What's Veeky Forums's thoughts on Mary Beard?

Did legitimately good work on Roman Triumphs

Fell into meme status and became complacent with shilling propaganda

>1968
>I don't have to listen to stuffy old conservative academic authorities, just because they have credentials doesn't make them immune to criticism

>2018
>heh, how dare you argue against the professor of Classics at Cambridge, she has credentials therefore she is right about everything

?

north africans aren't black

the black romans debate was ridiculous, because it was clearly propaganda
not because there wasn't the odd nubian merchant or slave in britain, but because the bbc had made other cartoons for the same series which depicted negroid picts and bronze age britons

also, a person can be knowledgeable and make a factual statement, but if they use deliberately vague terminology or a lot of 'what ifs' then the truth can be hidden behind the more palatable veneer of a half-truth

>DUDE DONLALD DRMPUF IS CAESAR!!!!
She is the caricature of the post modern historian, the JK. Rowling of Classics

I liked it when that pic of the ancient black Briton was doing the rounds, and /pol/ decided they knew more about genetics then genetic scientists

the reconstruction was darker than it should have been
it looked like a sudanese ffs, it should have been nearer to an arab or indian
all the genetics revealed was that it lacked certain genes for depigmentation, but then neither the japs nor chinese have those genes and they're pretty light

having said that I think some of the reactions, especially those shunning any connection to cheddar man, were a bit daft

It makes sense in the context of the series though, it's just superimposing modern characters onto historical time periods and one of them is black, it's not actually saying anything about the ethnic makeup of Britain

She triggers the fuck out of the idiot brigade. That alone is enough to make me a fan

Wait, was there ever a time when academics weren’t lecturing aloud to an audience?

Good for documentaries but some of her work does read as more the modern world looking back rather than analysing within old world ideas
>implying they aren’t reactionaries
>implying the feminists of the 60’s wouldn’t abhor the feminists of the 10’s

>should have been
It could have been any colour
/pol/ is retarded for WE WUZ CAESAR N SHIET and pretending like there’s some hegemon that stretches from Portugal to the Eurasian steppes

There was a time when it was at least entertaining
youtube.com/watch?v=q_jGH6Np0IM

STOP BLACKWASHING NORTH AFRICA

The reconstruction wasn't done by a geneticist, or else he would have known that the person wouldn't have been that black, wouldn't have had those brows, and he would have had a full beard.

It was lighter than a lot of indians.
Still very amusing how, when confronted with evidence that shows their worldview is wrong, people tend to double down instead of admitting they were wrong and changing their minds

Good for triggering /pol/tards

Yes, people who live in places near the equator tend to be more dark skinned ceteris paribus. Cheddar man didn't live near the equator, nor in all likelihood was he as black as the reconstruction which can be seen for example from previous reconstructions.

She and Taleb should fuck already

I fucking love history

The point was that he or his ancestors would have lived near the equator and only recently (in genetic terms) moved northwards. Pale skin is a recent development.
Amazing how butthurt people get. They seem so invested in skin colour as a signifier, when it means nothing. Such obvious horror that they might be descended from a darker skinned person.

>Pale skin is a recent development
Of course, but there's a spectrum between pale skin and really dark skin. They didn't find the genes for really dark skin.
>Such obvious horror that they might be descended from a darker skinned person
Shit tier liberal snark. Nobody is horrified about that, everyone knows the species originated in africa, so everyone knows our distant ancestors were all dark skinned dark haired with dark eyes. Also, modern britons barely have anything to do with cheddar man so your comment isn't even relevant.

They're triggered because Cheddar means that non-whites belong in Europe just as much as they do

No, it doesn't mean that at all, but that's exactly why it was propagandized so much and why he was made so dark skinned, without a beard and without prominent brows so thank you for admitting that.

Even if he was pitch black, he would still be almost genetically as far as the modern European is half Western Hunter Gatherer and the rest being related groups.

"Slap my fat tail daddy!"

Several things piss me off about the Black Roman debacle.

The first is simply that I've read SPQR, am aware of her credentials, so it's just putrid to see the arrogance of people doubting her knowledge of ancient Rome, while vastly overestimating their own 'knowledge' based on feelings and zero research/reading.

But the main thing is they wildly misrepresent what she said, while also never citing the evidence she provided in support of what she was saying.

The timeline, and her actual claims, were as follows.

>Guy says 'this is ridiculous' posting the screencap of the Roman scene. NOT any of the other periods. People would later post stills of other periods with far less historically defensible brown people as if that's what she defended.
>Mary Beard says actually, the Roman World was very diverse, movement within it was very easy. Note that at she does not say anything about black people specifically, but was talking about non-white people in general.
>She says the Romans would deliberately garrison areas with troops from far away. She cites the presence of Syrian archers at Hadrian's wall. She furthermore, I believe, cites the fact that legionairres were recruited from many provinces where populations may not have been white in modern terms.

CONTINUED:
>When the idiot arguing with her starts arguing about race specifically, she displays the academic responsibility of saying it's extremely difficult to speculate on what 'race' many historical populations were in modern terms, because the sources were frequently unconcerned with these things, or assumed it would be common knowledge. The guy demands exact, percentage statistics on the ethnic make-up of people living millennia ago. When Beard, in contrast, behaves as a responsible intellectual and saying he's asking for information that doesn't exist, he somehow thinks this validates his impression.

Further evidence she provided in support of her assertions of intra-Empire movement included an Emperor being born in Africa, and furthermore proof of someone born in Africa settling in Roman Britain.

Her entire point was that a brown 'Roman' in Britain is far from contradictory to all information we have. We know people from Africa and the Middle East could get around the empire, often in a military capacity. While the modern race of the populations of many of these regions is uncertain, the bottom line is that she was an exceptionally educated adult arguing with a retard.

The thing is, she shouldn't have even bothered, the entire series is about a half black kid projecting his dad and himself into historical events in Britain. There was never an argument made by the BBC that blacks were present in Britain during any period it covered

>the entire series is about a half black kid projecting his dad
Why is the series even about a half black kid? How many fucking half black kids are there in bongland

It's called market share, if they make him half black whites and blacks can relate is the theory

More than the number of children taking an active interest in ancient Rome, so if you're going for realism race is not the main factor.

Apart from that black and half black kids are far from uncommon, especially in London where most BBC stuff is usually set. I don't know how you can be so aggravated by black people, but also entirely unaware that one of most important cities in the western world is so racially diverse.

This is an aspect of the whole thing I wasn't even aware of, but yeah, that adds an entirely new layer of retardation.

>This is an aspect of the whole thing I wasn't even aware of,
That's because the user you replied to is making up rubbish. The video she commented about was one video set in the Roman Empire period of Britain featuring a brownish looking kid of unspecified ethnicity and his Roman officer father, which is actually perfectly defensible, which is what Beard said.

The series it was part of about British history included some videos with other non-whites dubiously inserted at times, but not the same character at all. Beard never commented on any of the rest of the videos in the series and may not have even been aware of them.

>That's because the user you replied to is making up rubbish
That's literally the series dickhead, good to know you haven't even bothered to watch it but still feel the need to shit your opinion all over this thread like it fucking matters. You're literally no better than some black cunt having a whine about how there are no blacks in Middle Earth, good work

>That's literally the series dickhead
Yes I watched them all and mentioned it was part of a series in my post, you rude user.

The rest of the series was set in different periods though and did not feature the same kid. Please read my posts properly and actually watch the things you claim to be talking about before you start winding yourself up and angrily throwing around insults.

>If it doesn't align with my preconceived notions it's meaningless.
Your brain on /pol/

He’s a she now but we got one more season of time commanders so it’s worth it
Proofs he didn’t shave?
Proofs he was definetly not that blakc

>not knowing the sub Saharan black is as old as the Caucasians

Waiting for SPQR to be delivered. Did I goof?

heh, both slices of bread were buttered

The first chapter is gender in the Roman Empire but the rest is good

It's on YOU to prove he did shave, you moron.

>forgetting the part where she starts smugly questioning /oursandnig/'s credentials until he slaps her demented ass down

>it's just superimposing modern characters onto historical time periods and one of them is black
they're "superimposing" drawings of nogs onto historical time periods? And one of them just HAPPENS to be black?

The reason for Syrian detachments at forts along Hadrian's Wall are not for the reason of keeping locals out of military affairs, it was primarily as a result of the foreign policy strategy of Hadrian and Antoninus, whom both pursued a rather defensive strategy across the Rhine, Moesia, and Dacia, only making mild advances and investments in the East. This focus on the Rhine led to the movement of many of the units from Asia Minor and Syria towards Britain as incursions had become a major issue, and he was using some Syrian troops so he could in the short term, sure up the northern territories of the Brigantes while the expensive, and difficult to maintain wall was being constructed. Further, the Brigantes, who at this time, were not fully under Roman control, and still exercised a degree of autonomy and had issues of pacification, hence the myriad of forts in the Pennines region.
Antoninus expanded this slightly though sought to cut costs so established his frontier.
It's not that there was a desire to keep Britons out of the army, the exact opposite is true, enrollment as auxiliaries, (which was common at this time, for many Britons were fighting with many Legions across the Rhine), and eventually as full citizens, the idea Romans wanted to actively stop populations from becoming integrated into Roman institutions is ridiculous.

>if they make him half black whites and blacks can relate is the theory

Everything I'm finding on this guy suggests he has no credentials in anything like history. He was some kind of economist who became a mathematician.

You can't just pathetically lie about how an interaction went and then bank on nobody checking.

Yes.

>Mary Beard says actually, the Roman World was very diverse, movement within it was very easy. Note that at she does not say anything about black people specifically, but was talking about non-white people in general.
That's what's known as being disingenuous, which she definitely was from what I saw claiming the Empire was "diverse" because it had dark middle easterners and North Africans whilst addressing the person posting a picture of drawn soot skinned Roman generals, soldiers and Britons meant to represent a SSA.

>The point was that he or his ancestors would have lived near the equator and only recently (in genetic terms) moved northwards
No, his ancestors had lived in Europe for 30,000 years and had left Africa another 40,000 years before that

She interjects her leftist politics with her work on roman history.

Needless to say, she's complete trash.

The Romans would have had some genuinely black people in their ranks and the guy in the video was not "soot skinned" it could easily have been a dark skinned Middle Easterner.

>and the guy in the video was not "soot skinned" it could easily have been a dark skinned Middle Easterner.
His kids are
>frizzy haired mulatto girl
>dark skinned nog with a close fade cut
wife is also a frizzy haired mulatto, you're doing your utmost to be as disingenuous as possible to defend Mary Beard and your faggot media

This is a good post. Furthermore I'm highly doubtful that she was ever shown the nifty screencap in which all of the egregious scenes from the cartoon, such as the depiction of black indigenous britonnic people, were neatly compiled together that regularly gets posted here. I honestly chalked it up to her having a somewhat vague notion of what was going on in the cartoon, and her addressing what she felt was a false critique that Rome was not diverse.

Problem?

yeah he doesn't look like him, he literally looks like a sketch of Idris Elba
keep stretching though anglo cuckboy

>yeah he doesn't look like him, he literally looks like a sketch of Idris Elba
Not dark enough to be Elba, besides which if you really are going to use your own bad eyesight as an argument as I have already pointed out the Romans will have had some genuinely black soldiers in their ranks.

>not dark enough to be elba
He's literally a sooty ashen colour and looks like him feature wise moreso than this dark afghani/pakistani/sindh looking individual you've posted, by a long shot

I disagree he looks more like the Middle Easterner to me, but as I have already pointed out twice the disagreement is moot as the Romans did have sub-Saharans in their ranks as well.

>Guy says 'this is ridiculous' posting the screencap of the Roman scene
I unironically think Paul Joseph Watson saw my post of a half-serious, half-sarcastic screenshot on this board, and that was what inspired him to make his little video

I feel like the Gavrilo Princip of Veeky Forums an sheeeit

There's two points here.

One is that the guy is definitely within the bounds where he could be brown but not black.

Second is that, due to the above discussion on how ancient sources rarely record race in unambiguous terms, Roman dominated regions may well have contained at least small minorities of people who would now be considered black, if not small areas that were majority black. I'm aware of a few sources from the greco-roman world that suggest black people were known, albeit somewhat novel, meaning that even taking him as black it would not be contradictory to what we know. One of these sources details a person whose skin was dark enough that people were superstitious about it and considered it kind of spooky. The guy was meant to be a legionnaire at Hadrian's wall.

>the disagreement is moot as the Romans did have sub-Saharans in their ranks as well.
Having some Numidian Auxiliary cav or infantry, some of whom are black, doesn't mean they had black Idris Elba looking generals commanding their legions of black legionairres against the mixed race mulatto tribes of Caledonia.

>he looks more like the Middle Easterner to me

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disingenuous

No one's being disingenuous I said nothing about Numidian auxilliary cavalry.

Who do you think these sub saharan africans were exactly, if they did have any?

>No one's being disingenuous
Then what are you arguing for? The dude definitely isn't a fucking Afghan or Punjabi, looking at what are meant to be his kids and his mixed race looking wife can tell you that much.

Stupid IYI imbecile """historian""" with no SITG

From Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia and beyond. The Romans described people with Sub-Saharan features as Aethiopes. I'm not clear what your random photo of people from the Punjab is about or why you have suddenly started talking about Afghan and the Punjab, what is wrong with you?

>From Sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia and beyond.
What?
This doesn't correspond to anything I said.

>I'm not clear what your random photo of people from the Punjab is about or why you have suddenly started talking about Afghan and the Punjab, what is wrong with you?
You posted an Afghani/Pakistani looking individual.

>This doesn't correspond to anything I said.
You asked (sic) "Who do you think these sub saharan africans were exactly, if they did have any?" That was a response to that question.

>You posted an Afghani/Pakistani looking individual.
I posted a Saudi Arabian, Afghan and Pakistan aren't even in the Middle East.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s really funny that we even have to entertain the idea of Romans being black? It’s so ludicrous. They say European history has always been plagued with white supremacy, then say it was diverse at the same time

>You asked (sic) "Who do you think these sub saharan africans were exactly, if they did have any?" That was a response to that question.
Where's the broofs the Romans had Ethiopian auxiliaries? I can accept sub-saharan looking INDIVIDUALS on a phenotypical and phrenological level with sooty skin and bulbous features but where is the proof of an auxiliary cohort or such consisting of these individuals from their regions around Ethiopia and Mauritania/Mali today?

>I posted a Saudi Arabian
Saudi Arabian isn't exactly an ethnicity, google search shows he's probably Yemeni which means significantly more Horn admixture, and needless to say the Romans didn't make much use of Afro-Asian Yemenis, historically.

It's actually pretty unlikely there'd be any sub-saharan legionnaires, and certainly not any above optio rank.
There were a couple expeditions down the nile and to lake Chad - simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_expeditions_to_Lake_Chad_and_western_Africa
but no settlement was established, or lines of contact.

>Where's the broofs the Romans had Ethiopian auxiliaries?
I didn't say anything about auxiliaries.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Ancient_Roman_history

>Saudi Arabian isn't exactly an ethnicity
I didn't say it was.I posted it as an example of a dark skinned Middle Easterner.

>I didn't say anything about auxiliaries.
>The Romans would have had some genuinely black people in their ranks

>.I posted it as an example of a dark skinned Middle Easterner.
who's part of an ethnic group admixed with black Africans that had little to nothing to do with the Roman Empire

And now you're linking me some general wikipedia article, how much of a brainlet are you? Is this the state of British people who get all their historical insight from BBC historical documentaries on coins?

The question is whether it is feasible that a Roman soldier could have had brown skin. It clearly is due to multiple reasons laid out for you.

>And now you're linking me some general wikipedia article
As compared to what? Making post after post after post of ludicrous strawman arguments while linking to the Merriam Webster definition of "disingenuous"?

>The question is whether it is feasible that a Roman soldier could have had brown skin.
Why are you suddenly understating with "brown skin" nigger?
Sure it's feasible some Roman soldiers had a tan, and there were most likely a few SSA looking people in the auxiliaries recruited from North Africa or perhaps Egypt, there's certainly nothing to show there were any black African Roman legates/generals in Britain or anywhere else in the Empire, nor is there grounds to believe they were even significant proportionally as soldiers within the North African regiments sent to Britain (mainly because NA isn't majority black).

>Why are you suddenly understating with "brown skin" nigger?
Strawman, I've said all along he looks like a dark skinned Middle Easterner to me, but it is entirely feasible he could be a properly black skinned Sub-Saharan if that is what your faulty eyesight is telling you.

>were any black African Roman legates/generals in Britain or anywhere else in the Empire,
I linked you to a citation telling you that Sub-Saharans were soldiers in the Roman Empire and there was no racial issues preventing them being legates etc.

>nor is there grounds to believe they were even significant proportionally
You keep firing off strawmen but we aren't talking about whatever random notion of what consists of significant or proportionate, we are talking about whether it is feasible there was a brown skinned Roman officer in Roman Empire era Britain, which it clearly was.

>Strawman
???????
You're tossing out fallacies and you don't know how they work
Am I strawmanning you by calling you a nigger?

>I linked you to a citation telling you that Sub-Saharans were soldiers in the Roman Empire and there was no racial issues preventing them being legates etc.
It doesn't say that at all you fool it's hardly a deep enough fucking wiki page to scroll down
It even says
>There was no such thing as a black community; immigrants from south of the Sahara were few and from disparate ethnic communities.

>we are talking about whether it is feasible there was a brown skinned Roman officer in Roman Empire era Britain
Find me a single black legate you clown
>inb4 you resort to calling Berbers black and quote that one person Afro-centrists love
literally black Hannibal tier revision

>You're tossing out fallacies and you don't know how they work
No, I am pointing out that you have objectively spent two hours misrepresenting what I say and arguing against your won imagination i.e.
classic strawman arguments, that is exactly what you have been doing and continue to do and if you can't even recognise that is what you are doing even after it has been pointed out to you then you are beyond delusional.

>Find me a single black legate you clown
I don't need to do that to show it was feasible, our sources from antiquity are a fraction of a fraction of the literature of the time.

>inb4 you resort to calling Berbers black and quote that one person Afro-centrists love
>literally black Hannibal tier revision
To think you actually had the audacity to claim you weren't making strawmen arguments and claim I didn't understand what they were earlier in your post. You're off on a green moon made of cheese arguing with pixies and fairies.

>I don't need to do that to show it was feasible, our sources from antiquity are a fraction of a fraction of the literature of the time.
lmao, so your "argument" for it is the infinite possibility of retarded conjecture projected on to a period with apparently little record

>To think you actually had the audacity to claim you weren't making strawmen arguments and claim I didn't understand what they were earlier in your post.
That's not a strawman, that's just anticipating a retarded point following a history of retarded points from you my nigga, and I made that clear. A strawman would be for me to say that's the argument you're making, not the argument you're probably going to make for something.

>lmao, so your "argument" for it is the infinite possibility of retarded conjecture projected on to a period with apparently little record
No, I have argued there were black and dark skinned Middle Easterners in Roman Legions. No one said anything about infinite possibilities.

>inb4 you resort to calling Berbers black and quote that one person Afro-centrists love
literally black Hannibal tier revision
So something you came up with from your own imagination that I didn't say and would never say.

What is wrong with you? You're just sitting there imagining stuff I haven't said and arguing against it in your own mind. Are you on hallucinogenic drugs or something?

...

>it's not actually saying anything about the ethnic makeup of Britain

>it's not actually saying anything about the ethnic makeup of Britain
I'm sure its not, it's only a children's show after all. I'm sure they get the nuance.

This one of the most jewish comments I've read on this site.

>there was no racial issues preventing them being legates etc
not racial per se, but the requirement to be a citizen of high social caste was pretty limiting to most provincials, and would have been an almost impossible ladder to climb for a Nubian auxiliary for example

>North Africans aren't black

That implies Italians aren't black either

...

>HURR DURR JEWS HURRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I don't trust *nglo """"""""historians""""""""

why?