Just to be annoying, first you could argue that Jews were a separate ethnic group with distinct characteristics, or that modern people in the Middle East are descendants of Turkic tribes that came to occupy Anatolia after the fall of the eastern Roman empire
Oh, no, the Romans were quite prolific in their criticism of anyone who wasn’t also Roman. Especially when it came to both their language and their physical characteristics. The shit they said about the Gauls was absurd.
And from pretty much every area they conquered, they took a gigantic amount of slaves.
Everybody took slaves from prisoners of war in any conflict, not just the Romans. Slavery was ius commune, it had nothing to do with ethnicity and it fit in very different social and anthropological functions across all societies of the period. Everybody stop it with the application of modern, anglocentric concepts to ancient Mediterranean cultures. It was cute when you were just building a whole bunch of anachronistic white marble columns, but that’s as much as I can tolerate.
Idk about the Romans, but pretty sure the Portuguese did report with surprise the existence of dark brown people in sub Saharan Africa during the age of discovery
Just to be annoying, first you could argue that Jews were a separate ethnic group with distinct characteristics, or that modern people in the Middle East are descendants of Turkic tribes that came to occupy Anatolia after the fall of the eastern Roman empire
You’re right, that is annoying!
So, you’re saying the people in the middle east were a lot more brown in the year 0 right?
I’m saying I have no idea what the Romans found when they conquered that part of the world. Wonder if there are any historical Roman records
There probably are records, but I would be very suspicious if they mentioned skin colour.
Oh, no, the Romans were quite prolific in their criticism of anyone who wasn’t also Roman. Especially when it came to both their language and their physical characteristics. The shit they said about the Gauls was absurd.
And from pretty much every area they conquered, they took a gigantic amount of slaves.
Everybody took slaves from prisoners of war in any conflict, not just the Romans. Slavery was ius commune, it had nothing to do with ethnicity and it fit in very different social and anthropological functions across all societies of the period. Everybody stop it with the application of modern, anglocentric concepts to ancient Mediterranean cultures. It was cute when you were just building a whole bunch of anachronistic white marble columns, but that’s as much as I can tolerate.
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Tunisia is an overnight ferry ride from Sicily
Idk about the Romans, but pretty sure the Portuguese did report with surprise the existence of dark brown people in sub Saharan Africa during the age of discovery
There’s no year 0. There’s year 1 BC, followed by year 1 AD.
Frankly, way less annoying than Americans trying to apply a concept of “whiteness” to first century social dynamics.