Scholars debunk myth of Roman settlement in China after DNA tests, doubt still draws tourists

In the remote village of Liqian, nestled in northwestern China’s Gansu province, a captivating myth once captured global attention and sparked an intriguing question: are the local people descendants of a lost Roman legion?

In the 1990s, the presence of Romanesque architecture and the villagers’ European traits – evident in their facial features – fuelled speculation regarding these potential connections. However, subsequent DNA testing and historical research have since debunked this myth.

The Post delves into the origins of this theory and its eventual discrediting.

In 1957, American sinologist Homer Dubs proposed in his paper, A Roman City in Ancient China, that Liqian village could be linked to a Roman legion. He asserted that after their defeat in a battle in 53 BC, some Roman soldiers fled to the territory of the Xiongnu, which corresponds to modern Central Asia and northwest China.

Dubs noted that the Han dynasty (206 BC-220) employed a unique “fish-scale formation” in their army and wooden defences – military tactics strikingly similar to those used by the Romans. He speculated that captured Roman soldiers were brought to what is now Liqian village in Yongchang county, where they settled and imparted combat skills to the Han people.

Dubs’s theory garnered acceptance among Western and Chinese scholars at the time. In 1993, the state media outlet Xinhua Daily Telegraph published a report claiming evidence suggesting that descendants of ancient Roman soldiers still inhabited Liqian.