Crazy Basque pagan tradition: Azeri Dantza

 

Basque people have unique ancient traditions that they still preserve such as the fox dance "Azeri Dantza" in Hernani where a man wears the skin of a fox and whips people with the inflated bladder of a pig! This derives from ancient Roman pagan traditions of Lupercalia and Bacchanalia.

TRAVEL: Top 6 Roman sites of ISTANBUL, Turkey

8 "Great Black Britons" who were NOT Black

 

For black history month I am taking a look at the list of 100 Great black Britons because quite a few of them are definitely not black and some aren't British either! This is my list of the top eight people who are called Black Britons even though they weren't black.

Interview on New Culture Forum about Fake Black History

 

 On today's Deprogrammed, hosts Harrison Pitt, a senior editor at the European Conservative, and Evan Riggs, freelance writer, are joined by Tom Rowsell, historian, filmmaker and youtuber at Survive the Jive

Debunking the BBC's Horrible Black History

Jive Book Review: The Final Pagan Generation

JIVE TALK: Rome in Asia / Roman Economy with Dr Raoul Mclaughlin

​Dr Raoul McLaughlin is an expert in Roman economics with a PhD in Roman Economy and Trade beyond Imperial Frontiers. Dr McLaughlin is a founder member of the Classical Association in Northern Ireland, a council member of the Classical Association of Ireland and Associate Editor of their academic journal: ‘Classics Ireland’. He has published three books on the subject of Roman economy in Asia.

Yule and Saturnalia - the pagan Christmas story

 I appeared on History Bro's channel again, this time to discuss Yule!

 

 The episode is also available as a podcast on Spotify and other platforms.

Ancient Roman DNA

New Ancient Roman/Italy Paper Summary:

A new paper has been published which finally confirms what many have thought about the genetics of Ancient Rome (however it is behind a paywall so I am going only on the preview supplementary data and what geneticists have said publicly about it). The following summary is based not only on what the paper itself says, but rather what it SHOWS but not does not say.

•  Neolithic Italy had no steppe DNA - people were genetically like Sardinians/Etruscans
• 11 pre-Imperial Roman samples plot as more Northern than modern Italians or Neolithic ones - They resemble people from Southern France - which means a significantly more Northern shifted (than modern french people) population entered the Italian peninsula, mixed over the Iron Age with natives and redefined the ethnic character of the region throughout the Roman Republic.
• The paper doesn't specify the most likely sources of this northerly population which is the Bell Beaker and/or Urnfield cultures. In the supplementary info they mention 99%  of Bell Beaker folk carried R1b M269 paternal haplogroup (present in Italy too). Instead of saying how Bell Beaker DNA entered Italy they just say "Steppe-related" people went to Italy in the Bronze age. This is misleading since they had left the steppe some 1000 years earlier and were now ethnically Central Europeans.
• The chronology of genetic change indicates the Urnfield expansion into Italy may mark arrival of Italic languages rather than the earlier Bell Beakers - they are related anyway so its likely two waves into Italy.
• Imperial Roman samples show a major shift toward MENA populations like Egyptians/ Carthaginians/ Syrians etc. The Roman Empire certainly made Italian people less European by attracting Middle Eastern migrants. People have said this for centuries.
• Italy became more European again after the Roman Empire. The paper suggests that the resurgence of European ancestry and reduction of Near Eastern admixture starting in Late antiquity and ending in the Middle Ages is due to migration into Italy from Central Europe (Celtic and Germanic invasions for eg?)

The most interesting thing from my perspective is what the paper doesn't discuss, which is which population from North of the Alps brought Indo-European languages to Italy.

Somebody made this which is interesting - they map the genetic shifts in Italy to the religious shifts - showing that the rise of near eastern cults like that of Cybele corresponds with a rise in Near Eastern admixture. What is labelled here as "European" should properly be labelled "Indo-European"