself had to finally "sort of" admit (after countless previous denials) as very likely in post #165 of this thread.


The IBD conclusions of Ralph & Coop's paper are well known to the authors of the paper that is the subject of this thread, yet it did not stop them one bit from estimating the age of North African, Middle Eastern and North European DNA in North Italy to around Roman times, and in Central Italy to around a bit before Etruscan times to Roman times. For Southern Italy their estimate gave medieval results. Notice how Angela tries to dismiss these results very quickly, particularly when it concerns Central Italy (Tuscany is located there.) The results are not to her satisfaction, she wants more ancient and prehistoric links. Why? Because she knows very well the arguments that Nordicists use against Southern Europeans having more "recent" and therefore "less white" ancestry (again, this "less whiteness" thing is just a bogus claim that they invented and did not get from legitimate historians and anthropologists.) She wants to avoid Italy from being put in the same bag. So the party line is basically "if you want recent ancestry look at the Iberians and Sicilians, they have some from the medieval Moors, but in continental Italy we are truly prehistoric in origin and haven't changed in thousands of years, just like you". Once again, nevermind the paradox that the numbers of slaves and immigrants in Roman times were quite larger than those of the Muslim foreigners anywhere in Europe in the Middle Ages. I have already posted the estimates from several historians for Arabs/Berbers in Iberia in other threads, they range from under 10% to less than 5% of the total population of Alandalus or the peninsula. The estimates one can see for slaves and foreigners from historians specializing in Roman Italy are almost always larger. In Angela's very own source, the estimate for the slaves alone was around 15-25% of the population, and other higher figures can be provided from other historians. Example:

https://books.google.com/books?id=7h...rs.%22&f=false

"Nevertheless, it has been estimated that at the end of the first century BC the body of slaves in Italy amounted to between two and three million people out of a total of six to seven-and-a-half million (including Gallia Cisalpina), or roughly one-third of the population"

1/3 = 33%

Angela very arbitrarily subordinates history to genetics when it is convenient for her agenda. But when genetics seemingly agrees with the historical record and points to Roman times as the source of genetic influx, then she turns the tables and subordinates genetics to her version of "history". Since the estimates that point to Roman times are not to her liking, then she conjures up excuses about slaves (never mind manumission and all the free foreign citizens) easily going the way of dodo-bird and therefore the genetic results are "bad" and must be dismissed. Her games are very easy to perceive for any observant person who has been reading her posts on this subject for a long time. That is the same reason why she also dismissed other papers trying to asses "recent" DNA in Europe. The results for Italy did not satisfy her expectations. They also point to Roman or medieval times. Not good. What will those Nordicists think of Italians? They will also find support for their claims in genetics. Not good. This is a "privilege" that Angela only wants to reserve for Iberians and Sicilians. Notice that when a vague speculative paper about Iberians comes around that offers a wide range of "possibilities" that could go from ancient times to immigrants from the Americas, like that "African" mtDNA paper, she sings its praises, inflates its supposed importance, and arbitrarily declares that the "Moors" must have had something to do with it. The way she treats papers on Italy and Iberia are diametrically opposed. When it comes to Italy, if the results are not to her liking, like those of the present paper, and there is any suggestion whatsoever that it might have to do with Roman times, she finds a myriad of obstacles and faults. When it comes to Iberia, on the other hand, even the faintest suggestion that it has something to do with "Moors" is quickly approved and given all credibility in the world. Same old, same old. Angela hasn't changed her tune in years. I am very familiar with this song and dance.


Predictably, Angela conjures up Lazaridis/Haak et al. and then tries to drop the "SSA" thingy on Spain, one of her favorite topics. Never mind the fact that the authors of that paper themselves question their own results in this matter, offering possible explanations, like using larger sample size. I can also conjure up the results of Busby et al., a paper that Angela most certainly does not like and dismisses any way she can, and point out how in their admixture run results the largest West African component was found among Tuscans. Was it sample size too? Maybe. They did use more Tuscan samples than of any other European group.


Character assassination? This coming from the very person who goes around gratuitously accusing those she does not like of being "Nazis", "racists", "Nordicists", etc.


Razib Khan is a blogger and columnist, not a geneticist who has actually published anything in any journals. And some of his arguments are not as good as he thinks they are. Plus he is well known to have very questionable and controversial agendas and affiliations, that's why he was fired from the New York Times:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/...ib-khan-204287

So it does not surprise me that our resident Italian Nordicist seems to like him so much.

[Hauteville]

The last phoenician survivors of Carthage after the third punic war were sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean not deported in Latium. It's a fact in the roman chronicles.

[Vukodav]

The last phoenician survivors of Carthage after the third punic war were sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean not deported in Latium. It's a fact in the roman chronicles.

He is a lost case: he claims that slaves in Rome were all Levantines, because there are brief mentions of "Hellenized" slaves in 3 or 4 satyrial or other gossip works, but totally forget that Caesar alone captured nearly a million of Celto Germanic slaves and moved them to Italy. Selective quoting as usualy. Not to mention the countless of Germanic, Briton and other Northern Euros who were captured in centuries of constant warfare.Anyway we are still waiting the long list of middle eastern inscriptions in Italy.

[Drac II]

He is a lost case: he claims that slaves in Rome were all Levantines, because there are brief mentions of "Hellenized" slaves in 3 or 4 satyrial or other gossip works, but totally forget that Caesar alone captured nearly a million of Celto Germanic slaves and moved them to Italy. Selective quoting as usualy. Not to mention the countless of Germanic, Briton and other Northern Euros who were captured in centuries of constant warfare.Anyway we are still waiting the long list of middle eastern inscriptions in Italy.

Talking about real lost causes: We are all still waiting for proof of your gratuitous assertion that practically no Near Easterners knew Greek or have Greek names. Getting debunked in public must be very frustrating, but you should get better informed before making claims.

The work of satirists are not "gossip" and actually a good source, they criticized the society in which they lived. The fact that they hardly ever mention slaves from north of the Alps is very telling. Had they been very common during those times, we see no reason why they shouldn't have been mentioned more often. These guys loved to make comments, often sarcastic or disparaging, about slaves and foreigners.

The claim that Caesar took 1 million slaves from Gaul was made by Plutarch, who was not Roman but Greek and also lived more than a century after the facts. Needless to say, the figure is obviously exaggerated even for Roman standards. One might give credit to several thousands of captured and enslaved people in those times at any given campaign, like the figures cited in one of the above posts, but a million is absurd. Velleius Paterculus, a Roman who lived closer to Caesar's times, gives a figure closer to 400,000 Gauls being captured. A bit more believable, but still probably somewhat exaggerated. On the other hand, Cato the Younger, a contemporary of Caesar, only seems to mention that 300,000 Germans were killed. Canfora gives such figures and specifically says that the ones given by Plutarch are devoid of criticism:

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ze...ism%22&f=false

[Pax Augusta]

Talking about real lost causes:

Talking about real lost causes you personally have contributed much to derail this thread about a population genetic study and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.

[Sile]

Talking about real lost causes you personally have contributed much to derail this thread about a population genetic study and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.

You must admit this was a study purely for western Italy and the western med area..............its goal, I am unsure...........but ancient etruscan and ligurian association with the south of Italy and Sardinia seems to be its core

[Drac II]

Talking about real lost causes you, Drac II, have contributed much to derail this thread and turn it into the usual and unnecessary anthro-wars.

I firmly believe that Eupedia should remain different.

Nobody "derailed" anything since the subject matter being discussed appertains to the paper that is the subject of this thread, and the person who started the arguments (and the rude responses; see post #144) was actually Angela, first when she attempted to make it look as if the genetics of the study was "bad" just because it suggested admixture dates she does not like (see first pages), and then when she started to bring up Iberians and Africans while she was exchanging posts with the supposed Roman history professor (see post #141.) Typical Angela tactics. If the topic of Italian genetics is getting dangerously close to making inferences she does not like, bring up those pesky Iberians and Africans.

Indeed, it should be different, but as long as some people want to push blatant double standards and agendas, unfortunately not exactly friendly exchanges like this will continue to happen.

[Pax Augusta]

You must admit this was a study purely for western Italy and the western med area..............its goal, I am unsure...........but ancient etruscan and ligurian association with the south of Italy and Sardinia seems to be its core

Sile, I agree with you. The lack of samples from eastern Italy (Veneto, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Marche, Abruzzi, Apulia) in this study makes it unfinished, absolutely Ferrara isn't enough to cover all east Italy.

[Vukodav]

Talking about real lost causes: We are all still waiting for proof of your gratuitous assertion that practically no Near Easterners knew Greek or have Greek names. Getting debunked in public must be very frustrating, but you should get better informed before making claims. The work of satirists are not "gossip" and actually a good source, they criticized the society in which they lived. The fact that they hardly ever mention slaves from north of the Alps is very telling. Had they been very common during those times, we see no reason why they shouldn't have been mentioned more often. These guys loved to make comments, often sarcastic or disparaging, about slaves and foreigners.The claim that Caesar took 1 million slaves from Gaul was made by Plutarch, who was not Roman but Greek and also lived more than a century after the facts. Needless to say, the figure is obviously exaggerated even for Roman standards. One might give credit to several thousands of captured and enslaved people in those times at any given campaign, like the figures cited in one of the above posts, but a million is absurd. Velleius Paterculus, a Roman who lived closer to Caesar's times, gives a figure closer to 400,000 Gauls being captured. A bit more believable, but still probably somewhat exaggerated. On the other hand, Cato the Younger, a contemporary of Caesar, only seems to mention that 300,000 Germans were killed. Canfora gives such figures and specifically says that the ones given by Plutarch are devoid of criticism:https://books.google.com/books?id=Ze...ism%22&f=false

Still way less ridicolous than people like you who claim that these millions of Near Easterners haven't left a single inscription in their own languages, but left plenty of them written in Greek, and that everyone with such name like Luke or Thomas was an Hellenized Arab, because Juvenal in his satires says so in few brief passages, and not some native who had adopted Christiany or some other Eastern Cult. After all millions of North Europeans with Hellenized Levantine names are officially Christians.

[Vukodav]

LoL between 400.000 to one Million of captured Gauls by Caesar alone and settled in Italy, plus only God knows how many Germans, Aquitanians, Belgians, Britons,... etc plus 150.000 Cimbri and Teutoni seized by Marius, 25.000 Salassi, 32.000 Gauls between 225 and 222, 500.000 Dacians seized by Thraian,... should I continue?

https://books.google.it/books?id=A9m...s+slaves&hl=it

[moore2moore]

We're going back and forth quite a bit. It's not that productive.

First, it is a mistake to take the statistics, or, for that matter, many statements of ancient historians as gospel. A well-known example is the Persian force at the Battle of Thermopylae. It wasn't a million. It was large, but nowhere near one million. There is a lot of legend in ancient sources.

The entire population of Gaul at the time of Caesar was ~1 million. The notion that he took 400,000 slaves must be greeted with some skepticism.

I want people to understand that ancient mass movements of people were not possible like they are in the Jet Age, or even as frequent as they were during the Germanic upheavals at the dawn of the "Dark Ages." A rather standard ancient warship, the quadrireme, carried about 75 people, 100 if packed.

(This is why I laugh at notions of the Anatolian--->Etruscan mass migration proffered by Herodotus, as more legend than fact. A "starving" inland nation of, say, 200,000 travels to coastal Anatolia, in the hostile territory of their neighbors, and cuts down enough trees, and builds 2000 ships?)

Always keep in mind the logistics. If they sound hard to believe, they are.

Caesar took 400,000 Gaulish slaves? How were they transported to Rome? Where are the mass graves from the tens of thousands who must have died en route?

Surely some went to places other than Italy. Why is there no Gallic genetic signature in North Africa? It had been solidly Roman by the time of Caesar, for about ~200 years (the age of our country).

Think it through. Healthy skepticism with logic are both your friends.

[Vukodav]

No, the Roman Republic controlled only Coastal Northern Tunisia, not the whole North Africa, by the time of Caesar, and that only after the third punic war (146 BC), so for less than one century. In fact North Africa was repopulated by Arabs and Black slaves in the last 1000 years, so the original Romanized Berber population is now completely mixed.

Those estimates are not totally correct and but are the only solid evidences we have.

[Drac II]

We're going back and forth quite a bit. It's not that productive.

First, it is a mistake to take the statistics, or, for that matter, many statements of ancient historians as gospel. A well-known example is the Persian force at the Battle of Thermopylae. It wasn't a million. It was large, but nowhere near one million. There is a lot of legend in ancient sources.

The entire population of Gaul at the time of Caesar was ~1 million. The notion that he took 400,000 slaves must be greeted with some skepticism.

I want people to understand that ancient mass movements of people were not possible like they are in the Jet Age, or even as frequent as they were during the Germanic upheavals at the dawn of the "Dark Ages." A rather standard ancient warship, the quadrireme, carried about 75 people, 100 if packed.

(This is why I laugh at notions of the Anatolian--->Etruscan mass migration proffered by Herodotus, as more legend than fact. A "starving" inland nation of, say, 200,000 travels to coastal Anatolia, in the hostile territory of their neighbors, and cuts down enough trees, and builds 2000 ships?)

Always keep in mind the logistics. If they sound hard to believe, they are.

Caesar took 400,000 Gaulish slaves? How were they transported to Rome? Where are the mass graves from the tens of thousands who must have died en route?

Surely some went to places other than Italy. Why is there no Gallic genetic signature in North Africa? It had been solidly Roman by the time of Caesar, for about ~200 years (the age of our country).

Think it through. Healthy skepticism with logic are both your friends.

Though Velleius Paterculus' 400,000 figure still seems exaggerated, it still is way more believable than Plutarch's absurd 1 million captives claim.

The Anatolian origin of Etruscans, or at least of some of them, is not any impossibility at all, but not in the migration proportions used in your example.

The reason why we should not expect North Africa to show much "Gallic" or any other such signatures is simply because there weren't that many people from those areas brought there. The Romans themselves were a minority in the conquered territories, and North Africa was one more of their labor supplies, not the other way around. Whenever possible, empires have relied on local labor. Simple logistics and economics. It is cheaper and more expedient to rely on the conquered local population for a labor force than have to import it from other places far away.

[Drac II]

LoL between 400.000 to one Million of captured Gauls by Caesar alone and settled in Italy, plus only God knows how many Germans, Aquitanians, Belgians, Britons,... etc plus 150.000 Cimbri and Teutoni seized by Marius, 25.000 Salassi, 32.000 Gauls between 225 and 222, 500.000 Dacians seized by Thraian,... should I continue?

https://books.google.it/books?id=A9m...s+slaves&hl=it

That source also gives similar reported figures for slaves from Africa and the Near East. And Plutarch's 1 million claim is hardly believable. It has no equivalent anywhere in the other reported figures.

[Drac II]

Still way less ridicolous than people like you who claim that these millions of Near Easterners haven't left a single inscription in their own languages, but left plenty of them written in Greek, and that everyone with such name like Luke or Thomas was an Hellenized Arab, because Juvenal in his satires says so in few brief passages, and not some native who had adopted Christiany or some other Eastern Cult. After all millions of North Europeans with Hellenized Levantine names are officially Christians.

You already know why the majority of the Near Easterners that the Romans were in contact with at the time would have been Hellenized. Hellenization of the areas in question had been going on for centuries. Greek had even spread to some parts of Arabia, let alone the Near East. You also have seen how common the Greek language was associated by the Romans with people like Syrians.

It still does not answer the question of why Roman writers from around the last century BC and the coming centuries AD usually mention more slaves and foreigners from Greece, the Near East and Africa than they do from north of the Alps. Also doesn't answer the question of why the Roman paranoia with foreigners and their supposed "corrupting" influence on Roman society was concerned mostly with Greeks and Near Easterners. You would think that if people like Gauls and Germans were so common in Rome that they too would have been the target of Roman xenophobia. Yet they are not nearly as targeted. And it is not because the Romans somehow liked Gauls and Germans. Their writings usually speak of these peoples with contempt as barbarians.

Again, you are comparing modern naming practices of today, after Christianity has spread all over the world for centuries, with those of around 2000 years ago, when Christianity was not even around yet. Apples & oranges.

[Vukodav]

That source also gives similar reported figures for slaves from Africa and the Near East. And Plutarch's 1 million claim is hardly believable. It has no equivalent anywhere in the other reported figures.

Ok 100.000 Jews, who were endogamic and did not mix with anyone, and 250.000 from the Punic wars, who included Celts, Iberians, Italics, Greeks etc... indeed the native Phoenician element among Carthaginians was a very tiny minority.

[Vukodav]

You already know why the majority of the Near Easterners that the Romans were in contact with at the time would have been Hellenized. Hellenization of the areas in question had been going on for centuries. Greek had even spread to some parts of Arabia, let alone the Near East. You also have seen how common the Greek language was associated by the Romans with people like Syrians.It still does not answer the question of why Roman writers from around the last century BC and the coming centuries AD usually mention more slaves and foreigners from Greece, the Near East and Africa than they do from north of the Alps. Also doesn't answer the question of why the Roman paranoia with foreigners and their supposed "corrupting" influence on Roman society was concerned mostly with Greeks and Near Easterners. You would think that if people like Gauls and Germans were so common in Rome that they too would have been the target of Roman xenophobia. Yet they are not nearly as targeted. And it is not because the Romans somehow liked Gauls and Germans. Their writings usually speak of these peoples with contempt as barbarians.Again, you are comparing modern naming practices of today, after Christianity has spread all over the world for centuries, with those of around 2000 years ago, when Christianity was not even around yet. Apples & oranges.

I've posted hard evidence from historians that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native European slaves were settled in Italy, while you are just selective quoting satires and anecdotes. Plus your own source states that Levantines were bilingual in Greek and in their own native languages, yet you want me to believe that they managed to leave no inscripions in any middle eastern language anywhere in Italy, but only Greek ones?

[Hauteville]

Carthage is known to use mercenaries. The phoenician element among their army was low.

[Drac II]

Ok 100.000 Jews, who were endogamic and did not mix with anyone, and 250.000 from the Punic wars, who included Celts, Iberians, Italics, Greeks etc... indeed the native Phoenician element among Carthaginians was a very tiny minority.

Also "a massive intake of slaves" from the Mithridatic wars. Also 100,000 Parthians. Then there's also the contributions of other means of obtaining slaves other than war captives, like commerce with the Eastern Mediterranean slave traders and "pirates". The Eastern parts of the empire were rife with them and had some of the most important slave markets, like those of Ephesus, Tyre, Chios, Thasos and Delos.

Jewish slaves would not have the freedom to decide with whom not to mix until they regained their freedom.

Almost all the figures given in the book are for the centuries BC, when the empire was expanding. Slavery continued all the way until the end of the empire. Once the empire stopped expanding (around Hadrian's times) Roman conquests no longer played an important role in the slave supply.

[Drac II]

I've posted hard evidence from historians that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native European slaves were settled in Italy, while you are just selective quoting satires and anecdotes. Plus your own source states that Levantines were bilingual in Greek and in their own native languages, yet you want me to believe that they managed to leave no inscripions in any middle eastern language anywhere in Italy, but only Greek ones?

The same sources say that hundreds of thousands if not millions of native Near Easterners and North Africans were also brought to Italy. But those figures are mostly for the BC centuries, during Rome's expansion.

Roman writers from the times of Nero, the Antonines, the Severans, etc., more often make references to slaves and foreigners from Africa, Greece and the Near East than from north of the Alps.

The source I cited clearly says that in entire areas of places like Syria Greek actually predominated. Notice that a totally Hellenized Syrian like Lucian did not write anything in any language other than Greek.

[Vukodav]

You are a liar. 100.000 captured endogamic Jews and 100.000 Persians from Ctesiphon don't add up to millions as you claim. Nothing compared to the nearly 2 millions of seized Dacians, Epirotes, Iberians. North Italians, Germans and Gauls in just five military campaigns. Your lame attempt to prove that millions of supposed Levantines only speak and wrote in Greek in Italy is making me laugh. Even your own source states that they were bilingual. Do you realize that you are going against your own source?