[extropy-chat] Romans

[Lee Corbin]

Amara writes

> spike:
> > Racial suicide?  What is that?

Yeah, I wondered too  :-)

> A little tongue-in-cheek, 'racial suicide' is a concept sometimes used
> as propaganda, that has fueled a number of unpleasant campaigns in world
> history.

Hmm, I don't recall it coming up, though I have heard about the
fear of admixture. So sometimes it was called "racial suicide", hmm?
Well, Google reports that there are many right-of-center accusations
that the present day Europeans and Anglo-Saxons are committing racial
suicide. I suppose that this is because it is claimed that they have
the power (but not the will) to cause the demographics to go the other
way if they truly wanted.

> It means that a particular race is reduced to no longer being
> recognizable, due to the mixing ("in-breeding") of other races. In my
> example, I was suggesting that the Romans could have assimilated
> themselves out of existence by absorbing/breeding with/etc. other
> races and cultures.

Well, I haven't heard that theory (about the Romans) seriously proposed. Now
it has been proposed that their ever increasing use of slaves drove out the
small landholders, who were a linchpin of the society. And of course, there
are the theories about lead poisoning and so on. It's interesting that
after some point the most able generals and aggressive politicians
were non-Italians, if memory serves. There was almost surely various
kinds of cultural decay, but I don't think that they were demographically
replaced---at least not at all suddenly and even if so, not by people
differing from them much in innate characteristics.

> In my discussion of Romans/Etruscans, a second alternative I should have
> suggested instead of the Romans assimilating the Etruscans, was the
> Etruscans assimilating the Romans. I don't think you can separate the
> two very easily.

That happened early enough that what most of us mean by "Roman"
refers to the people later on.  I.e., 

        In 282 B.C. they accepted a peace treaty after suffering
        another defeat. Within a few years, all Etruscan cities
        were taken over by Rome, and the Etruscans thus vanished
        from the political realms of the world.

By "Roman" most writers are referring to later periods. Although where
I got this from http://www.crystalinks.com/etruscians.html has fodder
for explanations concerning the fall of the *Etruscans*.

Thanks for the tidbit; I hadn't realized that it's not completely clear
whether culturally the early Romans assimilated the Etruscans or it
happened the other way around.

Lee