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Clues about human migration to Imperial Rome uncovered in 2,000-year-old cemetery
Eurekalert! ^ | Wednesday, February 10, 2016 | PLOS

Posted on 02/16/2016 9:47:28 AM PST by SunkenCiv

Isotope analysis of 2000-year-old skeletons buried in Imperial Rome reveal some were migrants from the Alps or North Africa, according to a study published February 10, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kristina Killgrove from University of West Florida, USA, and Janet Montgomery from Durham University, UK.

Previous work has focused on the overall human migration patterns within the Roman Empire. To understand human migration on a more granular level, the authors of this study examined 105 skeletons buried at two Roman cemeteries during the 1st through 3rd centuries AD. They analyzed the oxygen, strontium, and carbon isotope ratios in the skeletons' teeth to determine their geographical origin and diet.

They found up to eight individuals who were likely migrants from outside Rome, possibly from North Africa and the Alps. The individuals were mostly children and men, and the authors suggest their burial in a necropolis indicates that they may have been poor or even slaves. They also found that their diet probably changed significantly when they moved to Rome, possibly adapting to the local cuisine, comprising mostly wheat and some legumes, meat and fish. The authors note that further isotope and DNA analysis is needed to provide more context for their findings. Nonetheless, they state that their study provides the first physical evidence of individual migrants to Rome during this period.

(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: carthaginians; celts; gauls; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; helvetii; ligurians; numidians; romanempire; rome
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This should be an amusing topic, in terms of anachronistic responses. In before the stupid 'graverobbing' comments.
Skull of skeleton T15, a 35- to 50-year-old male who was buried in a cemetery in the modern neighborhood of Casal Bertone, Rome, Italy. Isotope ratios suggest he may have been born near the Alps. [Credit: Kristina Killgrove]

Credit: Kristina Killgrove

1 posted on 02/16/2016 9:47:28 AM PST by SunkenCiv
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Roman_conquest_of_Italy.PNG


2 posted on 02/16/2016 9:49:52 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...

Gauls, then Carthaginians.

3 posted on 02/16/2016 9:50:47 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: SunkenCiv
The Roman Empire covered most of Europe, the Mediterranean, and parts of Africa. Of course, many people in the provinces did well under Roman rule and low Roman taxes, they became citizens of Rome, and came to Rome for various and sundry reasons, and some died there. As well, the Romans took slaves as they conquered Europe and brought them to Rome. Some slaves earned their freedom, prospered, and when they died, buried in Roman cemeteries. This information is hardly new.
4 posted on 02/16/2016 9:54:44 AM PST by erkelly
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To: SunkenCiv

Migrants or slaves?

The movement of people during the classical period has always been a fascinating subject to me.

A while back I did a lot of study on Romania (Roman Dacia), and that province was considered the “California” of the Roman Empire in the 2nd Century AD. The region was so thoroughly Latinized that it is the only nation east of Italy that still retains a Romance language.


5 posted on 02/16/2016 9:55:35 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal (Amnesty advocates call me "Tio Tomas")
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To: SunkenCiv

I’m not a classical historian, but isn’t it already widely known that by the 2nd century, the Preatorian Guard, for example, was mostly made up of non-Romans from Gaul, Germania or North Africa?

I could imagine a case where most Romans themselves were either mired in luxury or poverty, or were so politically factionalized, they were no longer any use in controlling the vast empire.


6 posted on 02/16/2016 9:57:23 AM PST by PGR88
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http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/romanbaltic/index


7 posted on 02/16/2016 10:03:07 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: PGR88

In short Rome became “Diverse” and then collapsed.


8 posted on 02/16/2016 10:03:30 AM PST by AEMILIUS PAULUS
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To: Roman_War_Criminal

I have traced my family back two thousand years and found them living in Eastern Europe at that time. As the centuries passed they moved further west until they eventually settled in what is now Denmark. Some of them continued on to Norway and ended up in Scotland. Others went to Austria and ended up in England. The ones who came to Ireland started out in Turkey.


9 posted on 02/16/2016 10:16:11 AM PST by MondoQueen
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To: Roman_War_Criminal; PGR88; erkelly
Rome spent serious time, blood, and treasure to conquer and hold Dacia down over a couple of centuries; Aurelian (one of my favorite emperors) gave it up, resettling Romans from Dacia into territories s of the Danube. If not for Aurelian, there would have been no successors, Rome would have been finished a couple hundred years early, there would have been no Byzantine empire as such, and European, n African, and Near East history (at least) would have been quite different.

There's no controversy that the Roman Empire made it fairly simple for ethnic groups to relocate within and outside the borders (people from India lived in Rome, Romans joined Greeks already living in India, etc), there's been some DNA studies of human remains of that era, just not from Italy. There are very few known human remains from Roman Italy, and most of them haven't been studied at all (DNA studies don't always work, there's not enough material to study).

10 posted on 02/16/2016 10:17:53 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: MondoQueen

How did you go about tracing them there and going back that far?

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn that my Spanish/Basque/French ancestors had some Gothic/Burgundian-Scandinavian bloodlines along the way.


11 posted on 02/16/2016 10:18:55 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal (Amnesty advocates call me "Tio Tomas")
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To: AEMILIUS PAULUS; PGR88
Rome began diverse, and thrived from its conquest of Ostia circa 400 BC to the final destruction of the remnant of the eastern empire by the Turks in 1453 AD.

12 posted on 02/16/2016 10:21:09 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Wrong! The peoples you talk about were all Latins speaking a variant of old Roman Latin. The non Latin speaking people were the Etruscan’s which Rome promptly set about conquering. The Roman was initially very exclusive-see Cato the Elder and the Greek ambassadors. Diversity is linked to the loss of Republican freedom with the rise of Imperial slavery and finally collapse.


13 posted on 02/16/2016 10:27:42 AM PST by AEMILIUS PAULUS
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To: SunkenCiv

Speaking of migration of early peoples, I was visiting the Egyptian section at the Houston Museum of Natural History. One of the Egyptian mummies on display had been unwrapped enough to show the man’s face. He was in an amazing state of preservation for being 2,000 years old (period of the Greek Ptolemic rule) and he had red hair and a beard. The museum curator told me that the guy was European and not Egyptian. The curator said that details of his wrapping indicated that he belonged to the middle class and that he was possibly a wealthy merchant. The ancients got around more than we usually think.


14 posted on 02/16/2016 10:30:23 AM PST by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: SunkenCiv

The theory I’ve always been led to believe (from Romanians nonetheless) is that when Aurelian vacated Dacia, he only took the administrative people with him. The actual Romans citizens still living there chose to stay back and continue living in the vacated province for centuries. And they continued to have commerce with Rome via Moesia and Pannonia.

It’s an interesting theory because after Aurelian vacated, Dacia disappears from history for about a thousand years. In a way, it went through a similar, yet even longer transition from Roman Province, Dark Age Period, to Middle Age Kingdom as England did.

I lived in Romania for several months and there is no denying that modern Romanians are of Latin descent, just based on looks alone. The only Romance language I speak is Castillian, and after a week or so I could probably understand half of what was said to me.


15 posted on 02/16/2016 10:30:59 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal (Amnesty advocates call me "Tio Tomas")
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To: TexasRepublic

This person could have been Greek Ptolemaic also. The Ptolemies were Greek.
He also could’ve been a Galatian Celt from not too far away modern Turkey.

King David of Israel is reported to have had red hair also.


16 posted on 02/16/2016 10:34:32 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal (Amnesty advocates call me "Tio Tomas")
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To: Roman_War_Criminal

I have been doing genealogy for 25 years through Anestry.com. The first thing I learned was that I am a descendant of Gov. William Bradford. Recently I discovered that both my mother and father are descended from Gov. Bradford. (I am also a third cousin od Hugh Hefner on my father’s side, but keep that quiet!) That’s only 400 years, so I searched further back and found out that I am descended from both William the Conquerer and all the Plantaganet kings, but my favorite ancestor is St Margaret of Scotland.


17 posted on 02/16/2016 10:43:40 AM PST by MondoQueen
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To: Roman_War_Criminal

It’s little understood that modern-day Turks (and the name of the country) are foreign to that geographical territory, Anatolia or Asia Minor. The Muslim Turks came from northeast of Anatolia about a thousand years ago.


18 posted on 02/16/2016 10:45:18 AM PST by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: jjotto

Correct, most modern “Turks” are descended from the Asiatic Turkic peoples of Mongolia/Western China.


19 posted on 02/16/2016 10:55:42 AM PST by Roman_War_Criminal (Amnesty advocates call me "Tio Tomas")
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To: AEMILIUS PAULUS
Wrong! "Republican freedom" meant three dozen families ruling everyone else, 40 percent of the population in slavery (it was about 3:1 in Rome itself), and the decades conquests of neighboring groups led to the evolution of a permanent executive branch, non-Romans in the Senate (no more taxation without representation), and despite the best efforts of leaders as far back as Augustus, a serious decline in the inbred former aristocracy, with opportunity and upward mobility for citizens of the empire.

20 posted on 02/16/2016 11:08:21 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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