[throwaway676712]

There are reports of black legionaries in Romain Britain as late as the reign of Septimus Severus (himself not very white if you look at portraits).

Black people in the Roman empire isn't that far fetched when you consider Rome had a huge presence in Africa and the Trans-Saharan slave trade was thriving at the time. Rome also had contacts with Merowe (Kush) through Egypt and other client kingdoms in North Africa. It's not a stretch to imagine a small but steady stream of black slaves (possibly manumitted later), mercenaries and merchants trickling into the empire and spreading throughout, especially when one considers that the military was one of the very few social advancement possibilities if you weren't already from an aristocratic or at least land-owning family (Rome would give veterans a money payout equal to all of their 20+ years' service arrears plus a bonus and Roman citizenship at the end of service, allowing one to retire in relative comfort).

So they wouldn't be as frequent as in the US, but they definitely wouldn't be an oddity either.

[wasfgwp]

Equating North Africans who genetically, culturally more interlinked with other Mediterranean people with Sub-Saharan Africans is not exactly right. After all before the Indo-European invasion Europe was almost exclusively settled by middle eastern immigrants (and largely remained so in Southern Europe genetically).

> It's not a stretch to imagine

It’s not a stretch to imagine a lot of things but there is no evidence that was true to any significant degree (besides the demand for slaves in Roman Egypt was likely substantial enough to absorb most of the demand)

[throwaway676712]

>Equating North Africans who genetically, culturally more interlinked with other Mediterranean people with Sub-Saharan Africans is not exactly right. After all before the Indo-European invasion Europe was almost exclusively settled by middle eastern immigrants (and largely remained so in Southern Europe genetically).

No, I mean that North African client kingdoms and tribes, or the Roman themselves, would routinely trade in slaves and hire mercenaries or bring in merchants through the trans-Saharan trade routes.

>It’s not a stretch to imagine a lot of things but there is no evidence that was true to any significant degree (besides the demand for slaves in Roman Egypt was likely substantial enough to absorb most of the demand)

There literally is, as pointed out at the top of my comment. You can look it up.

[modo_mario]

They would be an oddity. That's often why one got reports of them. Because they were incredibly rare

Most of them like septimus severus you mention and the maurorum are north africans and then the historia augusta mentions a single black ethiopian. And it gets some weird amount of focus seemingly purely due to modern sensibilities in an anti racism drive and to create a sense of belonging. Same with how a lot of the story around the HMT windrush is wildly stretched or downright myth.

"It's not a stretch" .... "possibly manumitted later"....

Colonial era europe fairly certainly had many times more and outside of a few hotspots...they were still an oddity. They didn't just go back, didn't get selected out so that they didn't routinely show up in genepool research. They just aren't there in the demographic data. Fuck this is not that long ago. My great grandparents never saw one in the flesh.

[throwaway676712]

>And it gets some weird amount of focus seemingly purely due to modern sensibilities in an anti racism drive and to create a sense of belonging.

What does it say about people who relentlessly push back on it? It's not like people are arguing Rome had the same make up as the US. The thesis is fairly weak ("a small trickle of black people shows up because Rome was diverse and a unified empire that favors large scale population movements") and yet a large contingent of people seem intent on saying "no, not even that". I didn't mention anything about anti-racism drive, that's odd of you to bring it up.

>They didn't just go back, didn't get selected out so that they didn't routinely show up in genepool research. They just aren't there in the demographic data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnfBYO53jhg

(Africans in Anglo-Saxon England)

[modo_mario]

>What does it say about people who relentlessly push back on it?

That they don't like it when you twist and manufacture history for idiological purposes.

>and yet a large contingent of people seem intent on saying "no, not even that". I didn't mention anything about anti-racism drive, that's odd of you to bring it up.

Because typically it is "no, not even that". You get idk how many zeroes behind the decimal marker to describe the percentages and yet they're always massively disporortionally there.

>I didn't mention anything about anti-racism drive, that's odd of you to bring it up.

Because so much of this extreme overrepresentation and twisting comes from american anti racism push and to give a sense of belonging in a eurocentric vision of history. Either that or engagement ragebait (see queen victoria was a black woman, cleopatra was a black woman type stuff). Movies about african slaver kingdoms, movies about british royalty, movies about medieval france, movies about greek mythos now, elves described as white as snow. It becomes impossible to not notice it everywhere.

And then we start seeing it outside of media like i mentioned with the HMS windrush stuff where suddenly the government and BBC starts entirely fabricating history seemingly to justify current migration policy. I pick this as an example because it's more known in the anglo world and is also much more recent and easily debunked but the same goes for random bits of colonial history for other european nations. It becomes so wild, pervasive and ever expanding in such a short period of time that you can't even call it out without sounding like a far right conspiracy nut all of a sudden. Even if you know it's the truth it makes you feel dirty pointing it out, like you're going against the crowd with some easily verifiable stuff. it's a red cloth for some including me.

The winners write history becomes so accutely clear. Except the winners aren't a party in an actual war and nobody reasonable wanted a culture war.

>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnfBYO53jhg (Africans in Anglo-Saxon England)

So these skeletons had ancestors from sub saharan africa which could refer to a direct or tiered generational migration of very few individuals. It's that it's so extremely rare that makes us take note. Hell it's because it was so extremely rare that we can spot a lot of these differences in incomplete dna and skeletons to begin with.

There are also reports of very few chinese emisaries in the roman republic and similar asian showings. In Britain and italy there were some skeletons that were claimed to be of east asian origin with a more direct link.

I don't think we need this extreme overrepresentation to begin with but why are these people so rare in arthurian fiction, medieval and roman dramas. I don't suddenly see chinese or arabs in outlaw king or what have you. I see a much more contemporary makeup slanted towards the american one and then i see "people are arguing Rome had the same make up as the US." Constantly

[cauch]

Not sure if I should engage, but one thing just come to my mind in this discussion.

It looks like there is a huge imbalance between the "ideologically-driven intellectual dishonesty" contributions.

From the same author of the initial article (Bret Devereaux), there are more recent blog posts and even podcasts talks about what the author calls the "chuds", which are members of the public interested in history but who turn out to be ideologically motivated.

These groups have few characteristics that make them different from "normal amateurs": 1. they hate academics and confronting their views outside their bubble, 2. they have shallow knowledge (instead of "small localised deep knowledge" of normal amateurs), 3. they use their historical understanding "politically" (as opposed as someone who just enjoy understanding the past but does not go to the extra step to use it to support a future social ideal), 4. they are aggressive.

These characteristics should be independent of the political alignment: from this alone, there is no reason a right-wing chud has more probability to exist than a left-wing chud. And you easily expect the left-wing chud to have to same characteristics (because the origin of these characteristics is that these individuals first come to history with their ideological conclusions and acquire these characteristics when the reality or facts are contradicting these conclusions).

But what is interesting is that these chuds are overwhelmingly right-wing and pro-"how dare you say there were black Romans".

I'm sure that if you look long enough you may find left-wing and pro-"50% of blacks everywhere", but that is order of magnitude smaller (Devereaux points to Twitter account with huge following).

And I'm sure there are politically-correct mistakes. But it is not clear these mistakes are 100% ideological rather than the normal Gaussian curve (an intellectually honest person may sometimes underestimate, and may sometimes overestimate: the existence of overestimation examples does not mean it is the result of a problem). Or, even more interestingly, that these mistakes are due to the presence of right-wing chuds muddying the water (if you see a group that you know is unreliable defending some conclusions, you will be biased being more critical towards these conclusions, or you may "over correct" by swing of the pendulum).

So, I think it's a bit easy to just conclude: "That they don't like it when you twist and manufacture history for idiological purposes." to the question "What does it say about people who relentlessly push back on it?". A lot of people pushing back are not doing that because they don't like twisting and manufacturing history for ideological purposes, they are pushing back because they want to twist and manufacture history for their ideological purposes, and are angry if someone comes with something different (being for ideological purpose, from honest mistake, or even because it is the correct scientific approach).

I would agree with you if there were prominent left-wing chuds. But it's not the case, it looks like the pro-"presence of black romans" may sometimes get it wrong, but are less ideologically dominated than the anti-"presence of black romans".

(and to take back the example that started this specific thread: Elon Musk does not complain about The Odyssey because of respect for history. One of his prominent problem with the movie is that "the most beautiful woman" is black, which he judges as impossible historically but apparently, there are texts of this area praising the beauty of women that appear to be African. Musk's reaction is purely ideological: he does not know history, he does not care about it, he just saw something that was not particularly a-historical and concluded it was because he has a problem with "wokeness" and see it everywhere)

[modo_mario]

>talks about what the author calls the "chuds", which are

I think you're behind on internet culture which admittedly moves fast. This is not some term of the author nor doe is tie to history enthousiasts. the attempt at internet antropology feels distant and like framing.

>there is no reason a right-wing chud has more probability to exist than a left-wing chud

I'll try to ignore the word usage and i conflict with even the american misnomer left-wing here. I'd call them social progressives to be charitable. That said...hollywood is dominated by the later and quite notably also dominated by americans which are notoriously race obsessed many of which with a modernised iternalisation on the one drop rule.

Somehow it doesn't register with them that in places on the other side of the ocean such a diverse cast would be unrealistic in the LIVING memory of old people at a time when those areas were already hundreds of times more diverse than they once were during the times of the illyad and what not....because of the inventions of modern boats, more recently planes, colonialism, etc. I don't think my great grandparents on one side who never traveled to major cities and not to the city much even saw a black person for example. Ever. For my grandparents it happened quite late in life.

And yet there's nothing to compell me to say that a hundred years back there were none to be found at all across the country. They were just incredibly rare to the point that diversifying a period drama or raceswapping characters would be extremely noticeable. And again, this is when the place was already more diverse than the period many such films depict.

>I'm sure that if you look long enough you may find left-wing and pro-"50% of blacks everywhere", but that is order of magnitude smaller (Devereaux points to Twitter account with huge following).

That's a strawman just as much as saying these folks on the other side are all claiming the cast should all be blond (off the top of my mind i can only think of achiles being described as blond tho there are others that have their skin or eye colours described) It is simply not the case.

>And I'm sure there are politically-correct mistakes. But it is not clear these mistakes are 100% ideological rather than the normal Gaussian curve (an intellectually honest person may sometimes underestimate, and may sometimes overestimate: the existence of overestimation examples does not mean it is the result of a problem). Or, even more interestingly, that these mistakes are due to the presence of right-wing chuds muddying the water (if you see a group that you know is unreliable defending some conclusions, you will be biased being more critical towards these conclusions, or you may "over correct" by swing of the pendulum).

Please. The mistakes are persistent, consistent and pervasive. It becomes so extremely clear. In a bunch of cases this can be taken charitably but not in the way you describe but simply by noting that a lot of them are american movies drawing from local peoples in hollywood with no intent or ability to be accurate. But the recent phenomenon of loads of people claiming these to be accurate however can not be taken so charitable. It also becomes clear because with some effort I can start listing dozens of movies that do this. It's even more clear because comparatively you don't see these "mistakes" in historical settings featuring the perceived underdog. 'The woman king' doesn't have random groups of white people in west africa. In fact it also doesn't show the Dahomey with slaves like they were known for historically, it does the opposite. Additionally we don't make movies about various native american peoples (and there are plenty of examples) where suddenly we depict a bunch of them as scandinavian looking just because we believe some of those made it to north america. We know that even if they did they'd be a rare, because of living memory, because of old photos, because of modern geneology, etc. When we insert tome cruise as the white insert character in the last sumurai they don't depict the brunt of the other characters being japanese as a diverse bunch even tho at that point in time transport had evolved so much that japan was already more diverse than ancient greece. Only ancient europe randomly gets american levels of diversity and then loads of americans defending that as historically accurate.

>may sometimes get it wrong, but are less ideologically dominated than the anti-"presence of black romans".

So if like you i try to make their side look charitable I should ascribe no ideological motivation to black actresses saying queen charlotte was black, claiming cleopatra was black, etc, etc.

>One of his prominent problem with the movie is that "the most beautiful woman" is black, which he judges as impossible historically but apparently, there are texts of this area praising the beauty of women that appear to be African.

Again you're taking an uncharitable view yourself. The character is described as "white-armed". All the character descriptions lend themselves to the typical mediteranean look at the time where some notable but not unlikely character descriptions are noted. We know what those ethnicities around the area looked like. It's a race swap. It's just as much a race swap as if someone made a movie featuring characters such as mansa musa and they made him look scandinavian.

We also know these things because for the most part we can tie them to modern ethnicities and we have such a large coverage of genetic research that we can quite easily tie modern peoples and ancient corpses down to them. In fact that propensity for the vast majority of people to not move around much is both why tales of travels such as the oddysey exist and why these genetic isolates formed in the first place.

[cauch]

I was writing point-by-point response, but it is just too useless.

First, as for the diversity in Roman era, I think it's incorrect to compare it to 100 year ago diversity. It looks like it was the error done previously and historians now acknowledge it was stupid. We find more and more black people at an unexpected fraction. Historians are realizing that people of the roman era did not care about the color of skin as much as our mentality driven by "what is was like 100 years ago" would let us think: some people were mentioned abundantly in historical documents and it turns out they were black and no one cared enough to even mention it; or people being buried in the cemetery as anybody else, with no trace that other citizen at the time even cared (so, no, they were probably not "incredibly rare"). Other elements, such the strategy of the roman empire itself to force trade within the empire or to send troupes from remote lands to manage other remote lands, also indicate that it is not as easy as you think it is.

But my main point, that you don't really react on, is that the phenomena of the "diversity in cast" is order of magnitude lower, in dangerosity and aggressivness, than the phenomena of "right-wing chud". Trust me, if the "diversity in cast" crew was as common and as aggressive as the "right-wing chud" crew is, you would cry right now. It is just another level. It does not mean that the "diversity cast" crew is ideal, sure, they can be criticized when they are doing things that are not smart. But it is strange to totally ignore the ugly right-wing chuds while happily defending their talking point (even if they are right), it just feels your intervention is not about "truthness" or "correct history", it is more about "culture war".

As I've said, there are order of magnitude between the presence of right-wing chuds and left-wing chuds. The right-wing chuds are way more imposing their views on the society. If you are worried about "rewriting history", Hollywood is not at all a real problem. And the "problem" with using a diverse cast is really not a big deal. What is the bad consequence from it, exactly? That people who currently have a totally incorrect understanding of the diversity during the Roman era will now have an incorrect understanding of the diversity during the Roman era because somehow they will base it mainly on Hollywood movies that show actors with __american accent__? At the same time, Nolan's movie is also presenting a story very neoliberal (the economy theory) and friendly-globalisation-story. But strangely, this aspect, totally inaccurate, is apparently not a problem, the problem is "omg, he used a diverse cast that may not correspond to the reality of the time". People being obsessed around that are just idiots playing the "culture war", they are not defending "history" or "truthness".

I don't really recall the movie, but I remember one guy complaining that one movie was criticized for not having a diverse cast, pretending it was being cancelled. Looking up the article they were talking about, it was an article giving the movie 4.5 stars over 5 and encouraging people to go to see it. There was just one sentence saying something like "the cast was a bit disappointing, not super diverse". Parallel to this, the reaction to the Odyssey, for example, are "rage". Right-wing people are really angry about it, they see it as a danger for society and are adamant it is a bad movie, ignoring all other aspects. So, the idea that "diverse cast" is a dangerous cult destroying our society seems to be a bias: people who, ideologically, don't like the idea of diversity, will unconsciously blow everything out of proportion.

So, no, your argument don't really work. You are worried about the people who "see diversity everywhere". Well, sure, maybe there are idiots there. They are rather harmless. Currently, the real problem is the right-wing chuds. These are the aggressive people, these are the ones who want to stop the movies they don't like. They are the ones who want to create movies with, on purpose, rewritten history in it.

And as for the "white-armed" description, if it is really the point of the criticism, then it is even more stupid (and even more uncharitable). First, let's ignore that Helen of Troye is fictitious, half-swan, that "white-armed" may also mean "aristocrat" (same way nowadays we can say "blue blood" without meaning their blood is blue) and all the difficulty of usage of color in Greek text (but I'm sure an answer to that is "academic who say that are all woke"). But secondly, are they stupid enough to complain about a race swap in a context where the actress has an american accent? And what about all the other actors? Or maybe they are obsessed around white-to-black swap because they are too stupid to understand that, because of recent decade of racism, swapping a black character for a white character may not be a smart thing after years where black people were treated as inferior and had no visibility, but that swapping a white character for a black character is not much a bigger deal than swapping a blue-eyed character with a brown-eyed character.