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Notes -
The nature of exponential increase means that all modern Europeans are descended from Charlemagne (probably). Charlemagne lived about 600 years ago. Confucius lived about 2500 years ago. I would assume that all Chinese are descended from him, if not exclusively through the male line.
1200 years ago.
@jeroboam
If, as this article says, 80% of all europeans who lived a thousand years ago are ancestors of every single european living today, it’s almost certainly true of the europeans who lived two thousand years ago, ie romans.
That seems unlikely. What percentage of people at that time didn't have any children survive to adulthood and were immediately removed from the gene pool?
But let's say it's more like 50% or whatever. There's still important distinctions to be made from those within the 50%. Perhaps person A has 100x as much weight in the current gene mix as person B, even though their genes are both in gene pool somewhere.
In the Middle Ages in England, nobles often had many surviving children, the middle class had a couple, and the poor were lucky to have any. Over hundreds of years, this resulted in massive downward mobility and class replacement. By 1900, almost all of the gene pool of England came from people who were nobles in the year 1200. It was basically a slow-motion genocide of the lower classes, even if small amounts of peasant DNA are still in the mix.
But unlike those hearty English nobleman, Roman families had sub-replacement fertility due to disease and cultural factors. A person who lived in Rome circa 500 BC would have a very small contribution to the modern gene pool, mostly represented by descendants who left Rome at some point.
Around 16%? The overwhelming majority of adults reproduce.
While in principle, I accept that even a small difference in reproductive fitness can have large consequences way down the generations, I’d like a source for the modern english being around 100 times “more descended” from 13th century nobles than commoners.
The end of old patrician family names means nothing. They had daughters and illegitimate children.
I also doubt that ancient chinese city dwellers managed to considerably out-reproduce the romans despite the same urban constraints and diseases. What’s different about the romans? The chinese were at various times also conquered by barbarian people, who proceeded to establish themselves as the new dynasty and nobility. Shouldn’t then, by your own reasoning, the modern chinese mostly be the descendants of steppe conquerors, while the han peasantry died out?
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Plus that bit about the Romans dying out isn’t exactly true, at least not in the implied timeframe. The eastern Roman Empire didn’t fall until 1453 and those people and their descendants absolutely thought of themselves, correctly, as Roman.
There’s actually a famous story about this; in the Greek war of independence in the 1820s the Greek army liberated one of the islands between Greece and Asia Minor. The soldiers were marching through the streets and some boys came up to them and pointed and shouted “Look! The Greeks are here!” And one of the soldiers was utterly perplexed and stated “What are you talking about? You’re Greek! We are speaking Greek right now.” And the boys replied “No, we aren’t Greek. We’re Roman.”
That was almost 400 years after the de facto end of the Roman polity, one that had lasted in some form for about 2000 years.
That plus the modern Romanians are descendants of the Roman people after Dacia was heavily romanized by state decree, it was settled heavily by Latin speaking people who eventually became the Romanian people through ethnogenisis.
Whether or not they thought of themselves as Roman, they weren't. When your people haven't lived in the city of Rome for a millennium or so, calling yourself "Roman" is not remotely accurate. Put it this way - Taiwan considers themselves to be Chinese (and the legitimate Chinese government at that), but nobody else does. Possession matters.
No, what happened is what it is to be Roman simply changed. In the beginning it meant living in the city and surrounding area of Rome, then it denoted a status being a citizen of the empire, and after that it became essentially a sort of super-ethnic category that rested atop more specific ethnicity, much like “Latino” or “Arab” or “Desi”.
They went through a process of ethnogenesis. It’s a historically common process, ethnic groups don’t just spring from the earth.
After the 3rd century or so Rome wasn’t even the most important Roman city anymore in any given year.
I don't agree with that at all. To be Roman without involving the city of Rome is a completely incoherent idea. It didn't change.
I’m sorry to say, but you’re simply wrong about this, and any level of cursory knowledge of the Roman Empire would reveal this to you.
Literally millions of people living outside of Rome were considered Roman, even by the people living in Rome. They had the rights of citizens, they called themselves Roman, and other people called them Roman, including their enemies.
Contributions to Roman philosophy, literature and poetry frequently came from outside the city of Rome.
They followed and were subject to Roman law, practiced Roman rites of religion, when the empire converted to Christianity they did too, they had a “Roman way of life” that was particular to them ie culture.
It’s like thinking someone who lives in Dallas isn’t American just because at one point Texas was part of Mexico.
I'm willing to agree that people living in the Roman empire count as Roman. But once the polity doesn't include Rome, it isn't the Roman empire any more. Perhaps not immediately, but by the time the Byzantine empire collapsed it is absurd to call them "Roman" as they haven't had any relation to Rome for something like a thousand years.
Again, by your logic Taiwan is China - but they aren't, and if you refer to "China" nobody thinks you mean the little island of Taiwan too. Possession matters and you can't just ignore it.
If you take your argument here seriously, what's your opinion on Zionism? The jews didn't own Judaea for a very long time after all.
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It’s actually the reverse; by the time the Roman Empire was split the eastern portion of the empire had far outstripped the western portion of the empire in terms of wealth, power, population and prestige for more than a century.
In the Taiwan / China analogy, which I do t think even applies very well to premodern empires, you’re the one insisting Taiwan is China.
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I’m not sure this supports the point you’re trying to make.
It is obviously true that (modulo a small population of foreigners and Taiwanese aboriginals) virtually all inhabitants of Taiwan today are descended from people who came from China. And if you’ve ever paid a visit to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, you’d know that there’s a very real sense in which the people of present-day Taiwan are the heirs to, and the custodians of, the Chinese civilizational patrimony. Perhaps not uniquely so—the overseas Chinese of Malaysia and Singapore, and of course the mainland Chinese, have similar claims, with varying degrees of plausibility—but then again, no one said that the Romanians or the inhabitants of minor outlying islands in the Aegean were the only surviving Sons of Romulus, either.
The difference is that the PRC only really cares about the KMTs dispute of continuity of government from the 1911 Xinhai revolution, which is the theoretical successor to the Imperial China polity and its associated territorial claims. Cultural successors to different time/regions of China include the San Francisco and Flushing Chinatowns which practice the Cantonese ways of the 1800s, the Thai Chinese who practice a syncretic Thai-Teochew pattern of especially gaudy taoism (other southeast Asians are migrants who hold little affection for the mainland), and even the Joseon who at one point proclaimed they were the successors/avengers of Ming China following the Manchu conquest of the Han. Yet all of these are unimportant to the PRC because no one else claims legitimacy over the mainland.
The KMT are in fact colonizers in the truest sense, being a foreign people (KMT nationalist government, soldiers and displaced Nanjing intellectuals) that displaced the local power structures and cultures (Ainu/Japanese colonial subjects+local bureaucrats) while acting as a disputed successor to a foreign regime that had not ruled over Taiwanese for half a century. These putonghua speaking nobles ran roughshod over the minnanyu speaking islanders who cared not for the squabbles of the mainland. That the KMT was entertaining thoughts of reclaiming mainland China through an Operation Revival style invasion of the Inner Sphere was the maim reason for the continual dispute between the PRC and ROC.
Fast forward about 60 years and a LOT of cultural upheavals roiling the world, and the PRC obsession with the ROC seems less like actual intra-Chinese dynastic succession politics that basically characterized the vast majority of Chinese imperial history and more a consequence of a heavily interconnected world with a force of first resort actually able to project power to its vassals. The eastern roman themes draped the livery of Constantinople on their standards, but no levy of Aleppo trained with a Hellenic muster. By contrast the Taiwanese Armed Forces practically beg to be placed under the command and responsibility of their US friends, for force competency and blame absolution purposes. Whether this assessment is accurate or even shared by the PRC is unknown, but it certainly seems that Taiwans irredentist claims to the Qing holdings would not be maintained if Taiwan did not have the US 7th fleet nearby.
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Sure I would agree that the people in Taiwan are descended from the Chinese (as the Byzantines were from the Romans). But that doesn't make them Chinese, any more than Australians are English because most of the population is descended from English convicts. Like I said, possession matters. Perhaps the first generation or even second generation of the Byzantines after the fall of Rome could legitimately claim to be Roman. But at some point, it doesn't hold water any more.
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You are misinterpreting me. I made no claims about the Roman state (a rump of which survived until 1453).
But the people of Rome in 500 BC died out. Even the patrician lines vanished. Alexios I Komnenos was not a member of Gens Claudia or something. His ancestors were Greeks.
Does this mean that the Romans of 500 BC had literally zero descendants that survived to today? No, of course not. But hundreds of years of subreplacement fertility means their genetic contribution to the current mix is negligible.
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