Posted on 06/13/2004 2:15:19 PM PDT by blam
Borders folk may be descended from Africans
By David Derbyshire
(Filed: 11/06/2004)
Families who have lived in the English-Scottish Borders for generations could be descended from African soldiers who patrolled Hadrian's Wall nearly 2,000 years ago.
Archaeologists say there is compelling evidence that a 500-strong unit of Moors manned a fort near Carlisle in the third century AD.
Richard Benjamin, an archaeologist at Liverpool University who has studied the history of black Britons, believes many would have settled and raised families.
"When you talk about Romans in Britain, most people think about blue eyes and pale complexions," he said. "But the reality was very different."
Writing in the journal British Archaeology, Mr Benjamin describes a fourth century inscription discovered in Beaumount, two miles from the remains of the Aballava fort at Burgh by Sands. The inscription refers to the "numerus of Aurelian Moors" - a unit of North Africans, probably named after the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
The unit is also mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman list of officials and dignitaries. It describes the prefect of the "numeri Maurorum Aurelianorum, Aballaba".
The unit was probably mustered in the Roman province of Mauretania, in modern-day Morocco, by the emperor Septimus Severus and arrived in Britain in the second or third centuries AD. Aballava lay at the western end of Hadrian's Wall in Cumbria.
Mr Benjamin suspects that the unit would have been blooded in battles in Germany and the Danube where more inscriptions refer to a unit of Moors. Their number is unknown, but the fort could have held up to 500 men.
"There was freedom of movement for civilians and those in administration of the armed forces. Discharge certificates indicate that the veteran soldiers settled in Britain," he said. "Soldiers would have had plenty of money to spend in native settlements on the outskirts of the forts. They would have sought entertainment in brothels. Many would probably have wanted more permanent relationships."
Mr Benjamin is calling for a major study of black Roman Britons. He believes that DNA tests of locals could reveal genetic links with modern-day north Africans, while skeletons of Romans found in the area might contain telltale clues to their childhood origins.
Buildings in the village may have been built from recycled Roman materials. Some might be of African origin, he said.
The unit is likely to have been composed of Berbers from North Africa, but may also have had darker-skinned soldiers from Nubia.
In 1989, archaeologists discovered a 1,900-year-old wooden sculpture of a black African head in London carved in the first century.
Contemporary records also point to Africans living in Britain during the Roman occupation. The emperor Septimus Severus is reported to have been approached by a black African soldier while he crossed Hadrian's Wall on his return from a battle in Scotland.
In South Shields, a Roman tombstone refers to a 20-year-old "Moor by race, the freed slave of Numerians".
this is full of typos, sorry. spelling-cops please just give me a warning.
I didn't say it was impossible that a strain or two of the DNA might not have survived.
But even today family branches die out all the time from natural causes.
Considering the uncertain nature of mortality at the time, where whole populations died out in the 1st-3rd Centuries from disease, infant mortality, warfare and violence, the likelihood of uncovering a single line of DNA from only 500 subjects that lasted over a 1,500 year period seems rather remote.
yeah i would assume some genes are still mixed in but the y-chros. are likely long absorbed. Unless they were importing women to border forts, no foreign matrilinear dna at all. as you say, 80+ generations with multiple plagues and migrations (q-celts in some areas, saxon, viking, saxon again, then the 'harrying of the north' (did this extend to the wall?) it is amazing any celtic genes survive at all in that area
I wonder if there has been a study of people in the interior of wales (or cornwall) to see if any dna markers are similar to known italic dna, since they would have absorbed people from roman towns and cities, with civilian population including some romans.
Facts:
1)Inscriptions refer to the "numerus of Aurelian Moors"
2) The fort could have held up to 500 men
3) archaeologists discovered a 1,900-year-old wooden sculpture of a black African head in London carved in the first century
Conclusion: "Compelling evidence that a 500-strong unit of Moors manned a fort"
This isn't compelling at all. It could just as well have been 20 Moors in a 500 man unit. And the artifact could just as well have been a war trophy carried to Britain by an Italian soldier.
None of this stops the speculation from being reported as fact.
If by "not black" you mean they didn't have curly hair, thick lips and flat noses, probably right.
But the skin of Northern Africans can be extremely dark. There is quite a variation in skin color in North Africa. They sure aren't Caucasians.
Well, forts full of handsome young soldiers with money to spend do seem to have a way of acquiring "camp followers," that is to say, women of easy virtue. ;^)
'Tis the way of the world . . . .
Dinna "dis" our fair Scots lassies or you'll hear the bagpipes comin' for ye through the brae.
My husband is a piper so pipes don't scare me.
And your fair Scots lassies were pagans back then.
They still are. I know, my wife is Scots.
Aye, but verra verra sophisticated pagans. They pioneered the use of blue woad around the eyes as a cosmetic.
Of course they probably daubed a little here and elsewhere as well.
That's the word I was seeking, though I understand that is falling out of PC favor now, too.
I'll be darn, I didn't know that.
"Black South Africans were at times officially called "Bantus" by the apartheid regime. Nowadays in Southern Africa, the term "Bantu" is no longer used to refer to a people. The more common and polite term is "Black" and in fact legislation and documents from the South African government replaced "Bantu" with "Black". "
Is it okay to say they speak a Bantu Language?
I suppose so if you wince properly when you say it.
In ancient times the Greeks and Romans always described Moors as having dark skin.
The very word Moor derives from the Greek maurus, Latin mauri, meaning "dark men." The Mauri were the tribe that lived in Mauretania.
Here is Caesar calling the Mauretanians "black-skinned." Scroll down to the last sentence, "And I have heard this man say that beyond the country which he ruled there was no habitation of men, but desert land extending to a great distance, and that beyond that there are men, not black-skinned like the Mauretanii . . . ."
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/anc-nafrica.html
thanks!!!
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