Mysteries written in blood
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The historical records of a remote village in West China and the Caucasian features of locals suggest it may have been a settlement of defeated Roman soldiers.
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Liqian village in Gansu province is believed to be the former settlement of defeated Roman soldiers. [China Daily] |
Modern Liqian is a village of fewer than 100 households in Northwest China's Gansu province with a link to the Roman Empire. The remote village on the edge of the Gobi Desert captured to international attention in the 1980s when media became aware there was something unexplainable about some residents' physiognomies. Some of the mostly Han inhabitants of the Yongchang county settlement were born with wavy blond hair, hooked noses, and blue or green eyes - in other words, European features.
Locals were at a loss as to why. They were shocked when media discovered their ancestral links could be traced back to soldiers from the Roman empire. None of the local people - who live in earthen houses, raise sheep, water potatoes and carrots, with water from the snow-capped Qilianshan Mountains - had ever tasted pizza or even heard of the Roman empire.
In 53 BC, a Roman legion that had been part of the army under the command of general Marcus Licinius Crassus was defeated in a battle against Parthia, an empire occupying what is now Iran.
Crassus was killed. But an army of more than 6,000 Roman soldiers disappeared.
Some historians believed they were captured. Others speculated they came under the command of Crassus' eldest son and were lost in the East.
In 1941, Homer H. Dubs, a pioneering American sinologist and polymath who was raised in China as the son of missionaries, published the article "An Ancient Military Contact Between Romans and Chinese" in the American Journal of Philology.
In 1944, Feng Chengjun, a renowned communication history scholar specializing in ancient China's relations with the outside world, also mentioned the possibility of military contact between Roman troops and the Chinese army.
Dubs, who later became Oxford University's chair of Chinese, published "A Roman City in Ancient China" in 1957. This was largely recognized as the theory's origin. By compiling the historical records, Dubs speculated Roman soldiers had settled in a village in Northwest China.
Before Marco Polo's 13th-century travels to China, the only known contact between the two empires was a visit by Roman diplomats in AD 166.
Inspired by Dubs' research, Australian scholar David Harris proposed that a Gansu village named Zhelaizhai may be the ancient city of Liqian recorded in the Han Shu, or Book of Han, a classic Chinese book that records the country's history during the Western Han Dynasty from 206 BC to 25 AD.
Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) documents also mention that a Han army led by General Chen Tang encountered a 145-soldier detachment that marched in "fish-scale" formation as part of Zhizhi Chanyu's forces. They used round shields and fought bravely and efficiently but were eventually crushed by the Han cavalry. Dubs speculated they were the Roman soldiers captured by Parthian troops and used by Zhizhi Chanyu as mercenaries.
The Western Han Empire was impressed by the soldiers' courage and fighting abilities. It gave them land and incorporated them into its army to defend its eastern border.
Harris and many Chinese researchers, including Lanzhou University professor Chen Zhengyi, researched the history in the late 1980s. Their publications, including Harris' Black Horse Odyssey, Search for the Lost City of Rome, which stirred global interest in the tiny hamlet.
In 1999, the local government changed the village's name back from Zhelaizhai to its old name Liqian to attract investors and tourists.
Many domestic and foreign media have since visited the village to meet the "Roman descendents".
The local government went all out to promote the theory. It even asked villagers to dress like Roman soldiers and built a Roman-style monument, to commemorate "the surrendered Roman legion that settled in China".
The theory also inspired ordinary villagers' imaginations.
All tombs in Liqian face West, and villagers have retained such customs as bullfighting and making a type of pie that resembles pizza.
Yongchang resident Li Jinlan even claimed she was suddenly able to speak Latin after recovering from a serious illness and could tell previously unknown stories about the Roman legion.
But the myth's hold hasn't been able to compete with urbanization's magnetism, and many of the "Roman legion's descendents" have left for cities.
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