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=7...Rome's successful expansionist wars."&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=S...ng undermined by foreign immigrants."&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=7...Rome's successful expansionist wars."&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/2015/03/new-york-times-drops-razib-khan-204287
So it does not surprise me that our resident Italian Nordicist seems to like him so much.