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The story
The thread kicks off with a blunt question: “It used to be the Roman Empire, but now it’s just a country that makes pizza — why?” From there, discussion ranged over nations that have claimed to be “successors to Rome” — the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, France, the United States — and debated why Britain, once a backwater of the empire, ended up seizing world supremacy. That spiraled into a debate over the racial and ethnic makeup of ancient Roman citizens, citing genetic studies, before branching out even further into the hair color of Vikings and the original colors of ancient sculptures. The thread also drifted into pure chit-chat, with a video of a smiling Italian grandpa eating pasta and a graph showing how Japan and Italy always seem to end up next to each other on various national rankings, like wages.
What people said
Re: #3
Isn't it more that places like the Holy Roman Empire claimed the name "Rome" on the grounds of ruling northern Italy?
🇷🇺 "That's me!"
France and the US (too)
Russia also claims to be a successor, but it's communist, so it's really just a claim in name only
Because there were no more invasions by foreign peoples after the Norman Conquest, and royal power was strong and centralized from the start
Compared to Italy, Japan's geopolitical importance is on a completely different level though
Milan → Tokyo
Venice → ?
Isn't Greece more like Kyoto?
Geopolitically, the locals only ever come out ahead when there's an independent, self-governing regime in charge there
Just look at South America
There are countries that have stayed independent throughout recorded history, you know
You can also estimate eye color from the genes, and most of them had dark eyes
"Roman citizen" was a legal status, not a race, so the genetics would've varied a lot by region
The 8th emperor, Vitellius, rose to power backed by Germanic citizens, so there must have been blond, blue-eyed Roman citizens too
That's a result of multiple peoples flowing in via Mediterranean trade during Rome's rise — it doesn't carry over to the rest of the Italian peninsula outside the city of Rome
Italy actually has big north-south genetic differences to begin with
Even today, the south (including Rome) has kept its genetic continuity, with less Germanic influence than the north, so blond hair and blue eyes are rarer there
Seriously? That never shows up on my YouTube feed 😲
No, when they tested the genes of citizens within the city of Rome itself, it was almost all Middle Eastern
"Middle East" covers a huge area though
Persians, for instance, are Aryan just like modern Italians, so there's barely any difference
https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.aay6826/asset/a44162b4-1dce-4143-ac2f-d79c5ec4ade9/assets/graphic/366_708_f3.jpeg
Plainly put, imperial-era Roman citizens were close to Syrians and Palestinians
That was only for a brief moment
Also, all the arrows point back to Europe anyway
I read that original paper you're citing — its conclusion seems to be that Roman citizens were genetically diverse, not a uniform group
It also says European influence grew stronger in the later period
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay6826
Wait, "a brief moment" — we're talking about the whole span of the Roman Empire here
Medieval Italy was a backwater, plain and simple
In the scope of long history, it IS a brief moment
Also, Rome was more unified and stronger under the Republic, which is why it kept developing
Its decline actually started once it became an Empire
Whaaat, but the Renaissance started in Italy, didn't it?
Re: #55
The figures in the mosaics at the Roman-era Villa del Casale ruins are all blond and curly-haired — I wonder what ethnicity they were meant to depict
Even Scandinavians in the Viking age weren't mostly blond
No way Germans in the Roman era were blond then
But there's the Saga of Erik the Red, isn't there? (he was literally nicknamed "the Red" for his hair)
This guy's just faking historical knowledge (エアプ — slang for pretending you know something you've never actually done)
The Renaissance's main achievement was translating Middle Eastern texts
Are you doing okay in general?
Do you seriously think Jesus Christ was white just because European art paints him white?
That's the 12th-century Renaissance you're talking about
By the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, it was long past the era of just imitating Islamic scholarship
Re: #69
Isn't it more likely they painted blond, curly-haired people because such people actually existed in ancient Rome?
You really think they'd go out of their way to paint their subjects to resemble some obscure people from some backwater nobody even knew the location of?
If the Greeks were Arabs, why would they bother painting murals of European-looking people?
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/10/14/23/396503F700000578-3839092-The_team_reconstructed_the_Griffin_Warrior_s_face_pictured_by_la-m-9_1476484135292.jpg
Lmaooo
Probably just eating acorns and grunting like cavemen, right?
Getting invaded by the Yayoi people
The blond-hair gene actually originates in Siberia and migrated from northern Russia into Finland and inland Norway/Sweden
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/0e6e2623-4413-4c38-9113-5282a6793b99/exd14142-fig-0002-m.jpg
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1742567534568808448/pu/vid/avc1/480×854/3EX5jfmjsds0BLLr.mp4
He looks like he's having the time of his life, lol
So all that stuff about having to twirl pasta on your fork and never slurp it was a lie?
I could only find the wage one, but that's exactly why I like it
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The thread starts from a blunt question — “Italy is supposedly the heir of the Roman Empire, so why is it now just a pizza country?” — but the historical skeleton underneath it is largely sound: the medieval-and-later contest over who gets to claim the title of “successor to Rome” (the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, France, the United States, and so on), and the account of how Britain, once a mere frontier province, rose to prominence through centralized royal power and the absence of foreign invasions after the Norman Conquest. As for the genetic diversity of ancient Roman citizens, posters do cite a real 2019 paper published in Science (Antonio et al.), which found that imperial-era Rome had a genetically diverse population due to the influx of multiple peoples via Mediterranean trade, and that European influence grew stronger in the empire’s later period. That said, the thread tends to oversimplify these findings into claims like “Romans were Middle Eastern” or “not European,” which misses the paper’s actual conclusion — that Roman citizens had no single racial origin. The comments about Viking hair color and the original colors of ancient sculptures are likewise grounded in genuine recent scholarship, but individual posts mix in images and assertions that are hard to verify, so none of it should be taken at face value.
*This article excerpts and summarizes the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Why Did Italy End Up as Nothing More Than a Pizza-Making Country, Despite Having Been the Roman Empire?“.
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