Black legionnaries in Roman Army?

[Freddy]

I never quite understood how this went.
-Dad, why are we drinking milk?
-So that we could develop a tolerance for the lactose.
-But when? We shit our pants twice a day.
-Patience, this might take one or two thousand years.

Hunger is a great motivator.

Does not add up:
-for a weakened, starving body diarrea is a deadly danger
-in times of starvation there are no cows around to milk- they were already eaten.

[cadbren]

Well, remember Numidia is still North Africa.  They would have looked more like modern Algerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc.

See various sculptures from of Numidian kings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_I_of_Numidia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masinissa

They are heavily intermarried with Carthaginians who are of Phoenician descent.  So yes, some folks would have been quite dark from surrounding tribal intermarriage, but in general likely not a large portion.

I don't think the populations in North Africa have changed much if at all. The Fayum portraits from Roman Egypt look like modern Egyptians for instance. The base population of North Africa is caucasian, they came from the same people who settled parts of Europe, they simply colonised the southern coast of the Mediterranean rather than the northern coast. Over the millennia they then evolved separately and intermixed to varying degree with the black populations below the Sahara and on the edges where the Sahara stops and is replaced by the Red Sea in the east and the Atlantic in the west. There's an ancient Egyptian image showing Libyans as pale skinned with straight brown hair and possibly tattooed. The same image shows ancient Semitic people also with pale skin but black hair and curved noses.
Actual black people, what the Greeks called Aethiopians, were further south in Nubia/Kush and Aksum. The Romans had some dealings with them but they remained a peripheral people.
I think from a painting perspective there needs to be more tanned looking guys , but this is true even for native Europeans. I think some of us are so used to being surrounded by the sun starved that we forget that most of us end up darker if we spend any regular time under the sun. It's why the nobility cultivated pale skin, it was a way to show they didn't have to toil under the sun like the weather beaten commoners. Also while I've never done it, all those chaps fighting in ancient armies with their shirts off should probably have tan lines.

[FierceKitty]

To this day, many African and Asian people covet pale skin as a mark of a superior class that don't spend their days in the sun on a farm making sure there's food for their betters (telephone sanitisers, advertising executives, Youtube influencers, and other defining members of a mature civilisation).

[dadlamassu]

From: https://ianjamesross.com/journal/2018/4/28/aethiops-quidam-e-numero-militari-black-africans-in-the-roman-army
"After inspecting the wall near the rampart in Britain… just as he [Severus] was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian from a military unit, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable joker, met him with a garland of cypress. And when Severus in a rage ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man's ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland, [the Ethiopian] by way of jest cried, it is said, “You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god.” "

(Post murum apud vallum visum in Brittannia… volvens animo quid ominis sibi occurreret, Aethiops quidam e numero militari, clarae inter scurras famae et celebratorum semper iocorum, cum corona e cupressu facta eidem occurrit. quem cum ille iratus removeri ab oculis praecepisset, et coloris eius tactus omine et coronae, dixisse ille dicitur ioci causa: Totum fuisti, totum vicisti, iam deus esto victor.)

(Historia Augusta, ‘Septimius Severus’, 22.4-5)

[nicknorthstar]

I watched a fascinating documentary a few years ago on the subject of 'Were the Romans racist?'

They looked at numerous written documents where different skin colours were mentioned and the conclusion was that were just like us! It seems there were some Romans who were prejudiced, and others who said 'don't be such an a*****e, judging people by their appearance'.

Wish I could remember where it was shown.

So of course, that did show that people of different skin colours were throughout all the Empire.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

No, Cheddar man was not dark skinned.

I think you are wrong about this.  The wikipedia article is pretty clear about it.  If it was refuted as you say, surely someone would have edited the entry to reflect this.

[Coenus Scaldingus]

I never quite understood how this went.
-Dad, why are we drinking milk?
-So that we could develop a tolerance for the lactose.
-But when? We shit our pants twice a day.
-Patience, this might take one or two thousand years.

Lactose intolerance was (and in some populations remains) the default state, but for adults only - as mammals, bar the occasional rare mutation, we are capable of digesting lactose as young infants. As such, it's a pretty minor evolutionary step to continue the production of lactase (enzyme enabling lactose digestion) into adulthood, which explains why it has occurred quite many times independently. The benefits of an additional source of nutrition are obvious, but the mutation wouldn't be selected for if the person has no access to dairy, so that requires both pre-existing animal husbandry of specific species and subsequently a dietary shift to start incorporating milk/dairy products into the diets regularly. Since reduction in lactase production is otherwise a gradual process as far as I know, it would make sense that infants would be fed with non-human milk into later childhood when available until it started to become undesirable due to intolerance, but the "mutant" could continue this possibly over their full lifetime, making the adoption of a dietary shift quite natural. (Certainly a smaller step than whoever thought eating that infamous maggot-infested cheese was a good idea.  )

[Freddy]

Lactose intolerance was (and in some populations remains) the default state, but for adults only - as mammals, bar the occasional rare mutation, we are capable of digesting lactose as young infants. As such, it's a pretty minor evolutionary step to continue the production of lactase (enzyme enabling lactose digestion) into adulthood, which explains why it has occurred quite many times independently. The benefits of an additional source of nutrition are obvious, but the mutation wouldn't be selected for if the person has no access to dairy, so that requires both pre-existing animal husbandry of specific species and subsequently a dietary shift to start incorporating milk/dairy products into the diets regularly. Since reduction in lactase production is otherwise a gradual process as far as I know, it would make sense that infants would be fed with non-human milk into later childhood when available until it started to become undesirable due to intolerance, but the "mutant" could continue this possibly over their full lifetime, making the adoption of a dietary shift quite natural. (Certainly a smaller step than whoever thought eating that infamous maggot-infested cheese was a good idea.  )

Thanks, one learns something new every day

The wikipedia article is pretty clear about it.  If it was refuted as you say, surely someone would have edited the entry to reflect this.

In these politically affected questions wikipedia is not a reliable source any more (see the scandal about the black samurai game). The references might be usable but the article itself is edited back and forth.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I find it hard to believe that the skin color of Cheddar Man is politically charged, or even debatable in some sort of wiki edit struggle. 

The DNA indicates he had dark skin.

[Moriarty]

‘Could have’, ‘likely to have’, etc, rather than ‘had’. Science rarely picks a side, for good reason.
I have heard the words ‘of ritual significance’ come from the mouths of archaeologists too many times to believe they ‘know’ :-)

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Dark is a relative term.  The point is that he had darker skin than the median skin shades of later Britons.

What the question for me is when Cheddar man (or his ancestors) arrived into Britain and was he one of many or just a few, the start or a continuation of a migration wave, and whether his DNA line still existed in Britons during the Roman period or later. Migrations don’t usually completely destroy the preceding population, there is some absorbing of them. If the genes are recessive, still isolated individuals with the trait of darker skin still could occasionally occur.

We know Neolithic peoples got around even before copper/Bronze Age migrations.

[Freddy]

I find it hard to believe that the skin color of Cheddar Man is politically charged, or even debatable in some sort of wiki edit struggle. 

Oh, believe me, it is. I've read several pamphlets from people who themselves are not sure whether this "DNA" thing is a streaming service or a new type of ipa, but were adamant that rejecting/accepting the artwork of the Chaddar man is the work of The Enemy.

[cadbren]

Dark is a relative term.  The point is that he had darker skin than the median skin shades of later Britons.

What the question for me is when Cheddar man (or his ancestors) arrived into Britain and was he one of many or just a few, the start or a continuation of a migration wave, and whether his DNA line still existed in Britons during the Roman period or later. Migrations don’t usually completely destroy the preceding population, there is some absorbing of them. If the genes are recessive, still isolated individuals with the trait of darker skin still could occasionally occur.

We know Neolithic peoples got around even before copper/Bronze Age migrations.

My understanding is that most male bloodlines died out after the arrival of the Beaker peoples. Over what time period is conjecture. I think the pre-Beakers make up around 10% max today. Cheddar Man was part of a population that predated the arrival of the people who became the megalith builders so an extra step back into the past.
Given the history of peoples coming into Europe via the Steppe in historic times it's likely that once the ice sheets started receding there was a constant trickle of people moving west until the big movements of the Yamnaya around 5000 years ago.
There are living people in the UK with genetic links to Cheddar Man's people.

[Moriarty]

Apparently his descendant was found living in Cheddar.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-family-link-that-reaches-back-300-generations-to-a-cheddar-cave-1271542.html

[nicknorthstar]

Apparently his descendant was found living in Cheddar.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-family-link-that-reaches-back-300-generations-to-a-cheddar-cave-1271542.html

I'd read that a few years ago and thought it was brilliant then.

The Independent.  Think they are sooooo clever. Cheddar man hunted rabbits did he? Odd, they didn't arrive in Britain till the 11th Century. Idiots.