This story was the subject of a report in the London 'Daily Telegraph' newspaper on 2 Feb 2007. There were some photos of a blonde child and caucasian-looking locals. References quoted include Professor (of Chinese History) Homer Hasenflug Dubs of Oxford University who produced some papers on the subject in 1957 (called A Roman City in Ancient China) as well as a book by a later researcher called 'Black Horse Odyssey' which I have seen on Amazon.com. Dubs postulated that after the Roman army was beaten by the Parthians (Iranians) in about 53BC some of the captured troops may have ended up as mercenaries and moved eastwards, joining the Hun army of chieftain Jzh Jzh and settled in what is now China after their capture by the Han Chinese. There was a story in the Han dynastic papers studied by Dubs that captured troops were allowed to settle in the area and he derived his hypothesis from this and from other evidence.
The 'Telegraph' article noted that recent blood samples taken from local men may reveal a link in the genes of the Y-chromosome, which is passed from father to son, between the Chinese residents of the villages around Liqian and possible Western populations. They have taken the samples but are now trying to process the data and reach some conclusions. How easy this will be I'm not sure, as the Roman army was apparently composed of a mix of soldiers from different racial groups. D.
I think there is a book about this - called the Mummies of Urumchi. Even the women were over 6 foot tall, the largest male was 6'6" (2meters). May have been the Tocharians.
