Comment by bergoid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bergoid | Hacker News Reader

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> Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks. They're very weird and bitter.

This is his default style as a polemicist and it distracts indeed from the points he is trying to make.

> And I can't tell what his actual point is!

The first 3 bullet points are his actual message. The rest is a reaction to some preceding drama on twitter.

His point is basically that Africans were a statistically insignificant subgroup among Romans in Brittain, and by adding them so prominently in a short animated cartoon for school children (who hardly know anything about antiquity) the BBC is performing historical revisionism.

He also casts doubt on the assumption that these Africans were black, pointing out that Northern Africa was inhabited by Berbers and Phoenicians.

> He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.

He wants scientific rigor to prevail over political correctness.

We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall). For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans were a "statistically insignificant subgroup" (which by the way doesn't even make sense as a statistical statement). As Beard points out, even Norman DNA is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.

In the depicted cartoon case of an Ethiopian that has a local Briton or Celt wife, who has multiple children with her, there is the valid question of seeing what is in the genetic record, though, wouldn't you agree?

The reaction, and Beard's answer, was specifically about the family shown and not the narrow question of whether or not an Ethiopian conscript would have ever set foot in Roman Britain.

I'm not sure why you assume he would have been a conscript.

There is no reason to think that a few interracial marriages in Roman times would have left much of a trace in the modern genetic record. Surely no-one would get so up in arms about a cartoon that showed a Saxon married to a Norman, but we have no modern "genetic record" of this either. We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that interracial marriages existed in Roman Britain, often involving soldiers.

Talk about the "genetic record" might seem sciency sounding, but its really the historical evidence that's much more informative in this instance.

I think we are not far from each other in what we understand... the issue raised between Beard and Taleb seems to revolve around the meaning of "typical" .

Beard seems to say, "it was possible that it could have happened, here are a few Ethiopians for instance that we know were in Roman Britain, for example".

Taleb seems to say "typical means what is likely to have happened 50% or more of the time; since there was no chance that Roman Britain had 50% of marriages with children that involved Ethiopians/Berbers/etc. thus Beard is very wrong"

Beard's point is that we really have no idea what "typical" ethnic backgrounds were for Roman families in Britain. There's just no reliable data, and it most likely would have varied enormously between different parts of the country.

Beards answer points out among other things that there are exceedingly few traces of Normans in the genetic record as well, and gives a plausible suggestion that most might simply have left, like the Normans did. She also points to more examples than a single Ethiopian conscript.

So the reality is that we know there has been people here that are poorly reflected in the genetic record, and that makes it rather pointless to point to the genetic record to demonstrate the family in question is implausible.

In any case, what troubles me much more than whether or not the depiction is plausible is just how incredibly unprofessional and rude Talebs reaction was. If he wants honesty and a focus on the science, he should grow up and act professionally.

> We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall).

That "evidence" consist of one fleeting mention in a biography about Septimius Severus.

> For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans were a "statistically insignificant subgroup"

The lack of evidence (genetic or historical) puts an upper bound on the proportion of subsaharan Africans in Roman Britain that is several orders of magnitude lower than the BBC animated cartoon suggests.

> As Beard points out, even Norman DNA is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.

For the presence of the Normans there is plenty of historical evidence. For the presence of subsaharan Africans there is just about nothing. So we should stick to the null hypothesis.

There's quite a bit more evidence than that:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1464209/Borders-folk-...

>The lack of evidence (genetic or historical) puts an upper bound on the proportion of subsaharan Africans in Roman Britain

It does no such thing. Can you point to any reputable scholar who is prepared to state such an "upper bound"?

> There's quite a bit more evidence than that: > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1464209/Borders-folk-...

A unit of "Moors". Again, Mediterranean looking North Africans. Despite the misleading title.

> It does no such thing. Can you point to any reputable scholar who is prepared to state such an "upper bound"?

Of course not. The evidence is so thin it wasn't even up for useful scholarly debate.

There are plenty of people in North Africa who have dark skin. See e.g. the following photo that vidarh linked to in another comment:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ingetjetadros/4603950662

The term "Moor" does not translate precisely to any modern ethnic term, and is perfectly compatible with dark skin. In fact, the article notes that "The unit is likely to have been composed of Berbers from North Africa, but may also have had darker-skinned soldiers from Nubia."

We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black"

We do however know how far into Africa the Romans ventured (what is now Sudan) and what the ethnicity of the people living there was.

Beard addresses that point in her article. (Take home message: don't take lines on maps too seriously.)

If peoples from far flung regions had been present in numbers and those people tended to have rank (garrisoned, etc), one would imagine we'd have more bone evidence (from burial sites, given their ranks).

But as portrayed, it looks like there were more people from far flung areas than there were picts in the north.

In any event, it's interesting ironic in that its seen as progressive that an occupying force might have been slightly multi-ethnic, and this celebrated. The English in South Africa were also much more multi-ethnic in that they brought peoples from the Indian subcontinent and other places; let's celebrate that too, then.

>If peoples from far flung regions had been present in numbers and those people tended to have rank (garrisoned, etc), one would imagine we'd have more bone evidence.

We don't have many human remains from that period. So not really.

>But as portrayed

Portrayed where? Not sure what you mean by this.

>and this celebrated.

Who's celebrating it? I'm confused by your comment.

>We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall).

Ethiopians were black. The majority in ancient Rome were not like that, not even the majority of people in the northern Africa countries.

We don't have figures on skin tone for North Africa over two thousand years ago. As far as I know. If we do, then by all means post them here.

We don't need some magical list of figures to know the general distribution.

We have descriptions, from many sources, even before Herodotus, of what this or that country's people looked like. We also have actual depictions of populations in the various hellenistic, then Roman and Byzantine provinces in mosaics and other painted scenes.

Feel free to link to some relevant data or source if you have something. As far as I'm aware, historical data on skin color demographics are extremely scanty. Even in the case of major historical figures like Cleopatra, we just don't know for sure.

Considering the family tree of the Ptolemies, I think we have a good idea

There is no historical consensus on Cleopatra's skin color. Plenty of people have their own favorite speculations about it, but there's no hard evidence.

He also seems to ignore the fact that a large part of the roman army in Britain would have been auxilia troops at lot of whom where non white.

And arguing about whether north Africans where "black" or not seems just odd is he gong to say Sub saharan African actors should not play Othello.

North Africans at that time were not "black" ; I thought that this was already well known?

Was Libyan leader Gaddafi, black?

It's not obvious to me that the cartoon character is unambiguously black rather than brown. Berbers and other North African groups that were well-represented in the Roman army have brown skin. In any case, Beard points to instances of Romans in Britain who were either described as having black skin ("Ethiopean") in the historical record, or whose skeletal morpholgy suggests Sub Saharan ancestry.

Also, nothing is "well known" about the skin color of populations thousands of years ago, for obvious reasons.

Can't you deduce skin colour from chemical analysis of bog bodies, or is melanin unstable in those conditions? Also, can't we deduce skin colour from analysis of DNA (and from the climate: sunlight affects skin colour)?

Perhaps the problem is that scientists are not particularly interested in skin colour, for which I wouldn't blame them.

Not sure about bog bodies, but there's so few of them that it's unlikely to be useful information. There is no way to determine skin color via DNA analyses of ancient remains, so far as I'm aware.

Looks like I was wrong about DNA evidence and skin color: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/07/first-britons-...

This is a Tuareg berber boy [1]. The Tuareg moved South into the Sahel in antiquity, but their traditional areas included parts of modern day Algeria and Libya.

Gaddafi was Bedouin, but their skin color varies greatly. I'll go out on a limb and assume that Gaddafi spent decades spending a lot less time outdoors in the sun than many other Bedouin would. Here is an example of a much darker Bedouin man [2]. Note, however, that the main Arabization of Libya happened after the Romans moved out.

Berber men in Morocco [3].

Ghurara Berbers in Algeria [4]

Toubou man - The Toubous traditional area stretch into Libya [5].

In case you would assume the Berbers whose main areas were in Southern Libya would not make it North, consider that Septimius Severus' hometown of Leptis Magna on the mediterranean coast was frequently raided by berbers until the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. During Septimius rule a whole Roman legion (Legio III Augusta) was stationed there to protect against Berber raids (the legion was also been stationed in present day Algeria for a long time)

Septimius also extended roman rule to Garama - one of the main homes of the Garamantes Berber people who shared Fezzan (the South West of Libya) with the Toubou, Arabs, Berbers, Tuareg and Dawada.

Here's a Dawada man [6].

Now, I'm not an expert on the region, and I don't know the exact mix of Roman Libya and other Roman holdings in North Africa at the time, but the above is enough to at least suggest that unless you are an expert (in which case I welcome sources), there is sufficient reason to at least not jump to the conclusion that there were no dark skinned Africans in Libya in Roman times on the basis of Gadaffi - a person from an ethnic group that most certainly had a far lower presence in Libya until after Roman times.

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/ingetjetadros/4603950662

[2] http://www.gotellitonthemountain.net/wp-content/uploads/2014...

[3] https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/morocco-valley-of...

[4] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HVIPE5t6qvM/TxCq_VzQpaI/AAAAAAAAA...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubou_people#/media/File:Toub...

[6] http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/148807060-tuareg-tribesman-...

I suspect that a Libyan and Caribbean kid would be considered "black" in the western societies - just as likely to be stopped by the cops etc. face the same discrimination.

What about the aboriginal people living there? Some of the original colonists where not black yes - but over time there would have been considerable intermarriage.

What position in the distribution is suitably "scientifically rigorous"? Should all children's cartoons represent only the population mean? Or perhaps the median - at least that is guaranteed to actually exist. Maybe the mode would be better - but what if there is more than one? We could be willing to be a bit more relaxed, and allow anything within the middle two quartiles. Or, perhaps, we should just remember that there is a distinction between material produced for children and the academic consensus.

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