The Taboo Roots Of Imperial Collapse

[Lex]

Later, the Italians would have been replaced by different waves of invaders, because they do not look Semitic today.

I very much doubt that Italians during the Roman Empire where ever "Semitic" in appearance. Just look at their features on busts, coins, paintings and statues. I think they would have looked similar to how they do today. I don't believe that the various invasions and mixture with other population groups would have changed the way they looked too greatly. Just look at central Italians today, they still look 'Roman' in my opinion.

[Virgil61]

Actually it doesn't seem that any of us have questions. It appears that we are rather collectively dismissive of the notion.

 

Ok, I think I should do the same. The theory was just fascinating. It really choked me. Therefore I have felt the need to share it. One would have had to imagine the Italians of the Empire not as an European people as commonly thought, but as a mostly Oriental breed, perpetually on the dole, which was devouring the wealth of conquered territories in an everlasting feast , and guarded on the limes by Gallic, Balkan, and Teutonic legionnaires.

 

Then during the late Empire, this disparate people would have been elimitated from the peninsula in a massive die-off triggered by the collapse. Indeed, the population of Rome went gradually from roughly 1.000.000 to 30.000. Later, the Italians would have been replaced by different waves of invaders, because they do not look Semitic today.

 

Italians, in the case of the Latin tribes and the related 'Italian' tribes were Indo-Europeans who came down from the North, not an oriental or semitic people. I seriously doubt that the whole central portion of Italy was repopulated by non-Italians.

 

The article looks like a load of bunk written in the early 20th century motivated by the then predominate racial outlook popular among even the educated. How would it have looked for European whites to have a once great Roman culture that became in their eyes 'corrupt' and 'decadent', even if those claims is doubtful now?

[Gaius Octavius]

I would think that if the Frank theory were so, then the Italic languages and 'dialects' of today would contain many more words rooted in these alien languages (those of the East, in particular). Much of the food would also be traceable to the North and East. (As is the case with Sicily today, due to the later Arab invasion.) The architecture would also reflect the tastes of these foriegners, (excepting Greeks here). Christianity was adoped by the peoples of the Empire, but it cannot be shown that it was as a result of racial or ethnic admixture.

I think that Virgil's post is telling.

[Gini]

Who was is who asked who the Romans were ethnically? Is the theory that they came from the ruins of Troy still considered? I think it is the ancient legend.

[Kosmo]

Many roman colonists in Dacia were from Syria and other oriental regions. This led to the romanization of Dacia and not to orientalization. Race it's less important then cultural identity.

[Furius Venator]

The article looks like a load of bunk written in the early 20th century motivated by the then predominate racial outlook popular among even the educated

 

Couldn't agree more. It was about that time if I recall correctly that the USA was frightened that waves of ignorant immigrants were destined to outbreed the 'native' Anglo-Saxons, thus reducing IQ and causing collapse of the nation.

 

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

[Andrew Dalby]

Many roman colonists in Dacia were from Syria and other oriental regions. This led to the romanization of Dacia and not to orientalization. Race it's less important then cultural identity.

 

I think that's an excellent example, Kosmo.

[Gaius Octavius]

Who was is who asked who the Romans were ethnically? Is the theory that they came from the ruins of Troy still considered? I think it is the ancient legend.

 

I think that Augustus had Virgil compound that 'legend'. In that 'legend', the Romans were originally horsemen from the Caucasus who migrated to Illium.

Just as in the Bible, there are two 'creation' stories. Pick the one that suits you best.

[Andrew Dalby]

The article looks like a load of bunk written in the early 20th century motivated by the then predominate racial outlook popular among even the educated

 

Couldn't agree more. It was about that time if I recall correctly that the USA was frightened that waves of ignorant immigrants were destined to outbreed the 'native' Anglo-Saxons, thus reducing IQ and causing collapse of the nation.

 

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

 

Yes. Tenney Frank was not bad when he stuck to economic history. His mistake here was to rely on half-baked hypotheses about genetics. Down to the 1930s, many others did the same, with well-known results.

 

I suppose the question to put to him, should one meet him in Purgatory, would be: can you, T.F., think of one state or empire in history that actually has collapsed as a result of racial mixture? And don't name the United States, because, in spite of predictions, it hasn't collapsed yet ...

[Gaius Octavius]

The article looks like a load of bunk written in the early 20th century motivated by the then predominate racial outlook popular among even the educated

 

Couldn't agree more. It was about that time if I recall correctly that the USA was frightened that waves of ignorant immigrants were destined to outbreed the 'native' Anglo-Saxons, thus reducing IQ and causing collapse of the nation.

 

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

 

The 'theory' did have some credit. The immigrants raised the I.Q. of the population. Then, there is pizza, the long current national food.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

 

There's nothing idiotic about testing IQ. IQ tests allow one to diagnose developmental disorders and mental retardation, make predictions about who needs additional instruction in the schools, and evaluate other testing instruments for their discriminative power. If IQ tests did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

 

Gould's radical egalitarianism has done more harm to scientific progress than any benefits it provided in fighting racism. As this whole thread make clear, even in the absence of IQ tests, racism would remain and would find new rationalizations to invent.

[Gaius Octavius]

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

 

There's nothing idiotic about testing IQ. IQ tests allow one to diagnose developmental disorders and mental retardation, make predictions about who needs additional instruction in the schools, and evaluate other testing instruments for their discriminative power. If IQ tests did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

 

Gould's radical egalitarianism has done more harm to scientific progress than any benefits it provided in fighting racism. As this whole thread make clear, even in the absence of IQ tests, racism would remain and would find new rationalizations to invent.

 

Basically, I agree with you. BUT: I.Q. tests evaluate 'learned' rather than 'inate' ability. Additionally, minority cultural traits are not accounted for. This score stays with a person, often to his detriment.

[Andrew Dalby]

Gould's Mismeasure of Man was good on denouncing this sort of stuff (as well as the idiocy of IQ testing).

 

There's nothing idiotic about testing IQ. IQ tests allow one to diagnose developmental disorders and mental retardation, make predictions about who needs additional instruction in the schools, and evaluate other testing instruments for their discriminative power. If IQ tests did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them ...

 

You're right of course. But they are among the statistical measures that can easily be misused or over-used.

 

My mother was a village schoolmistress at a time when tests of that kind determined what kind of secondary school/high school children moved to at age 11.

 

She gave an example from a test whose results were crucial in one of those years. Choose a word to fill the gap: The countryside is ____. (noisy / quiet) Now, what country child, surrounded by cows mooing, sheep bleating, donkeys braying and tractors doing whatever tractors do, is going to say that the countryside is quiet? But those who answered 'noisy' lost a mark.

[Furius Venator]

Gould's radical egalitarianism has done more harm to scientific progress than any benefits it provided in fighting racism

 

How do you work that out? it may have impeded funding for IQ testing but that's about it. As a former teacher I doubt that IQ is actually very useful as a measure. It has some merit in distinguishing the brighter from the stupider and it might allow the occasional child who is not fulfilling their potential to be caught, but to be honest any sensible adult (let alone teacher) will pick up whether a child is bright or not pretty quickly.

 

The London borough of Croydon was still IQ testing 11 year olds in the early 90s (it may be doing so still). They had removed tha mathematical component and administered two tests. One was a crude fill in the blanks verbal reasoning and the other was a spacial awareness test that was meant to show absolute potential (personally I'd have thought it showed aptitude for spatial awareness if it showed anything) but there you go.

 

The scores were ten weighted for age. Thus an early September child who got just one answer wrong was condemned to a maximum of 124 (had the got them all right, they'd have scored 140). An august child could afford to get nine incorrect and still beat the September child who had a single error.

 

IQ testing tells us very little that commnon sense does not.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Well, I opened a can of off-topic worms. Perhaps we can agree that racism pre-dates IQ tests and that if IQ tests were abolished, racism would remain?