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Legionnaires in China?


Guest Scanderbeg

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Heh, that confused me a bit at first :blink:

 

But there you have it, no proof whatsoever.

 

My apologies Maledict, the threads, (when amalgamated) always run chronologically- so the older posts pre-date recent debate.

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I remember seeing a BBC programme some years ago which featured a valley in Chinese Turkestan (Western China). Its inhabitants were perfectly european in appearance, and some of them had blue eyes. Their clothing consisted of very evocative plaids and tartan - type patterns. These people are thought to be analogous to those who left us the mummies mentioned in earlier posts. The language these people spoke was closely related to Turkish, and these people had a tradition of coming from the west. Their remains have been found further east on China, and from even earlier times.

 

The current Chinese government does not particularly like research into this, as it confirms that not only have the Chinese been grabbing land off other people way earlier than they did in Tibet, but also that they may have originally colonised the Asian mainland from Japan!

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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 remember seeing a BBC programme some years ago which featured a valley in Chinese Turkestan (Western China). Its inhabitants were perfectly european in appearance, and some of them had blue eyes. Their clothing consisted of very evocative plaids and tartan - type patterns. These people are thought to be analogous to those who left us the mummies mentioned in earlier posts. The language these people spoke was closely related to Turkish, and these people had a tradition of coming from the west. Their remains have been found further east on China, and from even earlier times.

 

The current Chinese government does not particularly like research into this, as it confirms that not only have the Chinese been grabbing land off other people way earlier than they did in Tibet, but also that they may have originally colonised the Asian mainland from Japan!

 

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.

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The current Chinese government does not particularly like research into this, as it confirms that not only have the Chinese been grabbing land off other people way earlier than they did in Tibet, but also that they may have originally colonised the Asian mainland from Japan!

 

The original 'Chinese' came from Japan? I don't think even the most nationalist pro-Yamato Damashi scholar in Japan could now claim that, with most to varying degrees accepting modifioed versions of the continental origins theories proposed by Egami.

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