[Alan H]

Many of you probably know this, but what the heck....

It's pretty well documented that there are a significant number of Y-Chromosomal polymorphisms in Scottish and northern British populations which are shared with several cultural groups that are located in the Steppes of Western Asia, as well as Turkey and so on. Why might that be?

It so happens that the ancient Kingdom of Sarmatia was a significant rival to Rome for many hundreds of years. The Sarmatians lives in this area, roughly. Many battles were fought, sometimes the Romans won, sometimes the Sarmatians won. At one point, the Romans won a significant victory and to ensure that the Sarmatians wouldn't revolt further, took several thousand Sarmatian cavalry as hostages. This is well documented in some Roman archives.

What to do with a significant force of young, energetic warriors who are the sworn enemies of the regime? Well...ship them off to Gaul, the furthest edge of the Roman Empire and let them take care of distant Roman interests in that remote location. So that's what happened. Several thousand young, potent Sarmatian men arrived on the scene and did what young men do....and the DNA with it's unique polymorphisms entered the local gene pool.

I think about things like this when I contemplate politics and war.....and tartan. You know, thoughts like "It's OK to slaughter those barbarians/infidels/maniacs because they're NOT LIKE US.....except that they are.

Or...

You can't wear my clan tartan, because you're NOT LIKE ME. Except that I am.

[Dale Seago]

Didn't you know that King Arthur's knights were Sarmatian hostages serving in the Roman military?

:-)

Look up "King Arthur (Film)" at Wikipedia!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur_%28film%29

[Bugbear]

* Edit: I'm sorry, Allan, I shouldn't have posted.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Yes, I was going to say, "Didn't they make a movie about this"? And advertised it as the "true" version of the Arthur story, even though it's just about as fictional as any other.

But yes, some 5500 Iazyges (a Sarmatian tribe) were sent to northern Britain to defend the border against the Picts and, as far as I know, over time became integrated into the local population.

I'm not sure that I'd call Central Asia (or Eastern Europe, for that matter) the Middle East, though. However, the Sarmatians were closely related, at least by language, to the Iranians, and Iran is generally regarded as part of the Middle East.