Romans in China?

Possible route of Roman legionnaires to China.
Image: Telegraph.co.uk

Liqian, a remote settlement on the edge of the Gobi desert in northwestern China, may be an unusual place to expect the birth of a blonde-haired baby girl. But that's how Gu Meina was born. Her father, Gu Jianming, says she is called "yellow hair" by her classmates at school. Another resident of Liqian, Cai Junnian, has been nicknamed "Cai Luoma," or "Cai the Roman," on account of his ruddy complexion and green eyes.

Homer Dubs, professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s, hypothesized that Liqian was founded by Roman legionnaires in the late first century BC. In 53 BC, Marcus Crassus' army was defeated in Mesopotamia by the Parthian Empire at the battle of Carrhae. Stories were told of scores of captive Roman warriors who wandered eastward. And seventeen years later, Chinese warriors talked of capturing soldiers who made a "fish-scale formation," perhaps a reference to the tortoise formation of the Roman legion.

Geneticists have taken blood samples from 93 Liqians, and results are pending.

--The Telegraph has more