GrahamH wrote:Don't be daft. I'm speculating, not claiming knowledge. It seems likely that an occupying army is not living a family life. I allow that I may be wrong about that.

And yet not about the 20% foreigners figure?

GrahamH wrote:If you have reason to think most Romans in Britain were living in families I'd love to know about that.

Did I remotely say that "most Romans in Britain were living families"? Or is this another pointless sideshow rather than evidencing the things that you actually did say?

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Don't be daft. I'm speculating, not claiming knowledge. It seems likely that an occupying army is not living a family life. I allow that I may be wrong about that.

And yet not about the 20% foreigners figure?

GrahamH wrote:If you have reason to think most Romans in Britain were living in families I'd love to know about that.

Did I remotely say that "most Romans in Britain were living families"? Or is this another pointless sideshow rather than evidencing the things that you actually did say?

I took your 'correction' at face value and haven't argued for any particular numbers.

No you didn't. And what's with the fucking scare quotes, you can read the forum (since you're replying) so you can read the posts in question:

zoon wrote:Googling the question, an article on the British Museum website here says that about one in twenty people in Roman Britain were incomers, although the proportion in the cities may have been higher, and the incomers did come from around the Roman Empire, they were not only Italians. Quoting from the article:

...Roman Britain was largely built by Britons, not incomers, of whom there were relatively few. Most of the incomers were soldiers, of a huge variety of ethnic backgrounds – not many were Italians. There was very little settlement by immigrant civilians, except for the presence of the army and fairly small concentrations of incomers, mostly at centres like London and Bath. Modern estimates suggest that incomers were outnumbered by native Britons by at least twenty to one – but of course this minority was a politically, militarily and culturally dominant ruling elite. The result of the interaction of the two groups was an interesting cultural hybrid, not simply Britons adopting Roman ways, but a story of adaptation and the development of a distinctive Romano-British culture.

GrahamH wrote:if I misremembered the British museum figure given earlier. I'll look back at that later when I have use of a pc.

Despite your blatant error, all you said was you'd look back later.

GrahamH wrote:I pointed out that depicting a typical family is very different to depicting the life of a typical Roman That seems an utterly obvious point thst you don't seem to like.

No, you deflected, after making a shitload of stronger claims. My dislike is for the deflection.

GrahamH wrote:If 5% of Romans in Britain are X that is not the same as 5% of Roman families in Britain being X unless almost all Romans in Britain are in families.

And my objection is that 5% were neither. But hey, why not bury your mistakes in pages of bullshit, eh?

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:
Ok, and what's the evidence that 99.99% of the Romans in Britain in the time of Hadrian weren't [white]?

I already stated I think the error on dates is a serious error. There seems to be good evidence of non-white Romans at Hadrian's Wall and other locations wall within a few decades of Hadrian.

99.99%? Where have you pulled that number from?

I'll answer your question when you give more than "there seems to be" [evidence of something that was never mentioned by anyone].

ETA: Fucked up quote tags in original post, can't be bothered to fix them on his behalf.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:
If you want to argue against what you were taught you're certainly free to do so, but you need to actually argue, not just JAQ.

There seems to be very good evidence that the impression I got from multiple sources of a white-only Roman Britain is false. Do you want to argue against the archaeology? Or do you want to play games with percentages?

No, I don't care if you had the impression that there were literally no non-whites in Roman Britain at any point, it's too trivial for me to bother with. You were wrong, let's move on.

It's not like such a misapprehension relies on Roman Britain actually being ethnically diverse, or that Roman Britain was the same at all points of its hundred-of-years history or that a typical Roman family had two kids and was black.

Let's not fuck around, there were, on average somewhere around 20,000 Romans in Britain during the Roman British age, at any one time. They've found literally like half a dozen that they suspect weren't white, dating across those centuries. If you think an almost entirely white Roman Britain has been disproved then you're straight up wrong*.

GrahamH wrote:Lots of people think of Jesus and the disciples as white skinned Caucasians. The Alt-right would no doubt be outraged if a black man played Santa Clause. Any culture has it's biases. An occasional correction with evidenced facts is no bad thing (shame about the date errors though) . There were non-white Romans in Britain.

Yeah, sure, the alt right has biases. Did it ever occur to you that you might as well?

*And I should stress that this is no point of pride or anything for me, I could not care less - I think it's cool that there were some Black Britons going back millenia, but that has nothing to do with the demography as a whole.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:Despite your blatant error, all you said was you'd look back later.

Untrue. I dropped the wrong figure and adopted 5% instead.

I quoted you doing it. For fuck's sake.

This isn't worth the effort.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:Let's not fuck around, there were, on average somewhere around 20,000 Romans in Britain during the Roman British age, at any one time. They've found literally like half a dozen that they suspect weren't white, dating across those centuries. If you think an almost entirely white Roman Britain has been disproved then you're straight up wrong*.

That is a gross abuse of statistics. The number Romans in Britain at the time is irrelevant when you look at numbers of individual's remains found today. The archaeology gives a sample of a population. I don't know what the numbers are. If they have found remains of 100 people at a site and 6 of them are ethnic that suggests 6% of the population at that site if we assume representative sampling. Of course we don't know the sampling, but we know it's nothing like 6/20,000.

And If that post said it was 6/20,000 that would be relevant. But guess what?

It neither says that the number of Romans in Britain across the period from which remains were found is 20,000 (it wasn't) nor does it say that the number of non-white Romans in Britain across the period from which remains were found is 6 (it almost certainly wasn't).

But this is just more and more ridiculous deflection that's now taken us pages from the claims you actually did make and refuse to provide evidence for.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:Let's not fuck around, there were, on average somewhere around 20,000 Romans in Britain during the Roman British age, at any one time. They've found literally like half a dozen that they suspect weren't white, dating across those centuries. If you think an almost entirely white Roman Britain has been disproved then you're straight up wrong*.

That is a gross abuse of statistics. The number Romans in Britain at the time is irrelevant when you look at numbers of individual's remains found today. The archaeology gives a sample of a population. I don't know what the numbers are. If they have found remains of 100 people at a site and 6 of them are ethnic that suggests 6% of the population at that site if we assume representative sampling. Of course we don't know the sampling, but we know it's nothing like 6/20,000.

And If that post said it was 6/20,000 that would be relevant. But guess what?

No need to guess, it's in black and white. You threw in an irrelevant big number. You linked it to the archaeology to suggest the less significance of the evidence. You contrasted half a dozen with 20,000.
You evaded the entirely valid point I made.

Yeah, when in a hole, why not just lie?

It's not like you can actually read the conclusion I drew*, is it?

*"If you think an almost entirely white Roman Britain has been disproved then you're straight up wrong."

[If you want the spelled out letter-by-letter version it includes the inference that showing that there might have been dozens or more (after multiplying across the centuries) non-whites doesn't show that they were a large fraction of the population, whether of Britons, Romans, or Roman family members.]

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

And If that post said it was 6/20,000 that would be relevant. But guess what?

No need to guess, it's in black and white. You threw in an irrelevant big number. You linked it to the archaeology to suggest the less significance of the evidence. You contrasted half a dozen with 20,000.
You evaded the entirely valid point I made.

Yeah, when in a hole, why not just lie?

It's not like you can actually read the conclusion I drew*, is it?

*If you think an almost entirely white Roman Britain has been disproved then you're straight up wrong.

Not only do you fail to address my point you accuse me of lying? FFS.

Yes, because you lied. You said that the 20,000 was irrelevant when it is not, you said that I linked it to the archaeology to "suggest the less significance of the evidence" when I did not, you said that it's in black and white that I suggested it was 6/20,000 when I did not.

That's lying. Please don't.

GrahamH wrote:" Roman Britain " is ambiguous. We are talking about Romans in Britain (<20,000 incomers over many years), not Britain under the Romans.

If you want to play the pedant then don't say "<20,000 incomers over many years" since it's not true, eh?

~20,000 at any one time.

GrahamH wrote:Come on then, explain what you actually meant by that post. What is the relevance of 20,000? Why use it in a post about 6 archeological finds?

Why should I while you're still dodging the questions about the claims you made?

"In any case, not representing that 5% at all would be a serious distortion, in my view."

"the depiction may well be typical of such families."

"Where they are in family units this typically how they live."

"It claim to depict a typical roman family, which is likely a very small proportion of the roman population. Ignoring ethnicity it may well be accurate."

But regardless of this ludicrous deflection from the actual claim maker the relevance was that the number of Romans in Britain at any one time was about 20,000 and that this contrasts with both the number of Britons and the number of Romans suspected to be of non-white ethnic origin - albeit without remotely suggesting the number is 6 (which is wrong) / 20,000 (which is wrong).

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:
That's lying. Please don't.

Wow, staggering hypocrisy.

Grow up, you aren't PeeWee Herman. If you think I've lied, at least explain where and how.

Conversely I blatantly never said anything about 6/20,000. You inferred it from "half a dozen" and "20,000" that were never put together.

GrahamH wrote:

Thommo wrote:

GrahamH wrote:" Roman Britain " is ambiguous. We are talking about Romans in Britain (<20,000 incomers over many years), not Britain under the Romans.

If you want to play the pedant then don't say "<20,000 incomers over many years" since it's not true, eh?

~20,000 at any one time.

OK, its was your number and it's irrelevant anyway. It could as well be 20,000,000. The point stands.

What point? If you made one, it would be nice. Or better yet, if you backed up the points you made earlier in the thread about how North Korea was ethnically diverse that could work too (or indeed the ones mentioned in the post just above this one).

GrahamH wrote:Sample size relative to population is significant to error margins, but not proportions. If 50% of the sample is X it suggests that 50% of the population is X. If the sample is 10% of the population the result is more reliable than if it is 0.01% of the population.

Yeah, ok, now show it is in the case we're talking about. What percentage of the remains found at York where reliably found to be non-white?