Posted on 12/20/2005 9:59:10 AM PST by blam
Romans may have learned from Chinese Great Wall: archaeologists
The construction of the Roman Limes was quite possibly influenced by the concept of the Great Wall in China, though the two great buildings of the world are far away from each other, said archaeologists and historians.
Although there is no evidence that the two constructions had any direct connections, indirect influence from the Great Wall on the Roman Limes is certain, said Visy Zsolt, a professor with the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Pecs in Hungary.
Visy made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua as he attended an international conference in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province recently, and his opinion was shared by some Chinese and foreign scholars.
The Roman Limes are Europe's largest archaeological monument, consisting of sections of the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2nd century AD.
All together, the Limes stretch over 5,000 kilometers from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast.
Vestiges include the remains of the ramparts, walls and ditches, close to 900 watchtowers, 60 forts, and civilian settlements which accommodated tradesmen, craftsmen and others who served in the military.
The long distance and the great number of different peoples and cultures in Central Asia made any connections between the two ancient Roman and Chinese empires almost impossible.
However, curiosity and the challenge of covering great distances and seeing remote lands excited people in the past, Visy said.
"Indeed, more information about each other could be gained exactly in times as the one or the other became stronger and could start some programs toward the other," Visy said.
As for the Roman Empire, the silk trade started during the reign of Augustus. The trade became intensive both on the Silk Route and in the sea.
The Chinese chief commander Ban Chao led an army up the Caspian Sea in the 1st century AD and sent a delegation to the west to get information about Rome (called Daqin in Chinese).
Visy noted that there are a lot of similarities between the Roman Limes and the Great Wall. Both empires wanted to launch a strong barrier against "barbarians" and to prevent their invasions. In doing so, the Han Dynasty (226 BC-220 AD) built a continuous wall, but Rome built a wall only in special cases.
"It was an important point in both systems to build a military road along the limes, as well as a row of beacon towers in a strict sequence. Also the military centers and bigger forts are similar in the Roman and in the Chinese constructions," Visy said.
Archaeologists have found almost the same methods were used for providing signs at the Great Wall and the Roman Limes.
Visy said another factor that should not be neglected is that the western most sector of the Great Wall was built in the last decades of the 2nd century BC, during the strong rule of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
"The Chinese Empire seems to be interested in Western connections, at least in Central Asia," Visy said.
The trade connections between the two empires were quite intensive in the first century and at least in the first half of the second one. "It is worth noting that the north line of the Silk Road was opened also at the beginning of the 1st century AD," Visy said.
A. Stein and other scholars' research in the region of Dunhuang and Lop Nur in northwest China has also found similarities between the Great Wall and the Roman Limes, according to Visy.
Taking all these points into consideration one can ask the question if all this is due to chance or if there is a connection between the two constructions, Visy said.
"It is quite obvious to suppose that Rome gained information about China and about their special, complicated structure of frontier defence. Could the idea of the strong limes not come from the well-tried system of China?" Visy added.
Xu Weimin, director of the Department of History of Northwest China University, said that during the 400 years from the 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD, lots of Chinese silk was transported to the western countries via the Silk Road. It is natural that the information about the Great Wall was spread to the Rome Empire.
The Great Wall was first built in the 7th century BC, and was repaired, enlarged and rebuilt in many dynasties. In the Han Dynasty, the western most part of the Great Wall was extended to the Lop Nur in today's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to protect the Silk Road.
Chen Yongzhi, vice director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said the exchanges between the east and west started earlier than believed. In addition to silk, the information about the Great Wall was also exchanged.
"It's convincing that the Roman Limes and the Great Wall have some 'blood relationship'," Chen added.
Source: Xinhua
They called the Romans Daqin...I wonder if that's any connection to the name Tarquin?
I would submit that the Chinese actually learned from the Romans. Roman soldiers who disappeared after a famous defeat founded a city in eastern China, archaeologists say .
The phantom legion was part of the defeated forces of Marcus Licinius Crassus, according to the current edition of the Italian magazine Archeologia Viva .
The famously wealthy Crassus needed glory to rival the exploits of the two men with whom he ruled Rome as the First Triumvirate, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar .
Crassus decided to bring down the Parthian Empire - a fatal choice .
His forces were routed in 53 BC outside the Mesopotamian city of Carre - today's Harran - and he was beheaded .
According to the Roman historian Pliny, the Romans who survived were taken to a prison camp in what is now northern Afghanistan .
When Rome and Parthia sued for peace in 20 BC - 33 years after Crassus's last battle - all trace of the prisoners had disappeared .
The survivors of Crassus's legion became a mystery, walking ghosts in Roman legends. A Chinese historian in the Han Empire, China's second dynasty, provided an answer to the riddle in the early 3rd century AD .
The historian, Bau Gau, wrote that a Chinese war leader defeated a group of soldiers drawn up in typical Roman formation .
Crassus's old troops must now have been in their fifties and sixties .
Bau Gau said the foreigners were moved to China to defend the strategically important eastern region of Gansu, near today's city of Yongchang .
This is where the survivors founded the city of Liquian, the only site in China where the mark of Ancient Rome can be seen. 'Liquian' is said to mean 'Roman' .
The city has been virtually unknown outside China although hundreds of people visit it each year, admiring traces of defensive wallworks and pieces of broken pottery .
File this under "highly unlikely."
The Caucasians have always been in China and predate the Han themselves in the Gansu region.
From the excellent book The Tarim Mummies, page #281:
"...Narin Infers that they (Caucasians) had been there at least since the Qijia Culture of c. 2,000BC and probably even earlier in the Yangshao Culture of the Neolithic. This would render the Tocharians as virtually native to Gansu (and earlier than the putative spread of the Neolithic to Xinjaing) and Narin goes so far as to argue that the Indo-Europeans themselves originally dispensed from this area westwards."
The movement of the Romans to the Gansu region was a reintroduction.
If this is true, why don't they ever find any MSG at Roman sites? Why aren't there any fossilized fortune cookies at Hadrian's Wall?
While I love a good yarn as much as the next man, the fate of prisoners in ancient times never resulted in a 'prison camp' where all the defeated army was kept together. Too much trouble to maintain them, feed them, etc., not to mention the possibility of an armed uprising.
However, there was a great market for slaves to fill the coffers of the winner (with a little booty for the common soldiers)
On the other hand, some victorius generals simply liked to slaughter the defeated army.
The routing of an entire Roman army is as much a yarn as anything. A more likely scenario was a deal was cut.
How so? The no army is ever a stranger to defeat and Rome has witnessed many near catastrophic defeats where entire legions were destroyed. Hannibal, Sparticus, Alaric, do the names ring a bell?
"Ah, Scotch! Was inwented by little old lady from St. Petersburg!" --Mr. Chekov to Mr. Scott
Here are significant battles where the Romans lost entire armies in significant battles. The defeat of an "entire Roman army" happened a few times in their otherwise glorious military history:
1) Battle of the Allia
2) Caudine Forks
3) Battle of Cannae
4) Arausio
5) Battle of Carrhae
6) Teutoburg Forest
7) Battle of Adrianople
8) Alaric's Attack on Rome
I want to bring to mind that Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan type city like New York or London.
In Jerusalem citizens were referred to as Jews, but they might not be from the tribe of Judah, it like in America we are called Americans, but come from various nations!
In Jerusalem there were folks from the Asia such Chinese, or from Africa, Egyptian, Roamans, Greeks, etc!
This subterranean world would most likely been learn from the Chinese!
Archaeologists in Israel find ancient tunnels from Jewish revolt against Romans
Archaeologists have uncovered underground chambers and tunnels constructed in northern Israel by Jews, for hiding from the Romans during their revolt in A.D. 66-70.
Archaeologists said Monday they have uncovered underground chambers and tunnels constructed in northern Israel by Jews for hiding from the Romans during their revolt in A.D. 66-70.
The Jews laid in supplies and were preparing to hide from the Romans, the experts said. The pits, which are connected to each other by short tunnels, would have served as a concealed subterranean home.
Yardenna Alexandre of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the find shows the ancient Jews planned and prepared for the uprising. This is in contrast to the common perception that the revolt began spontaneously.
"It definitely was not spontaneous," said Alexandre. "The Jews of that time certainly did prepare for it, with underground hideaways here and in other sites we have found."
However, the recent discovery of these underground chambers at the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Kana, north of Nazareth, is unique. All other "hiding refuges" found so far are hewn out of rock. But at Kfar Kana, the settlers built the chambers out of housing materials, and they hid them directly under their floors. They made sure their families had access to the chambers from inside their homes.
"This construction was very well camouflaged inside one of the houses," Alexandre said. "There are three pits under this house and one tunnel leading to another pit. There are 11 storage jars in that pit. This was storage for an emergency situation during the second half of the first century CE, which is well-known for the Great Revolt."
Alexandre describes the chambers as "very attractive." Built like igloos, they are wide at the base and small at the top. The tunnels between them are very short, and the ceilings are too low for standing up.
Zeev Weiss, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said, "I think this is a very important find at Kfar Kana. It can give us more information about life in the Galilee in the first century and the preparations Jews were making on the eve of the revolt." Weiss is director of excavations at Sepphoris, which was the largest city in the Galilee at the time of the revolt.
The Jewish revolt against Roman rule ended in A.D. 70, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple.
The Jews at the Kfar site built their houses over the ruins of a fortified Iron Age city, reusing some of the stones from the original settlement. Then they dug through 1.5 meters (five feet) of debris from the ancient ruins to build their hideaway complex. "It was quite a lot of work," Alexandre said.
The original settlement, which dates from the 10th and 9th centuries B.C., is also a new discovery.
Alexandre attributes current dating of the original city as an Iron Age settlement to pottery remains, which are plentiful at the site. The excavators have also found large quantities of animal bones, a scarab depicting a man surrounded by two crocodiles and a ceramic seal bearing the image of a lion.
The excavation of the city's architecture has uncovered fortified walls which still stand 1.5 meters high in some places. "It's magnificent," said Alexandre. "You can walk among them."
"University of Pecs in Hungary"
I think Gov. Schwartzenegger got his degree there.
Seems like a wall is pretty easy to figure out though. :')
Speculation out of thin air. The Roman era is not prehistorical. If the Romans were influenced by the Chinesse they would have wrote about it, and some writings would have been likely to survive.
While I wholeheartedly agree that there's not likely any connection between the development of walls, the Roman Empire and China had continual trade links, both overland and (more intermittently) by sea, usually by go-betweens, but occasionally directly.
Yeah, the Romans had it goin' on. Unified Scotland with the Persian Gulf (briefly), eliminated Mediterranean piracy for hundreds of years, carried on trade with India...
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