Callaecus

Since they no longer attack us, I suppose they didn't like the taste of human meal (just kidding).

Why do you think the Romans left Britain?...

No, these are scientists that help archaeologists; actually, archaeologists are historians, but whereas the latter spend their time with documents, the former also five attention to the material world. Unfortunatelly, you're right about archaeology today: it has mostly became a dull and routine work. The earlier generations would certainly be disapointed with this shift from learning about the past through the material world to a mere record of findings.

It's not only in California; it's everywhere in the world.

This "Seven Wonders" issue is mostly a political thing. If it pretends to create a common world community by electing wonders that belong to "everyone" it will fail since people will just be patriotic and will simply vote in the wonder of their land. In the end, it will just divide instead of uniting, with people already complaining that their land doesn't have monuments in the list. Finally, nobody knows what were the criteria followed by the "savants" to choose the final contenders. At least, I can notice one of them: pick a bit of everything throughout the world.

These so-called "stamps" certainly had nothing to do with our modern world stamps. Notice that they were found in a tumulus, which means that they were probably symbols with some sort of religious meaning.

What I find interesting in this article is the drawing that depicts the Neanderthal man as the typical

Northern Portugal and Galicia are today two different entities, though in the Roman period they both constituted the Roman province of Gallaecia. As far as having any current Celtic-speaking populations, I can assure you that nobody in Portugal and Spain speaks any Celtic language; all languages spoken here come from Latin. Regarding the Celtic descent, well, that's more problematic. When the Romans arrived to Hispania, a Northern Portugal and Spain were occupied by Celtic-speaking populations and some Celtic words still survive today. However, this does not prove that there was a large (if any) influx of Celtic migrants into this area. After all, we are all speaking English in this forum, but that is not the native language of many of us. In my opinion, I think it is more likely that Celt was a lingua franca in large parts of Europe in those days, due to a little know process of cultural transmission. It was the Celtic culture that was moving around Europe and not a people. Finally, the main reason why more recently there has been an emphasis in Northern Portugal and in Galicia about their Celtic heritage is due to political reasons, that is, it is about creating a common past between both areas so that, together, they can resist better the centralisation attempts of the capital cities of both countries.

Big business should give more support to archaeologists in order to bring back the good ideas of the past.

As far as I know, the occupation of Masada was a victory, with or without mass suicide.

If such god was a hunter, it makes sense its invocation to track and find the robber.

I prefer to wait first for the C14 dating of the bones and, if possible, if there are any signs of the body having been decapitated. Even if these elements are proved correct, I would accept the claim with caution, taking in consideration a well-known history of fakes. That's what I think is the main reason behind this "discovery": the Catholic Church is in crisis and nothing like a bombastic discovery to attract again some people.

Such findings do not prove that Norwegians served the Roman empire since they could have simply obtained those artifacts through trade with other Germanic tribes that lived closer to the border of the Roman world. In my opinion, what would be interesting to find was th meaning given to Norwegians to those Roman artifacts.

Paper wouldn't survive all that time and in order to see the digital archives you would need the computers (which wouldn't be working). All that would remain from our society to be seen in 2000 years would be remains of our skyscrapers. It's impossible, however, to say what sort of meaning would be given to them. Maybe they would just look to the material and call our society the "Age of Cement" or, if they were more religious, they might say the same thing that the Jews said when they saw the Babel tower in Babylon: humanity tried to reach the heavens and God punished them.

It's impossible to compare today Rome with the USA. The latter's hegemony only has 50 years, whereas Rome's influence is still around, including in the American Republic. We need to wait 2000/3000 years to see if America's influence will be able to surpass the Roman one. For the moment, it's too early to say.

Hello everyone. I'm from Porto (then known as Portucale) in Northern Portugal (then the southern part of the province of Gallaecia). History is one of my favourite subjects and since my knowledge of the Roman period is so-so, I decided to join this forum in order to learn more about it. Finally, I must say that I find the design of this forum quite attractive and well-made. Congratulations to the designers.

No. The Republican institutions were not made to rule an empire, which means that changes were needed. Notice also that when the empire started not to work well, Christianism was instituted as an official religion in order to create a more stable identity among Romans instead of the cult of the emperor. In this way, the successor of the Roman Empire - Byzantium - was able to hold for another 1000 years. Not bad, I would say. Stable institutions are a chimera, since they are constantly changing according to circumstances. Actually, the "Republic" itself went through a number of changes.

I like it all; there's always something interesting going on.

Basically, the same thing for me. It's all about understanding better our identity through history.

I'd like to be an ambassador, so that I could travel within and beyond the empire and meet all sorts of lands and persons.

I think that the Romans were never really interested in the East. All attempts of conquest of the East were the result of men who wished to emulate Alexander and not of a united Roman effort. Thus the all the efforts were always half-hearted, never surviving its patron.