Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In this episode, I'd like to take us back to
Speaker 2: the year thirty six VCE. So at this point we
Speaker 2: have two of the most powerful kingdoms of the day
Speaker 2: ruling over their respective spheres of influence. So in the
Speaker 2: West we have the Roman Republic on the cusp of
Speaker 2: collapse into the Roman Empire, and there at the time
Speaker 2: in control of much of the Mediterranean coast, including all
Speaker 2: or significant portions of the Italian Peninsula Sicily, Sardinia, Hispania, Gaul, Ireicum, Macedonia, Greece,
Speaker 2: Asia Minor Syria, Judea, Cyprus, Crete, and parts of coastal
Speaker 2: northern Africa. And then in the East we have the
Speaker 2: Chinese Han dynasty controlling an even a larger territory that
Speaker 2: consisted of much of modern day China, with a significant
Speaker 2: expansion into western regions of this area. So each empire
Speaker 2: was the most consequential of its day within its sphere
Speaker 2: of influence, though they were hardly mirror images of each other.
Speaker 2: The Roman Republic was in a very fragile state on
Speaker 2: the verge of collapse into the Roman Empire, and it's
Speaker 2: going to continue to experience threats to its stability from
Speaker 2: that point onward. While the Han dynasty was somewhat consolidated
Speaker 2: and stable, with a complex bureaucracy in place to solidify
Speaker 2: its emperor's rule, it's also worth stressing that the Han
Speaker 2: dynasty also clearly had longevity on its side at this point,
Speaker 2: having existed from around two p six BCE. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: each was ruled to a certain extent by some form
Speaker 2: of unofficial triumvirate at the time, Rome by the first
Speaker 2: Triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus and Pump and the Han Empire
Speaker 2: was sometimes administered by something like triumvirate, most specifically in
Speaker 2: the form of the three Excellencies who would run things
Speaker 2: of the emperor happened to be very young. But again,
Speaker 2: the Roman situation was an unsteady alliance of the day,
Speaker 2: and the Chinese version we're seeing here was more of
Speaker 2: a baked in aspect of imperial rule. At some point,
Speaker 2: I'd like to come back and explore the idea of
Speaker 2: rule by three in general is kind of like to
Speaker 2: what extent it works or doesn't work in human governance
Speaker 2: and so forth. Now, why are we talking about the
Speaker 2: Romans and the Han dynasty. Obviously we're going to get
Speaker 2: to contemplations of and hypotheses, maybe even wild hypotheses, about
Speaker 2: how they might have come into contact with each other.
Speaker 2: And I have to acknowledge something that I remember playing
Speaker 2: as a kid. Maybe you played this when you're younger
Speaker 2: as well. I think it's still around in various forms,
Speaker 2: but the Age of Empire's real time strategy video games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember that. I didn't play it much, but
Speaker 3: I remember it was popular among like my friends when
Speaker 3: I was in middle school, and it did seem cool
Speaker 3: because you could make historical empires or peoples that never
Speaker 3: would have really had reason to have much interaction with
Speaker 3: each other. You could make them clash.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and so it was. It was you know,
Speaker 2: I haven't played in a long time, so I can't
Speaker 2: really do a deep analysis of it, but you know,
Speaker 2: at least on the surface, it was interesting that you
Speaker 2: were generating interest about these various times and places by
Speaker 2: putting them in oftentimes unreal proximity to each other, like
Speaker 2: very unreal, like there's a river between the two of them.
Speaker 2: And then engaging in combat. And in my experience, it
Speaker 2: was like, well, what would happen if whichever empire I
Speaker 2: picked a command fell to, I don't know, the Aztecs,
Speaker 2: because I could never play these things correctly. I would
Speaker 2: just feel overwhelmed and would inevitably be destroyed. But again,
Speaker 2: in these games, it makes it seem and I'm you know,
Speaker 2: and it's an artificial construct, you know, it could make
Speaker 2: it seem as if well, there's really not that much
Speaker 2: distance between these two empires in time or in space,
Speaker 2: but in this particular instance, talking about the Han Chinese
Speaker 2: and the Romans, the distance between the two empires, particularly
Speaker 2: for this day and age, was quite vast.
Speaker 3: Especially with other empires in between.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, there were at least two major empires
Speaker 2: in between as well. We'll mention here. So the Roman Roads,
Speaker 2: the famous Roman Roads, did not directly link Roman China.
Speaker 2: There was trade along the Silk Road that unofficially, I guess,
Speaker 2: did sort of stitch the two together. There was definitely
Speaker 2: trade awareness and perhaps a distant military awareness I've read,
Speaker 2: but each existed well outside of each other's sphere of
Speaker 2: influence and in between them. Yeah, as we're discussing here,
Speaker 2: you had various Central Asian kingdom's nomadic groups, and a
Speaker 2: particular note to what we'll be discussing here, you had
Speaker 2: the Parthian Empire, which lasted from two forty seven u
Speaker 2: BCE to two twenty four CE, and this empire controlled
Speaker 2: modern day Iran and much of Mesopotamia and was heavily
Speaker 2: invested in the Silk Road. This empire was preceded by
Speaker 2: the Solucid Empire and ultimately succeeded by the Susanian Empire,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show before. You can
Speaker 2: look up various maps of what these territories looked like.
Speaker 2: I found one from a bit later for our notes here, Joe,
Speaker 2: and you know, I encourage folks to look up on
Speaker 2: I think the one we're looking at here is from
Speaker 2: one hundred CE, so not one hundred percent accurate of
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, but it gives like sort of
Speaker 2: a basic shape, and you get to see a sizable
Speaker 2: amount of territory between these two empires.
Speaker 3: Just to be clear for the folks at home, you're
Speaker 3: talking about a map representing one hundred CE, not from.
Speaker 4: The year right.
Speaker 2: Correct. This is a modern map that has been you know,
Speaker 2: augmented to represent the you know, the rough boundary zone
Speaker 2: of these different kingdoms and empires.
Speaker 3: Right, because the interesting thing being, at the time, probably
Speaker 3: no one person could have combined a map with all
Speaker 3: the geographical knowledge to represent the land masses between like
Speaker 3: Portugal to Korea as we have here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and the and distant kingdoms, distant empires were
Speaker 2: truly distant, and there might just not be much known
Speaker 2: about them at all. And more would of course be
Speaker 2: known about your immediate neighbors, neighbors that you probably had
Speaker 2: to deal with in terms of trade, in terms of
Speaker 2: various military conflicts. So on the Roman side of things,
Speaker 2: the Parthian Empire was a far greater immediate concern, and
Speaker 2: even beyond then you had the Kushan Empire. And for
Speaker 2: the Chinese it was, you know, essentially the reverse, though
Speaker 2: their relationships were more but with the more immediate Kushan
Speaker 2: were more cooperative. Apparently, conflict with various nomadic groups were
Speaker 2: more of a common threat for these two, and so
Speaker 2: contact between the Roman and Han empires basically remained a
Speaker 2: distant one, handled through intermediaries among the Parthians and the Kashans,
Speaker 2: as well as generally through the Silk Road, but their
Speaker 2: knowledge of each other again was incomplete, even as their
Speaker 2: respective interests continued to creep out closer and closer to
Speaker 2: each other. And it's this is one of the I
Speaker 2: think the fascinating things about this historical scenarios. It's so
Speaker 2: different from the interconnected world that we know today, where
Speaker 2: you know, there are places that are still very distant
Speaker 2: to us for various reasons, and it may not even
Speaker 2: be purely geographical distance. It could be informational distance and
Speaker 2: cultural distance and so forth, and various other factors could
Speaker 2: be involved. But like this was a time where something
Speaker 2: like two kingdoms away it almost didn't exist. It almost
Speaker 2: took on maybe almost kind of mythical energy. Now that's
Speaker 2: not to say there were not at least some recorded
Speaker 2: attempts at direct contact. One of them is mentioned in
Speaker 2: the book China History by British historian John Key. Though
Speaker 2: it occurred this occurs sometime after the period we're looking at,
Speaker 2: This would be ninety seven CE, and this is when
Speaker 2: the Chinese sent a mission to tashin a distant realm
Speaker 2: with an apparently insatiable appetite for Chinese silk. According to
Speaker 2: Qi and he points out that this was likely Rome,
Speaker 2: or at least its easternmost provinces, but the mission ends
Speaker 2: up being detained in Parthia, likely by parties with a
Speaker 2: vested interest in preventing any direct trade between Rome and
Speaker 2: the Han dynasty, because there's simply too much money to
Speaker 2: be made as the middleman in trade between these two.
Speaker 3: Right, If you are currently making money as the station
Speaker 3: house in the middle of the exchange, you don't want
Speaker 3: to connect the parties on either side of you directly.
Speaker 2: Right, So that seems to be at least one of
Speaker 2: the stumbling blocks that occurred whenever direct communication was really attempted.
Speaker 2: It's possible that there's something else in the history books
Speaker 2: that I didn't come across, in which there was an
Speaker 2: attempted connection. But as far as I know, not much
Speaker 2: ever came together. But if we look to the world
Speaker 2: of highly hypothetical interpretations of ambiguous literary data, it's possible
Speaker 2: we could maybe find something right. And that's what we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about a little bit here today. Let's,
Speaker 2: first of all, let's look to fifty three BCE. So
Speaker 2: I mentioned the Roman triumvirate, of which Roman general and
Speaker 2: statesman Crassus was a member. He assumed Syria as is
Speaker 2: Roman province, but he apparently wanted more, perhaps perhaps in particular,
Speaker 2: he wished to rival the military successes of Caesar and Pompey,
Speaker 2: so he launched a military campaign against the Parthian Empire
Speaker 2: that suffered from refusal to cooperate with allies, as well
Speaker 2: as a deliberate misinformation campaign against his incursion. As a result,
Speaker 2: his forces were outmatched at the Battle of Kari. This
Speaker 2: was this would be modern day Heron and what is
Speaker 2: now Turkey, and they suffered a disastrous defeat. Crassus himself
Speaker 2: lost his life. Later tellings of this would claim that
Speaker 2: the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat. I think
Speaker 2: we mentioned this in a previous episode, but this was
Speaker 2: likely a later Roman fiction. I think most historians contend.
Speaker 3: But absolutely true that the Romans did not do well there.
Speaker 3: I think some of the troops escaped, but the majority
Speaker 3: of them were either killed or taken prisoner.
Speaker 2: Right, So that's fifty three PCE. Fast forwarding now to
Speaker 2: thirty six PC. This is where we're getting to our
Speaker 2: outside hypothesis here. This is where we get into this
Speaker 2: mysterious affair of shields like fish scales. So, looking here
Speaker 2: at a nineteen forty one paper titled an Ancient Military
Speaker 2: Contact between Romans and Chinese by Homer H. Dubs, this
Speaker 2: paper lays out the scenario. So, looking at Chinese histories
Speaker 2: of the time period, we have this situation where allegedly
Speaker 2: the Protector General of the Chinese Western Frontier Regions in
Speaker 2: Chinese Turkestan named Chin Tang ventures into Sogdia or Sogdiana
Speaker 2: to put down a Hun warlord whose whose name is
Speaker 2: difficult to pronounce. To be to be clear, we think
Speaker 2: it's I was reading something it sounded maybe it's like giorjur,
Speaker 2: and I think you were finding it, maybe more like
Speaker 2: with more of a C sound. But maybe the it's
Speaker 2: somewhere between a J and a C that our lips
Speaker 2: can't quite form. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In his paper, Dubs spells his name c H I
Speaker 3: H c H I H like Chi Chi, and but
Speaker 3: I've seen the name spelled elsewhere in the scientific paper
Speaker 3: that I'm going to talk about later, which is going
Speaker 3: to disagree with this hypothesis being put forward by Dubbs,
Speaker 3: they anglicize his name j z H j z H
Speaker 3: so I'm I think it is that Chi Chi or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: Ye. Either way, you pronounced that he was definitely a
Speaker 2: rising figure in this sort of region where different powers met.
Speaker 2: He'd previously killed a Chinese envoy and he was then
Speaker 2: invited by the King of Sogdia to come and help
Speaker 2: deal with some nomadic threats that they were facing. But
Speaker 2: he also was seemingly amassing power, demanding tributes from tribes
Speaker 2: under Chinese protection, and generally just become an increasing threat
Speaker 2: to Chinese interests in the region.
Speaker 3: He was trying to set up his own thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the Protector General here gathers his troops
Speaker 2: along with some auxiliary forces, and he sets out to
Speaker 2: attack this new city that this warlord is set up.
Speaker 2: And it's here we learned from these various accounts sent
Speaker 2: back to the Hunt Emperor that they encountered something perhaps strange.
Speaker 2: They saw strange soldiers fighting on behalf of the Hunt
Speaker 2: warlord that would have been basically would have mounted to
Speaker 2: like a more than one hundred foot soldiers lined up
Speaker 2: on either side of the city gate in some sort
Speaker 2: of fish scale formation. They apparently included illustrations, and I
Speaker 2: hope I'm inferring this correctly. But I don't think the
Speaker 2: illustrations themselves survived. I think what survived are histories written
Speaker 2: later based in part on these illustrations that were sent back.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is a weirdly indirect method of information we're
Speaker 3: getting here. But Dubbs does explain in his paper here
Speaker 3: that the information about what this military formation looks like
Speaker 3: comes from a Chinese text called the History of the
Speaker 3: Former Han Dynasty that itself says it got its information
Speaker 3: about this from paintings of the battle that were sent
Speaker 3: that were sent back to the Imperial court, and so
Speaker 3: somebody who saw the battle allegedly painted what it looked like,
Speaker 3: and then it is described in this history. The paintings
Speaker 3: are described as having more than one hundred foot soldiers quote,
Speaker 3: lined up on either side of the gate in a
Speaker 3: fish scale formation. So that is the particular visual detail
Speaker 3: in the description of the painting of the battle that
Speaker 3: Dubs is trying to explain here, with the fish scale
Speaker 3: formation of the soldiers. What does that mean? It is
Speaker 3: taken to refer to shields, which I guess is our
Speaker 3: broader point here.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Dubs contends that what they're talking
Speaker 2: about with fish scale formation is a shield wall, and
Speaker 2: not just any shield wall, he argues, but that of
Speaker 2: a Roman shield wall, the formation known as the testudo
Speaker 2: or tortoise that Romans would utilize. And his argument is
Speaker 2: that these were surviving Roman soldiers from the Battle of
Speaker 2: Ki who were now long since employed as foreign mercenaries.
Speaker 3: Now, this probably is a good place to flag. We've
Speaker 3: already alluded to this, but a good place to flag
Speaker 3: again that Dubbs's proposal here is highly speculative and relies
Speaker 3: on a bunch of assumptions that are not strongly in evidence.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting idea, but it's far from certain or
Speaker 3: certainly not as certain as Dubbs will claim it is
Speaker 3: by the end of his paper. And also, you know,
Speaker 3: not to say that it isn't worth talking about. But
Speaker 3: this is one of those ideas where this has come
Speaker 3: up on the show before, where it's like a proposal
Speaker 3: of something that's really radically interesting and unique and might
Speaker 3: gain a kind of epistemic advantage from that, like it's, oh,
Speaker 3: it's so cool. The idea that the ancient Chinese and
Speaker 3: the ancient Romans happened to may have happened to meet
Speaker 3: each other in battle at one point, and we've got
Speaker 3: a theory explaining how that could have happened. That would
Speaker 3: be such an interesting idea. The mind kind of wants
Speaker 3: it to be true and thus views any claim of
Speaker 3: evidence on behalf of it maybe unfairly favorably. So just
Speaker 3: to keep that in mind as we continue discussing it.
Speaker 3: Certainly is worth talking through this idea, but it's one
Speaker 3: of the many examples of don't let the cool idea
Speaker 3: overwhelm your epistemics.
Speaker 2: That's right, if true, it's amazing, but don't abbreviate that
Speaker 2: to just it's amazing or it's amazing and probably true.
Speaker 4: No, no, Now.
Speaker 2: In the second episode we do We're gonna get, We're
Speaker 2: gonna come back and discuss shield walls and particularly the
Speaker 2: test Tuto in greater detail. But just a reminder here
Speaker 2: if you're not picturing what we're talking about. This was
Speaker 2: a shield wall formation that the Romans use that generally
Speaker 2: featured both a front and a top of overlapping protective
Speaker 2: shields in a layer something that does look like scales,
Speaker 2: and this would and sometimes the sides are well sides,
Speaker 2: sometimes all side, depending on the description, would be covered
Speaker 2: as well. It made use of the Roman scutum shield,
Speaker 2: which show was these big, kind of like semi cylindrical
Speaker 2: but otherwise kind of rectangular shields that the Roman soldiers had.
Speaker 2: And it's also worth stressing that this was not the
Speaker 2: default Roman shield formation, but this is one that they
Speaker 2: could use in cases where they're having to endure sustained
Speaker 2: heavy projectile fire, such as while approaching walls during a siege,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, So imagine, Yeah, you're trying to maneuver
Speaker 3: around at the bottom of the wall of your enemy's fortifications.
Speaker 3: It makes sense to form this tight interlocked shield formation
Speaker 3: above your heads because they're going to be throwing stuff
Speaker 3: down at you.
Speaker 2: Right, But does it make sense to use it all
Speaker 2: the time? No, and we'll get into some of the
Speaker 2: reasons why in the next episode. But it is certainly
Speaker 2: iconic of the Romans. The Romans did use it. You
Speaker 2: see it pop up in Roman depictions of their own troops. Lubbs.
Speaker 2: His contention here is that while other forces use shield
Speaker 2: wall formations, only the Romans use shields big enough to
Speaker 2: generate on effect that could be described as looking like
Speaker 2: fish scales, and he also contended that quote, the only
Speaker 2: professional soldiers at the time of whom regular formations are
Speaker 2: recorded were Greeks and Romans, and then he makes the
Speaker 2: argument that Greek shields were round, and he argues too
Speaker 2: small to create the sort of shield formation, so it
Speaker 2: absolutely had to be the Romans. And therefore what we
Speaker 2: have here is direct military conflict between Roman troops granted
Speaker 2: no longer serving the Roman Empire or Republic, and soldiers
Speaker 2: of the Hun dynasty.
Speaker 3: Now, based on just everything we've talked about so far,
Speaker 3: this is a really interesting suggestion. So the facts we're
Speaker 3: combining are the ancient Chinese historical account based on paintings
Speaker 3: of the battle, which again I think we don't have
Speaker 3: the paintings, but we have the description of the formation
Speaker 3: of soldiers with these shields interlocked like fish scales, and
Speaker 3: the fact that that would pretty well describe certain types
Speaker 3: of shield maneuvers that were done by the ancient Romans,
Speaker 3: and that their shields in particular would have been good
Speaker 3: at creating the effect to described, And also the fact
Speaker 3: that we know from the first century BCE a large
Speaker 3: contingent of Romans were captured by the Parthian Empire after
Speaker 3: this battle. In southeastern Turkey, and it says that they
Speaker 3: were sent east and that's all we know about them
Speaker 3: after that. So, on one hand, just recognizing all these
Speaker 3: these little kind of unexplained details otherwise just hanging out
Speaker 3: there in histories maybe something you wouldn't even really take
Speaker 3: notice of as notable or in need of explanation otherwise,
Speaker 3: and seeing how, oh they kind of could fit together,
Speaker 3: especially you know they're in the right kind of timeline
Speaker 3: to fit together. That's kind of interesting. That isn't kind
Speaker 3: of ingenious observation. On the other hand, it's the sort
Speaker 3: of thing where like as we were just saying, like
Speaker 3: it's it's so kind of ingenius that you just want
Speaker 3: to fall in love with it and forget how many
Speaker 3: assumptions you're taking on early on, like this is based
Speaker 3: on this very loose description of a battle third hand
Speaker 3: from a painting. And also we don't actually know that
Speaker 3: Romans were employed by this nomadic ruler, that they ever
Speaker 3: made it to that particular place. All that we know
Speaker 3: is they were captured after a battle hundreds of miles away,
Speaker 3: and it's said the last we're told of them in
Speaker 3: Roman and Greek histories is that they were captured and
Speaker 3: they were sent somewhere east. So big leaps being made,
Speaker 3: But it is a charming idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and it's possible, but do we
Speaker 2: actually have the evidence for it, And yeah, that's where
Speaker 2: we often come up empty here. Additionally, Dubs hypothesized that
Speaker 2: the captured soldiers were then moved further east and settled
Speaker 2: along the border of the Han Empire itself, and they
Speaker 2: were settled in this area where, of course, then the
Speaker 2: the troops end up intermarrying with the local population. This
Speaker 2: area comes to be known as lee Chen, which essentially
Speaker 2: means legion. Dubs argues, and he argues that we can
Speaker 2: still see evidence of this lineage here today in the
Speaker 2: genetics of the local population here.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so this is sort of the secondary growth
Speaker 3: of this hypothesis about the idea of Roman soldiers in
Speaker 3: this battle, which again we're not sure of. That just
Speaker 3: an interesting idea, it's hard to prove. So there's that idea,
Speaker 3: and then there's the second idea that the Roman mercenaries
Speaker 3: form the ancestors of the Leechen people, and the lee
Speaker 3: Chien are a real people that exist today. Many of
Speaker 3: them live in a place called Yongchang, which is a
Speaker 3: county in China, in Gansu Province, and so they are
Speaker 3: real people. And this has been sort of connected to
Speaker 3: individual observations of morphological traits among some of the lee
Speaker 3: Chi and people that are said to look European like.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there will be a Lechian person who has who
Speaker 3: has like green eyes or blonde hair or something. And
Speaker 3: this has been connected to this idea and in many
Speaker 3: ways I believe has been capitalized on for sort of
Speaker 3: tourism interest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's some interesting articles talking about the degree
Speaker 2: to which the locals have revved up interest in this
Speaker 2: concept and maybe you know, erected some statues and some
Speaker 2: buildings and put on some costumes appealing to tourists who
Speaker 2: want to come and see this place where you know,
Speaker 2: a lost legion came to rest. And maybe this in
Speaker 2: this idea of oh, there's an intermingling here of Chinese
Speaker 2: and ancient Roman cultures and blood and it seemed to
Speaker 2: have it seems to have been a very popular idea,
Speaker 2: not only in the West but also in China. And
Speaker 2: this sort of seemed to really like pick up steam
Speaker 2: in the nineties. And I would I would I assume
Speaker 2: like maybe reached like its peak. In twenty fifteen, that's
Speaker 2: when we saw the release of a very expensive looking
Speaker 2: movie titled well this is at least its English release title,
Speaker 2: dragon Blade, starring none other than Jackie Chan and then
Speaker 2: co starring John Cusack and Adrian Brody. Whoa yeah, both
Speaker 2: Western actors playing Romans, with Cusack playing the good guy
Speaker 2: Roman and Adrian Brody playing the bad guy Roman. If
Speaker 2: nothing else, look up a picture of Adrian Brody's hair
Speaker 2: in this motion picture. It is amazing.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like this big, beautiful brunette bouffont, just like
Speaker 3: puffed out. I guess this has got to be a wig.
Speaker 3: That can't be his real hair.
Speaker 2: I assume it's just too big, it's too glorious. I mean,
Speaker 2: he looks like he looks like an anime character come
Speaker 2: to life here. Oh amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Adrian Brody's big, big hair. I've never wow. So
Speaker 3: that's funny. But also it's funny. John Cusack just seems
Speaker 3: like weird casting for a Roman mercenary.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean by yeah, yeah, by by a
Speaker 2: number of standards. I think you can make a make
Speaker 2: a fair argument that that's the case. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you would have been my casting choice. But but
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know this movie, which I haven't seen,
Speaker 2: so I can't really vouch for the quality here. I
Speaker 2: just looked at the stills, I looked at the trailer.
Speaker 2: This isn't like a period of Chinese cinema that I've
Speaker 2: seen much of. But you know, it does show you
Speaker 2: just how exciting this concept is that you're like, let's
Speaker 2: make a movie out of that. Let's let's get let's
Speaker 2: get some big names from from around the world. Let's
Speaker 2: make you know, this big international venture out of it.
Speaker 2: To some extent.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm having a brainstorm. Okay, combining our sort of
Speaker 3: like weird house cinema unlikely casting's recent discussions regarding virtuosity
Speaker 3: and the Roman theme. What if the two actors here
Speaker 3: had been Russell Crow and Denzel Washington, that would have
Speaker 3: been great. We'll bring in both from the too Gladiat movies.
Speaker 3: All right, they've already got the Roman bona fides, and
Speaker 3: here they are in northwestern China, strutting to stay alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and either one could play the villain, like, we
Speaker 2: have clear evidence that either one of them could pull
Speaker 2: it off. But back to the underlocking hypothesis here, So yeah,
Speaker 2: we want to be clear there are a lot of
Speaker 2: problems with it before you even get into any discussion
Speaker 2: of genetics. The big one, of course, is lack of evidence.
Speaker 2: Dubbs himself, you know, bases his hypothesis on extremely little
Speaker 2: literary evidence. You know, if you were thinking game of
Speaker 2: telephone when we were talking about the evidence. I think
Speaker 2: that's fair. I mean, to a certain extent, all history
Speaker 2: is a game of telephone, but this especially sounds like one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that. Again, Dubbs's paper is
Speaker 3: an interesting read for a speculative history paper written in
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties. It's actually interesting for multiple reasons. Number one,
Speaker 3: like it is cool to kind of follow the way
Speaker 3: he put together these different pieces of evidence and all that.
Speaker 3: But it's also a lesson in how the mind works
Speaker 3: in a way, because Rob, you and I were talking
Speaker 3: about this off mic, like noticing if you just go
Speaker 3: along the paper, it's kind of funny how he just
Speaker 3: like step by step, leverages multiple it is reasonable to
Speaker 3: assumes into it is certain that these are the legionaries
Speaker 3: of Crassus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he at least the way it's written, it
Speaker 2: sounds like he's just very convinced to this idea by
Speaker 2: the end of it, and as it turns out, like
Speaker 2: other folks of his time and shortly thereafter, most of
Speaker 2: them disagreed with it, at least to some degree. I
Speaker 2: was looking at a twenty eleven paper published in the
Speaker 2: Journal of Asian History by historian Christopher A. Matthews, which
Speaker 2: an historian here who ultimately presents his own hypothesis that well,
Speaker 2: maybe the soldiers could have been Greek. And basically he
Speaker 2: just presents this as a quote more probable hypothesis, getting
Speaker 2: into like details of the shield observations and so forth.
Speaker 2: But in it he also provides a good overview of
Speaker 2: how other synologists and historians of Dubbs's own time reacted
Speaker 2: to the paper. And basically, there were some who accepted
Speaker 2: that this passage indicates foreign troops, okay, fair enough, but
Speaker 2: disputed the idea that they were Romans. Others accepted only
Speaker 2: parts of the theory. Some of them also did that
Speaker 2: kind of thing where what you see in histories where
Speaker 2: a controversial hypothesis will be just mentioned without judgment, to
Speaker 2: just say, well, Homer dubs such and such, and then
Speaker 2: they move on to the next or included as a footnote.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Often happens if it's like ancillary to the main point
Speaker 3: you're making. It's like I don't have time to argue
Speaker 3: for or against this. I just need to acknowledge that
Speaker 3: I know somebody said.
Speaker 2: It right right, and then others just dismissed it completely,
Speaker 2: saying that this is fiction or it's just not probable
Speaker 2: at all. Now, another thing we talked earlier about the
Speaker 2: vast distances involved here, and even even couching all of
Speaker 2: this in the vast distances between those two empires, it's
Speaker 2: still tempting to sort of oversimplify the vast amount of
Speaker 2: space we're talking about. So the distance between Hern Turkey
Speaker 2: and Yongchan, China is five four hundred and thirty six
Speaker 2: kilometers or roughly three three hundred and seventy seven miles,
Speaker 2: And Joe included a map for you other folks. You
Speaker 2: can you can get a map showing this distance by
Speaker 2: just doing a Google search. But we're talking about a
Speaker 2: huge expanse of territory here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dubs gets them part of the way there by
Speaker 3: accepting the history, saying that, okay, they're captured by the Parthians,
Speaker 3: and then we're told in histories that they were sent
Speaker 3: east from here to I think it says that they
Speaker 3: were sent to the region of Margiana, which is a
Speaker 3: region in Central Asia overlapping parts of modern day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
Speaker 3: and Uzbekistan. And after that, of course, there are no
Speaker 3: more Roman or Greek records of what happens to these soldiers,
Speaker 3: what happens to the prisoners. It just says they were
Speaker 3: taken out to Margiana. So dubs gets them from the
Speaker 3: battlefield to weigh at the other side of the Parthian
Speaker 3: Empire over there. That gets them part of the way.
Speaker 3: That still doesn't get them all the way to where
Speaker 3: this ancient battle described in the Chinese histories would have been.
Speaker 3: And then that does not get them all the way
Speaker 3: to Yongchang County, right, So there's a bunch of steps
Speaker 3: along the way that you just have to fill in
Speaker 3: and say, assume this happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not to say these are impossible distances
Speaker 2: and that's not And you have to acknowledge there are
Speaker 2: other accounts of people traveling great distance in ancient times,
Speaker 2: you know, on up through medieval times and so forth.
Speaker 2: And you know, some of these are also have an
Speaker 2: air of myth making and a legend about them. But
Speaker 2: you know it's not impossible. But still the greater the distance,
Speaker 2: there's less likelihood and there are more problems in getting
Speaker 2: them from point A to point B. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: there's the genetics based take on the whole situation.
Speaker 3: Right, So, Rob, you asked me to look into this,
Speaker 3: and I went digging around. The best study I could
Speaker 3: find of the genetic evidence concerning specifically the question of
Speaker 3: the Roman mercenary theory of the genetic origins of the
Speaker 3: Lechian people. The best study I could find on that
Speaker 3: was a two thousand and seven paper published in the
Speaker 3: Journal of Human Genetics by Joe at All called testing
Speaker 3: the hypothesis of an Ancient Roman soldier origin of the
Speaker 3: Lechian people in Northwest China a Y chromosome perspective. And
Speaker 3: this paper has a bunch of authors, a majority of
Speaker 3: which are affiliated with Lango University in China, also has
Speaker 3: one author from the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of
Speaker 3: Genetics in and the authors start off this paper by
Speaker 3: addressing the hypothesis we've been talking about, so they sort
Speaker 3: of lay out what Dubs claims in his classic paper
Speaker 3: and how that idea has been developed historically since then.
Speaker 3: The main thing they're looking at is the claim that
Speaker 3: the le Chien people of yung Chang County and Gansu Province,
Speaker 3: Northern China are descended from a group of Roman mercenaries
Speaker 3: that settled in the region in the first century BCE.
Speaker 3: This story that we've been talking about of the Roman
Speaker 3: mercenaries that went east is often told to explain the
Speaker 3: fact that some people, not most, but some in the
Speaker 3: area of Yongchang County in Gansu Province have what appear
Speaker 3: to be European looking physical features, such as blonde hair
Speaker 3: or maybe blue or green eyes. But the authors note
Speaker 3: that apart from any direct contradictory physical evidence, this hypothesis
Speaker 3: of the Roman legionary origin of the Leechian people has
Speaker 3: been challenged by a number of scholars for a variety
Speaker 3: of reasons. One is a lack of strong archaeological evidence
Speaker 3: to support it. It would be one thing if you
Speaker 3: had a bunch of ancient Roman artifacts there, I mean,
Speaker 3: that would be kind of interesting, But that's not the case.
Speaker 3: The best thing I could find in terms of archaeological
Speaker 3: evidence were just sort of indirect inferences, and then also
Speaker 3: the fact that this hypothesis rests on a lot of
Speaker 3: speculative assumptions. So the authors here set out to investigate
Speaker 3: by comparing the genetic evidence. They write, quote, single nucleotide
Speaker 3: polymorphisms or SNPs and short tandem repeat loci on the
Speaker 3: non recombining region of the human Y chromosome have been
Speaker 3: widely used to trace the origin and migratory events of
Speaker 3: modern paternal genetic lineages. Therefore, why chromosome polymorphisms in our
Speaker 3: study were used to investigate the paternal genetic landscape of
Speaker 3: the lee Chien and to provide genetic evidence for a
Speaker 3: suggested origin of the Lechian people. So, in this study,
Speaker 3: the authors took blood samples of two hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: seven unrelated men from four different ethnic populations of northwest China.
Speaker 3: The study featured thirty nine Tibetans, forty nine Wikers, eighty
Speaker 3: seven Lechians, and fifty two Yugurs, who are apparently closely
Speaker 3: related to the Lechian people. They also compared the information
Speaker 3: collected from this analysis to Y chromosome patterns in other
Speaker 3: populations around the world. What did they find well, they
Speaker 3: found that seventy one point three percent of the Y
Speaker 3: chromosomes from the Lechian people belonged to a haplogroup called
Speaker 3: three M one two, which is a specific East Asian lineage.
Speaker 3: The Lechian people actually had the greatest frequency of this
Speaker 3: haplogroup of any of the four groups tested from northwestern China,
Speaker 3: So ultimately, the Lechian people were genetically close mostly related
Speaker 3: to other Chinese populations, particularly the Han Chinese people, but
Speaker 3: also to Mongolians and the Yugurs. Also, the authors say
Speaker 3: that genetically the Lechian people were found to be quite
Speaker 3: distinct from Central Asian and West Eurasian populations, which they
Speaker 3: say is incompatible with the hypothesis that Roman soldiers made
Speaker 3: up the bulk of their paternal ancestry. So that doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily rule out the idea that somebody from Europe or
Speaker 3: from the Roman Empire could have come to this region
Speaker 3: long ago, but it really does. It doesn't fit at
Speaker 3: all with the idea that these people as an ethnic
Speaker 3: group or as a culture were descended from a settlement
Speaker 3: of Roman mercenaries. Quote failure to find an apparent link
Speaker 3: between the Lechian people and ancient Roman soldiers in this
Speaker 3: study might be either because long distance migration and intermarriage
Speaker 3: have erased earlier genetic signatures, or because the Lechians are
Speaker 3: just a general population in north in China. The authors
Speaker 3: also they get ahead of another thing that does pop
Speaker 3: up later. I've read in various news articles people will
Speaker 3: keep trying to resurrect this hypothesis, particularly by saying, but
Speaker 3: look at these individual cases of local people in Yongchang
Speaker 3: with European looking features, or look at maybe these individuals,
Speaker 3: a handful of individuals that have done genetic testing, and
Speaker 3: maybe they show more Central Asian or West Eurasian ancestry.
Speaker 3: Could they be descended from Roman soldiers, even if the
Speaker 3: le Chien people in general are not. It's hard to
Speaker 3: ever like completely rule out that sort of possibility. But
Speaker 3: the authors of this paper also point out that a
Speaker 3: captured legion of Roman soldiers turned Roman mercenaries turned settlers
Speaker 3: in northern China is not the only way to explain
Speaker 3: some people in Yongchang having what look like European features
Speaker 3: or even some European genetic lineage. All throughout history, people
Speaker 3: were moving around in ways that were not documented in
Speaker 3: exciting narrative histories and you know, mentioned in like royal
Speaker 3: royal decrees about battles and things like that. The author's
Speaker 3: right quote. Along the ancient Silk Road in North China,
Speaker 3: it is common to see people with Caucasian morphological traits,
Speaker 3: which is also a classical trait of Chinese minority ethnic
Speaker 3: groups in Shinjung, like the Wigers. Therefore, we cannot trace
Speaker 3: a Lechian origin only from morphological traits. And this area
Speaker 3: was indeed around the path of the ancient Silk Road.
Speaker 3: So that's another thing here that somewhat undermined some of
Speaker 3: the claims people make for this Roman legionary hypothesis. You know,
Speaker 3: that's not the only way people from further west could
Speaker 3: have ended up in this region hundreds or thousands of
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 2: It's just one of the more exciting stories of how
Speaker 2: it could happen, as like the Lost Legion, just as
Speaker 2: more appealing, as opposed to like the Lost Silk Merchant's
Speaker 2: brother in law not as exciting, but could easily be
Speaker 2: a factor in anything like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was trade, there was some travel, economic transactions,
Speaker 3: and along the way there was some genetic exchange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that the loss of merchant's brother
Speaker 2: in law would also make for a nice movie, so
Speaker 2: and you could probably would probably be cheaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me actually back that up. It's a counter
Speaker 3: narrative to the way people might be thinking about this.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I want the I want the legionaries
Speaker 3: settling and China thing to be real. Isn't it actually
Speaker 3: more interesting to think about sort of non military examples
Speaker 3: of cultural ad mixing in the ancient world and people
Speaker 3: are traveling and you know, not as like a like
Speaker 3: an armed band who train and travel together and you
Speaker 3: know they're fighting through the Instead, it's like smaller groups
Speaker 3: of people, maybe even individual people, just trying to survive
Speaker 3: and get by in an unfamiliar culture in the ancient
Speaker 3: world without even having the kind of the technology link
Speaker 3: and stuff that we have today that make transportation and
Speaker 3: communication across distance easy. Just trying to imagine that sort
Speaker 3: of thing in the ancient world is is fascinating, you know,
Speaker 3: imagining just one lost trader or a small group of
Speaker 3: traders from one edge of the Eurasian continent getting ending
Speaker 3: up in the other and settling down there. Like what
Speaker 3: leads to that? What is what is the life of
Speaker 3: those people.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, I mean it's that kind of story
Speaker 2: that on one level, it's it's it's more relatable because
Speaker 2: it deals with like everyday life and everyday experience. Is though,
Speaker 2: you know, a in a setting that is that is
Speaker 2: also fantastic and intriguing, you know, outside of like the
Speaker 2: military setting, which in ways is like easier to imagine
Speaker 2: because we've in part because we've seen it depicted so much,
Speaker 2: but I think also a reality that is a little
Speaker 2: further from many of our experiences, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: especially if we've never actually been in a military of
Speaker 2: one form or another, and certainly not in an ancient military.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, it is also interesting to think
Speaker 3: about ancient military tactics being sort of like lifted up
Speaker 3: and take transplanted around to places where they were not familiar,
Speaker 3: where that was not normally what the armies did. And
Speaker 3: so thinking about a testudo formation with this wall of
Speaker 3: shields appearing in a place where that was not what
Speaker 3: the other armies were used to seeing it that that's
Speaker 3: interesting as well, and I think that's good fodder for
Speaker 3: continuing our look at shields and shield walls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's the age of Empires thought experiment, right,
Speaker 2: And it's also a thought experiment that is not without
Speaker 2: context in the real world. We certainly do have a situations,
Speaker 2: certainly with the arrival of Europeans and the Americas, where
Speaker 2: you have combatants going up against combatants that they have
Speaker 2: never encountered before, and in some cases weapons they have
Speaker 2: never encountered before. So you know, it's an interesting thought
Speaker 2: experiment from multiple points of view. One more thing I
Speaker 2: want to bring up, though, is that if you look
Speaker 2: up articles about what we've been discussing here, you will
Speaker 2: find locals from yong Chung County dressed up, yeah, sort
Speaker 2: of mock Roman military attire. These are quite amusing images.
Speaker 2: And again you know they're you know, get those tourism dollars.
Speaker 2: I understand it, like it totally makes sense. I understand
Speaker 2: the economic incentive here. But I have to say, shields
Speaker 2: are all wrong. This I would you could easily say, well, this,
Speaker 2: this hypothesis cannot be correct because the shields and the
Speaker 2: illustrations are round. They're not slightly cylindrical and rectangular at all.
Speaker 3: That's such a good point. I didn't even notice that
Speaker 3: the rectangular profile of the shields is like the core
Speaker 3: of what he bases the hypothesis on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then here here we got the round ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the two seem to be eating it up
Speaker 2: in these photos, so yeah, yeah, more power. Then all right,
Speaker 2: Well we'll go ahead and cap this one here, but yes,
Speaker 2: we'll be back in the next episode. This will probably
Speaker 2: be just a two parter, but in the next episode
Speaker 2: we'll get more into a discussion of shield, shield walls
Speaker 2: and shield tactics. In the meantime, will remind you that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short
Speaker 2: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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