This page is viewed 3735 times
Telegraph Archeologists have discovered the 2,000 year old skeleton of an Asian man in an ancient cemetery in Italy, suggesting that the Roman Empire's reach was far more extensive than previously thought. Although the Romans are known to have traded for silk and exotic spices with China, it was thought that most of the commerce was conducted through intermediaries along the Silk Route and that no Chinese or other Asians entered the empire itself. But that orthodoxy will now have to be re-examined after a team of Canadian archaeologists conducted DNA analysis on the man's bones and found that he came from East Asia. The skeleton was excavated from a cemetery which formed part of an imperial Roman estate at Vagnari, in the province Puglia, which forms the heel of the Italian boot. "This discovery poses many questions about globalisation and the movement of people in Roman times," said the team's leader, Tracy Prowse, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "Our data reveals that some of the inhabitants of Vagnari came from far outside the confines of the Roman Empire," Prof Prowse told the Journal of Roman Archaeology. She suggested that the man, who lived in either the first or second century AD, may have been a slave or labourer, based on where in the cemetery his remains were found and the fact that the only item buried alongside him was a clay pot. The fact that another body was later buried on top of him, with more elaborate grave goods, also suggests that he was of humble standing. Although analysis of the man's mitochondrial DNA proves that he was of Asian origin, the archaeologists are unable to say whether he himself settled in Italy or whether he was the descendant of an Asian family which was already living there. Nor does the DNA analysis allow the scientists to pinpoint more accurately where in eastern Asia he came from. His skeleton is one of 70 that have been found since the Vagnari site was found in 2002. Details of the discovery will be presented at a conference on Roman archaeology in Oxford next month.
Related News:
|
