The Lost Romans

There’s a small villiage in the Liqian province of China where people have a disturbing color of hair; yellow. Local people have always wondered why they look different from their neighbors, and in the 1950’s it was put forth that they were the descendants of a lost legion of Roman soldiers.

DNA samples were recently taken from male inhabitants to see if we can find a tie between Liqian locals and the Romans.

Wikipedia has a whole page about Roman/Chinese relations as well as a bit about Liqian specifically. The Sydney Morning Herald also has an excellent article.

Call of Ctesiphon

In her last post, Michele suggested that Mohenjo-Daro might be the coolest city name ever. I’m afraid must disagree: the city with the coolest name is clearly Ctesiphon, capital of the Parthian Empire. (It gets bonus points for sounding like something out of an HP Lovecraft story.)