
Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story - benbreen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/03/22/ancient-romans-depicted-huns-as-barbarians-their-bones-tell-a-different-story/
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empath75
The Fall of Rome podcast had a really interesting episode on The Huns:
[https://m.soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast/fall-of-rome-
epis...](https://m.soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast/fall-of-rome-
episode-9-attila-and-the-empire-of-the-huns)

He makes the argument that in the later Roman Empire, the Huns treated the
Roman Empire as either a vassal or a buffer state to their own empire. They
demanded tribute from them and even forced the romans to chase down and return
refugees. It's really interesting to look at the Roman Empire from a hun-
centered point of view-- just one more border state along a small section of a
vast empire.

They seem to have been one of a long series of steppe empires with the same
basic organization-- from the Scythians to the Mongols.

~~~
arethuza
Speaking of Scythia - somewhat bizarrely Scottish legends claim that the Scots
were originally from there!

 _" They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the
Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the
most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however
barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel
crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today."_

Declaration of Arbroath, 1320.

~~~
tacomonstrous
It's not an unreasonable legend. Conventional wisdom is that all Indo-
Europeans sprang from the steppes of Central Asia. Having it mentioned in a
14th century declaration is pretty fascinating!

~~~
throwaway91111
The proto-indo-European migration is thought to have been a cultural and
linguistic migration, not a mass physical migration or a conquest.

~~~
clw8
Source on that? IE spread from the Dnieper River area to Western Europe and
Western China in a rather short amount of time. Clearly there was a lot of
migration from the Urheimat.

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endisukaj
Wow. What a weak article. It basically tells nothing other than the fact that
the Huns were people (we knew that) and that different people may lead
different lives (we knew that also).

~~~
etrevino
I was thinking the same thing. As someone who spent a lot of his PhD time with
Late Antiquity as a secondary area of specialization, I can say that an
enormous amount of this is "duh". It does not uproot the commonly accepted
research by any stretch.

~~~
Erik816
I'm sure most popular press articles are "duh" if you have PhD in the field or
a closely related field ...

~~~
clw8
Indeed. I've spent many a Sunday at university libraries reading about history
and this was interesting and largely new to me. That people with some
expertise thinks it's a duh article makes me happy that I didn't just read a
bunch of bullshit!

~~~
cema

      That people with some expertise thinks it's a duh article 
      makes me happy that I didn't just read a bunch of bullshit!
    

A good point, by the way.

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digi_owl
I thought by now we knew that Romans used the label "barbarian" on any group
not Romans.

~~~
the_af
In the context of the article, it's clear they mean the now common meaning of
"barbarian: a person in a savage, primitive state; uncivilized person." TFA
even mentions the Romans considered Huns "scarcely human".

Obviously they are not referring to the Roman meaning of "any non-Romans",
because that would be a tautology.

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viggity
Fun fact, "Barbarian" is a Greek word as a label for non-Greeks. To the
Greeks, foreign languages just sounded like they were mumbling "bar-bar-bar",
hence Barbarians = Non-Greeks.

~~~
gnicholasgreen
I've heard this oft repeated over the decades. I wonder if there is a
legitimate historical source for it.

~~~
gglitch
"from Greek _barbaros_ 'foreign, strange, ignorant,' from PIE root *barbar-
echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit barbara-
'stammering,' also 'non-Aryan,' Latin balbus 'stammering,' Czech blblati 'to
stammer')." I don't know if the source I'm quoting is reliable, but I find the
same reference to Sanskrit in a variety of sources.

~~~
vram22
>compare Sanskrit barbara- "stammering,"

Interesting. Though I knew Sanskrit (well in school), didn't know or remember
that word - but still know Hindi well, and in Hindi, bad-bad (pronounced like
bud-bud) means blabbing, as in:

Kya bad-bad kar rahe ho - What are you blabbing.

And to close the loop, in Hindi, the sounds r and d are closely related and
sometimes substituted for one another - at least while talking.

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dghughes
I've seen forensics shows where the person was identified using oxygen
isotopes in the water the person drank.

I wonder how mixed up we are now with bottled water from Fiji, strontium in
toothpaste and other weird non-local molecules.

Cops talking "Hey Frank He's from Fiji but seems to have lived in Siberia
too."

~~~
startupdiscuss
I would love to see a cop procedural where all the science keeps leading them
to the wrong conclusion.

I presume it is easiest to write it as a comedy, but might be pulled off as a
drama too.

~~~
Steko
How about a dystopian Law and Order where every week a new batch of innocent
people are sent to prison based on dubious science and willful ignorance from
police and prosecutors.

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yawz
History is written by the... victors. It's not surprising to get a single-
sided story when the other side didn't care much about leaving written
detailed records.

~~~
tonmoy
The Huns were victors though, so the age old adage may need some updating

~~~
marcosdumay
Yep. History is written by... the people that cared to write it down. And
Romans wrote a lot.

~~~
vetinari
That and the random chance of having your writings preserved through
centuries.

Burning down the libraries in not something unheard of.

~~~
clw8
Burning wasn't necessary. Most texts that weren't copied continuously were
simply lost. Our oldest sources for written Chinese are on dinosaur bones --
but the script already had characters that clearly show they also wrote with
pen on bamboo slips, but we don't have any surviving examples of that until
the Classical Chinese era.

------
amk_
There are a couple of good books on the Hun-Roman relationship if you want to
learn more about that era:

The End of Empire is a more casual read: [https://www.amazon.com/End-Empire-
Attila-Fall-Rome/dp/039333...](https://www.amazon.com/End-Empire-Attila-Fall-
Rome/dp/0393338495%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-d-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0393338495)

The Huns by EA Thompson is older but as far as I know one of the canonical
works: [https://www.amazon.com/Huns-
Thompson/dp/0631214437%3FSubscri...](https://www.amazon.com/Huns-
Thompson/dp/0631214437%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-d-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0631214437)

Another fun fact: Attila (aka King Etzel) assists the protagonist Kriemhild,
widow of Siegfried, in the medieval saga "The Song of the Niebelungs"

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vacri
So, they weren't barbarians because some of them farmed? Seems to be a rather
low bar.

~~~
pacala
> Some bones suggested that the individual was born into a roaming tribe but
> later settled down; _others indicated the opposite lifestyle change._

Not sure what history Susanne Hakenbeck studies, but asiatic hersdmen
populations in Eastern Europe have a long documented history of looting for
slaves.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean%E2%80%93Nogai_raids_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean%E2%80%93Nogai_raids_into_East_Slavic_lands)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devshirme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devshirme)

~~~
qordoba
If your argument is correct US and European slave trade in 19th and 20th
century shows us what?

~~~
pacala
It shows that observed mixture of populations doesn't imply peaceful
coexistence. Which refutes the main thesis of the article / research.

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qordoba
Looks like racism in Europe haven't evolved much. Europeans are human rest is
animal.

~~~
qordoba
The number of downvotes will reveal how many are disconnected from the fact
that racism raising (once again) in Europe.

~~~
dpark
The number of downvotes will reveal that your initial comment adds little to
the conversation and your second comment is basically a downvote complaint.

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mtgx
Surprise, surprise. Propaganda and "fake news" existed during Romans' time,
too.

