Talk:Sino-Roman relations/Archive 1

X-Y relations
There are many articles which follow the X-Y relations naming structure. As this is a more specific area than Sino-Roman relations shouldn't this article first be moved there and appropriately expanded - once that article is saturated (broad and roughly 32kb) a new article under this title may be started (with the current content and more) on this specific area? --Oldak Quill 22:52, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Caspian castaways

 * The context claims these Indi as evidence for the Northeast Passage and the northward strait out of the Caspian Sea;

What does that mean? That there was a connection from the Caspian to the Arctic? --Error 9 July 2005 00:59 (UTC)


 * Most of the ancients believed there was such a passage, of those who thought about it at all. Septentrionalis 13:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * This article makes the case that they were actually Native Americans. Kuralyov 9 July 2005 01:07 (UTC)

1
This page appears to have been originally written using AD/BC (except perhaps for the mention of Augustus). It concerns no religious topic, and the labels are essential for clarity. Changing to CE/BCE is the abusive form of political correctness; please just leave things alone. Wikipedia is inconsistent. Septentrionalis 13:56, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know what article you're looking at, but this one was certainly started using BCE/CE, as can be seen quite clearly in the history . It is User:Jguk who changed BCE/CE to BC/AD here . Sortan 15:34, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Sortan is a sockpuppet used to troll on this issue, as a check on his user contributions will prove. Please do not feed the trolls, jguk 17:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * He may be a sockpuppet, but he still seems to be right. Look at the page's history. (Or was it originally copied over from a different source?) — Llywelyn II   03:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

2
I just reverted an edit by 86.31.102.226 (Contributions) to return to the earlier dating style on this page.

Per the Manual of Style, "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change." Since there was no compelling reason for this change, I reverted it back and recommend 86.31.102.226 review the MOS before making such changes in the future. * Septegram * Talk * Contributions * 18:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite so, but the original (and overall stable) usage of the page has been . Personally, I hate it, too, but that doesn't enter into it. — Llywelyn II   03:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:ERA
Just to clarify the discussion above and the edit summaries that have been left before, the original usage of this page was established by this edit. That usage was and  and it should be maintained consistently pending a new consensus. — Llywelyn II   03:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree and have (belatedly) fixed this. --John (talk) 06:40, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Embassies and Silk Route
Just in passing, the embassies to China merely claimed to be embassies from Rome. There is no evidence they were embassies from Rome. Anyone mind if I change it to make that clear? The Silk Road never existed and so should not be referred to quite so often. And while I am here there is no reason to think the Xiongnu are Huns. Anyone object to a few minor changes? Lao Wai 17:18, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Roman soldiers in the East
This is a classic example of some reporters are trying to make some bread money.

The account of the so-called blue eye blond Roman legionary settled down in Northern China has been proved to be false. This report has been circulating on many Chinese newspapers in the last few years. The story was initially generated from a small village (Liqian) in Shanxi province. There’re many villagers who have some western facial characteristics such as blond hair and blue eyes. Some lousy reporters made a big deal out of it and fabricated a “Lost Roman Legion in China” story. But this story lacks many fundamental historical evidence to back it up and it is fatally flawed. According to the numerous well-known Chinese historians, the Liqian western looking villagers have absolutely no connection with Crassus' lost legion. Latin Romans rarely had blue eyes and blond hair anyway. This is more of a Barbarian character. The fish-scale formation was not adopted by Romans alone. The formation was used by many countries other than the Romans. It sounds so ridiculous that those reporters are trying to tie the name of Lixuan with Legio because the similarity on the pronunciation.

The bottom line is simple: both Parthians and Huns have their unique battle tactics which are almost opposite of Romans. Roman’s rely on their heavy infantry to fight set battles. However the eastern armys, like Parthian’s and Huns were calvary armies which were much more mobile. Very few Crassus' soldiers survived the battle of Carrhae, not to mention the extreme long and deadly expedition to the western border of Han Dynasty. It’s very doubtful that Parthians would’ve kept each surviving Roman century after their defeat. After all, preserving your captives’ ranks and units is like encouraging them to rebel. It’s even more doubtful the mobile Hun cavalry would adopt Roman heavy infantry battle scheme to fight Han cavalry. The fantasy story of Roman legions showing up on the river bank of Yellow river in their full segamentatas and red tunics and ready to battle the Han army is as laughable as “Alien vs. Predator”.

Romans and Ancient Greeks were known to be blond and blue eyed. Only after centuries of Asian and African intermarriage do Italians and Greeks look they way they do now. There is nothing inconsistent with the Romans in Liqian being blond and blue eyed. Also, the foundation ruins and DNA tests have also proven Roman links.

- Mediterranean people (especially ancient Greek and Roman) used to have blonde hair and blue eyes until the Moors got into Europe. Only then the Italians, Spanish and Greeks adopted those facial characteristics.


 * Romans and ancient Greeks were not known to be blond and blue eyed. In fact Romans specifically commented on the Gauls and Germans for being blond and blue eyed.  Moreover the number of Arabs who invaded the Middle East was small.  The majority of what we now call Arabs are probably locals who have become Muslims and Arabic-speaking - Greeks and Romans in fact.  Greece and Rome both got heavy influxes of northerners - Germans in Italy, Slavs in Greece - so they may be more blond and blue eyed than they were.  There is precisely no reason to think any Romans who may have made it to China were blond - you can start by finding out where this alleged unit was stationed as they recuited locally.  Given their involvement in Persia, they were probably all Syrian anyway.  What DNA tests? Lao Wai 10:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

To return to the subject once more, the sources that are provided, if read properly, do not prove what the article was claiming. Let me quote from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-08/24/content_3396301.htm :


 * In 1955, Homer Hasenflug Dubs, professor of Chinese history at Oxford University, surmised that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 BC made their way east to today's Uzbekistan and later enlisted with the Hun chieftain Jzh Jzh against the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).


 * Dubs derived his speculation from ancient Chinese Han Dynasty history annals, which described a battle between the Han empire and Jzh Jzh in western China.


 * The annals noted that about 150 men from Jzh Jzh's army took up a "fish-scale formation," which Dubs surmised to have been the Roman testudo formation.


 * Dubs then asserted that these men, captured by the Chinese, then settled and built their own town called Liqian (Li-chien) the Chinese transliteration of "Alexandria."

Thus the Han Shu says nothing of relevance - just that 150 men fighting in a Fish-scale formation, whatever that is, were captured. Dubs made the rest up. From http://www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/china.html :


 * This idea was first proposed by Homer Hasenphlug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, who speculated in 1955 that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 B.C. made their way east to Uzbekistan to enlist with Jzh Jzh against the Han. Chinese accounts of the battle, in which Jzh Jzh was decapitated and his army defeated, note unusual military formations and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns. Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border guards, settling them in Liqian, a short form of Alexandria used by the Chinese to denote Rome. While some Chinese scholars have been critical of Dubs' hypothesis, others went so far as to identify Lou Zhuangzi as the probable location of Liqian in the late 1980s.


 * Ten years later, still no academic papers have been published on the subject, and no archaeological investigation has been conducted in Lou Zhuangzi', but the media and local government remain unfazed. County officials, sensing potential tourist revenue, have erected a Doric pavilion in Lou Zhuangzi, while the county capital of Yongchang has decorated its main thoroughfare with enormous statues of a Roman soldier and a Roman woman flanking a Communist party official.

Need I go on? No blond Roman soldiers, no Roman soldiers at all in fact, just the claim of one academic. Lao Wai 09:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It's true that the Romans do seem to have been generally dark-haired and swarthy (as shown on mosaics and paintings). However, there were units of Gallic cavalry accompanying Crassus, who would have been blue-eyed and blond.


 * More than that, Cisalpine Gaul was a major recruiting center in this period, populated by Romanized Gauls.

Quote
I found a quote on another website that linked to this Wikipedia page, reading:

As for the king, he is not a permanent figure but is chosen as the man most worthy… The people in this country are tall and regularly featured. They resemble the Chinese, and that is why the country is called Da Qin (The "Great" Qin)… The soil produced lots of gold, silver and rare jewels, including the jewel which shines at night… they sew embroidered tissues with gold threads to form tapestries and damask of many colours, and make a gold-painted cloth, and a "cloth washed-in-the-fire" (asbestos)

Could anyone tell me where this came from so I can see the rest of it? KongminRegent 22:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You can find the whole account in the paragraphs on Da Qin in . Regards PHG 23:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Ban Chao in Parthia
"The Chinese army made an alliance with the Parthians and established some forts at a distance of a few days march from the Parthian capital Ctesiphon and held the region for several years. In 116, after the conquest of Dacia's gold and silver mines in year 106, the Roman Emperor Trajan advanced into Parthia to Ctesiphon and came within one day's march of the Chinese border garrisons, but direct contacts never took place."

I rode all the sources about the parthian empire, the campaigns of Ban Chao and the campaign of Trajan at 117, and there aren't any evidence about garrisons near Ctesiphon or Ban Chao army into parthian empire. So in few time i will correct it. -Fco


 * I think I wrote this part, and took it from one of my history books. Unfortunately I did not take the reference at the time, so I'll have to look for it again. Normally you could add a Fact tag without deleting, until I can find again my source. Regards. PHG 20:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, now i can't see that portion of the text althought i didn't change it. -Fco

Removed
I removed some lines about Alexander for two particular reasons: 1. theories cannot be utilized as historical evidence. For example, there is no proof to demonstrate that the Romans utilized the Greek road to go to India (and later China.) 2. The article is Sino-Roman relations, not Sino-Graeco relations. The latter needs a separate article.

Lao Wai, about the theory of the Roman soldiers in the east, read this:

"The development and wide application of DNA technologies have opened a new approach for researchers like Xie, who are bent on unraveling the mystery.

DNA lends a hand

However, Xie and his colleagues are encountering tremendous complexities.

The area where Yongchang is located was a trade hub along the ancient Silk Road, where people of various ethnicities from as far as the Mediterranean came and went, Xie said.

Moreover, soldiers in the Roman legions were supposed to consist of peoples of different ethnic and national backgrounds.

Because the Roman Empire was at that time at the height of its power and splendor, it had conquered many countries and regions across Europe, Africa and West Asia, he added.

According to Zhou Ruixia, Xie's assistant, they will build up the genetic data from the local villagers with Caucasian features and compare the data with those of European as well as Western, Central and East Asians.

They will report their research results in academic journals in the United States or Britain.

Two years ago, Ma Runlin, a bio-chemist based in Beijing, also collected blood samples from Yongchang people for DNA analysis.

However, he has not finished his research yet.

In an e-mail to China Daily, Ma said he is collaborating with British researchers in the genetic study of the villagers' ancestry.

He does not know when he will finish the research.

"I have backache. I needed to input 1,000 lines of data with 16 numbers in each line yesterday ... We're doing the experiments at the fastest speed we can," the 26-year-old said. "Please don't push me any more."

Source: China Daily, 2005. www.chinaview.cn 2005-08-24 14:03:49"

So, before saying "no Roman soldiers at all in fact", we must wait for a DNA test.

Jack 23:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Jinan?
Hi.

I noticed this:

"The Roman mission came from the south (therefore probably by sea), entering China by the frontier of Jinan or Tonkin."

What is being referred to here as "Jinan", anyway? The Chinese city, or the South Korean one? I'd vouch for the former, since the Romans did not know of the existence of Korea, nor did they know about the Pacific Ocean in the slightest and had no interest in finding out. 74.38.35.171 21:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Jinan is the Han dynasty name for the part of modern northern Vietnam the Han ruled. As they also ruled Korea.  So Jinan is usually referred to as Tongking these days.  At least in French and hence English.  Obviously (Eastern Capital) it was not called that under the Han. Lao Wai 11:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Then why differentiate between the two if both are identical? 74.38.35.171 04:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know what the original writer had in mind but I assume the intention was to say something like "Dacia, or modern Romania,...." So the Han referred to it as Jinan, but modern Vietnamese call it something else - although most of the world calls it Tongking which is just silly. Lao Wai 08:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Tonkin is named for Hanoi, which was called in Vietnamese Đông Kinh, meaning "eastern capital" (Like how Beijing in China means "Northern Capital".). Also, the Vietnamese name Bắc Kỳ, or "northern region". See the link. 74.38.35.171 01:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Roman coins in North Vietnam
I made a small edit to the following passage ( -> ) because the old template didn't seem to fit this context -- "eventually hundreds of Roman coins were discovered in North Vietnam in the 70s". J. Innes Miller notes that a "copper coin of the Roman Emperor Maximius (253-8) was found in the district of My-Tho in southern Vietnam" (The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969], p. 240), so this statement is not as improbable as it might seem at first glance. -- llywrch 22:42, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Not Romans, but Yuezhi
Indeed, the Roman Legionaries were people of Mediteranean stock, most of them dark haired and brown eyed. During the time of the Carrhae Battle, the Roman Army had very few Gauls or central European recruits, so there is relative few chances to have blue eyed blonds among the Roman Legionaries at that time. It is more probable that the villagers from this remote area of contemporary China are inheriting the European racial features from the Yuezhi tribes which are well recorded Indo-European people, living for centuries along the western frontier of Chinese Empire.

Need more Details
What did the romans learn about china from the first embassy and how did they communicate with the chinese to trade? the linguistic differences between latin and chinese are staggering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.35.9 (talk) 22:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Confusion
The page on Roman Commerce says in regards to trade with China:

''["The Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han Chinese dynasty) recounted the first of several Roman embassies to China sent out by a Roman Emperor, probably Marcus Aurelius judging by the arrival date of 166 (Antoninus Pius is another possibility, but he died in 161. The confusion arises because Marcus Aurelius took the names of his predecessor as additional names, as a mark of respect and so is referred to in Chinese history as "An Tun", i.e. "Antoninus"). The mission came from the South, and therefore probably by sea, entering China by the frontier of Jinan or Tonkin. It brought presents of rhinoceros horns, ivory, and tortoise shell which had probably been acquired in Southern Asia.

The mission reached the Chinese capital of Luoyang in 166 and was met by Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty. About the same time, and possibly through this embassy, the Chinese acquired a treatise of astronomy from Daqin (Rome).

However, in the absence of any record of this on the Roman side of the silk road, it may be that the "ambassadors" were in reality free traders acting independently of Aurelius.

From the 3rd century we have a Chinese text, the Weilue, describing the products of the Roman Empire and the routes to it. [1]''

Yet here on this article we have talk of Romans happily wondering about in Chinese cities mixing with the local populace to produce blonde blue-eyed Chinese children, its amazing how the Mediterraneans are so much like the Nordics. I don't know who or what to believe but logic tells me that 1) Rome didn't have any great relations with China to be worthy of a page, 2) any Westerners they did happen to meet weren't Romans or acting on behalf of the emperor 3) We have nothing to go on from the Roman prospective about this 4) We all like far fetched stories about how the Egyptians salied to the Americas to teach the Aztecs to build pyramids and how Altantis really existed etc but its probably false. This page in my opinion is fantastical, untill I see any book written about this page I refuse to believe it and will try and get it deleted. Smarred Wolet (talk) 12:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * and ten years later on, the article is still here - documented with RS's . . . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.169.28.48 (talk) 00:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

"Fish-Scale Formation"
It would Seem much more likely that the soldiers using the "fish scale formation" mentioned by the Chinese are much more likely to be Baktrian Greeks (or possibly Indo-Greeks) utiliziing a Phalanx than Romans utilizing a Testudo.68.81.161.67 (talk) 22:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC) Alex8876


 * Except that the Romans adopted the phalanx for themselves in the 2nd century B.C., and the "turtle" formation of the later Roman army was distinctly more "fish-scale" than the Greek phalanx. There is no certainty, of course, but it could easily have been Roman soldiers. 104.169.28.48 (talk) 23:47, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

"One of the external links is defunct"
My apologies if this is the wrong place to note this - this is my first contribution. I followed the link to the silk road site and discovered that it is no more and the domain name is up for sale. I don't know if I may just delete the link? --MuireannMc (talk) 21:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Outflow: gold? or silver
"the importation of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold" Perhaps. Or of silver, the usual metal sought abroad by the Chinese. Perhaps a citation would better support this statement. --Wetman 19:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yü Ying-Shih (1986, "Han Foreign Relations" in Cambridge History of China, Cambridge University Press) heavily doubts this and the common mythos that any significant amount of Roman silver or gold traveled east in exchange for silk, although he admits that there was obviously some silk that reached the Roman world and Roman items that obviously reached China. I can get you a quote if you like.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Pliny the Elder wrote: "By the lowest reckoning, India, China [Seres] and the Arabian peninsula take from our Empire 100 million sesterces every year: that is how much our luxuries and women cost us." Pliny the Elder, Natural History 12.84. I am not sure if Roman gold coins have been found in China, but many have been unearthed in India. See also Roman trade with India. Pliny may only have referred to the value of the trade though, rather than an actual number of coins. Phg (talk) 05:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Recent finds
I found this blurb in the latest issue of Archaeology (magazine). The item is just a basic announcement, so if anyone has any details, it would certainly make this article a little more interesting since we would get away from the high level relations and focus on the organic flow of people: "Think of it as early globalization. DNA from remains in a 2,000-year-old Xiongnu Empire (209 B.C.–A.D. 93) grave show that its occupant had European or western Asian genes. The structure and location of the tomb suggest that he was friendly with the elites of what is considered a linguistically and ethnically diverse empire. Meanwhile, mitochondrial DNA from bones around the same age, found at Vagnari in southern Italy, indicate that their owner was of East Asian descent, possibly a worker or slave in the Roman Empire." Found at http://www.archaeology.org/1005/trenches/world.html. Hiberniantears (talk) 16:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The Xiongnu could have had Tocharian ancestry. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Help please!
Someone has added a huge amount of text as blockquotes into the Footnote section. While much of the information is of interest, this is no way to write an encyclopaedia. The worthwhile information in these blockquotes needs to be rewritten (and considerably shortened) and woven into the text. Unfortunately, I am too busy at the moment getting a book ready for publication to take on this major task. Is there anyone else who could take on this major task, please? Many thanks, John Hill (talk) 21:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

What is with the name of this article?
Why not Sino-Roman relations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.226.67.84 (talk) 07:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That would make more sense. 216.8.164.187 (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
 * In fact, that was exactly the original title. I've moved it back for various reasons:
 * because I could (heh),
 * to get a discussion going, should anyone object (in my experience, being WP:BOLD is really more effective than complaining on the talk page and doing nothing)
 * the rationale given by Gun Powder Ma for the move is insufficient: neither sequence logically implies anything, certainly not a particular perspective (and BTW, English is spoken as a native language all over the globe, and Hong Kong and Singapore are prominently English-speaking, too, so the English Wikipedia cannot be said to have a European/non-East-Asian-centred geographical point of view),
 * I think Romano-Chinese looks plainly ugly (why not Roman–Chinese, if you must?),
 * neither title is supported by refs, so it's unclear which one is more common. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:41, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The only two embassies which established a direct contact between Rome and China were Roman, hence Romano-Chinese with the active force coming first. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:24, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It is. Per common English usage, Romano- refers to (if anything) the gypsies ("Roma"). If it's not a completely WP:OR WP:NEOLOGISM, it's certainly uncommon and misleading enough that we should keep no truck with it. Per that plus the consensus here ("heh" not being especially convincing), I've restored the correct name. — Llywelyn II   04:05, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * @GPM: You're not wrong either about the logical order or about what people are coming here to see. That said, you're still off on how we refer to things in English. When the other option is awkward sounding enough, we default to euphony. See: Sino-Japanese War, Sino-French War, Sino-American Relations, Sino-Tibetan languages... If you can bring in some WP:RS who do use this term, well, that's something... but I'd personally still oppose the Romano- anything on the grounds that it sounds so bad you're just forcing the page to endure an ongoing edit war as people correct it. Flor is right: the alt isn't Romano-, it's Roman–Chinese with an en dash. —  Llywelyn II   04:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Please point us to the rule that "Sino-" comes first by default. Isn't this a sinocentric rule? The Oxford Dictionary defines "Romano" as combined form for "Roman; Roman and ..." and Romano-British, Romano-Germanic and Romano-Gothic are all used in WP. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 15:10, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem is that there is no "us": it's only you. Kindly knock off the WP:OWNERSHIP (however well-intended) and realize what the other editors' WP:CONSENSUS is here or provide support for your (obviously strongly contested) view that "Romano-Chinese" isn't just something you made up. Don't bring in bizarre charges of anti-Roman Empire racism into it. (In every case, the Romano- above refers to X people who have adopted Roman culture and practices. A "Romano-Chinese" would be a Chinese person living under Roman rule, not trade between these countries.)


 * Hm, I was going to help you out with some prelim searches, but they're so strongly against you I'll just start a move request. — Llywelyn II   02:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Use plain English
I did some research on this question, and the best answer I can come up with is that China does not use "Sino" to refer to itself in those kinds of phrases (in English). Furthermore, it appears to me that the word "Sino" has long been obsolete in the Western world ("China" is the correct 21st century word in English), but it still gets used for whatever reason, perhaps in a similar deliberately-obfuscating fashion as legalese. I searched the Coin Compendium's database of modern Chinese coinage, and I couldn't find any "Sino-X friendship" coins that were called by those words by any official publication of the government of China. Instead what I found is only American numismatists use "Sino", and even then, they don't seem confident enough in that to avoid looking like they're just making it up arbitrarily, like here: Re: is this Sino Jap or Tokyo?.

I found one articularly important "friendship" coin and its COA, and the official text does not use the word "Sino" anywhere, in CCT1962: 1989 1/10 oz gold panda Sino-Japanese friendship You-You first birthday and Japan Heisei Era begins, and File:1390525857-7726.png:. If I remember correctly, the entire idea of "Sino-this" and "Sino-that" in China's coinage is just an emergent series of coins recognized by coin collectors over the years, and the government of China never intentionally set out in the beginning to create such a series. With that fact noted, the Chinese-speaking collectors do not normally use the word "Sino" unless they're specifically reading an English label.

So, in short, I think there's a good case to be made for WP:UPE, and use "China" instead of "Sino"...sinus...wino...swino...winus...

Badon (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * For some more interesting background on this topic, CCT2514: 1973 silver Sino-British friendship was the first coin to be called "Sino-X friendship", but our research eventually got us photos of the original box and certificate of authenticity (COA), and even the original British English text does not use the word "Sino". Really, "Sino" seems out of fashion, and it's only being used in academic areas that are notorious for not being on the cutting edge of modernity (history and numismatics - more or less the same thing). Badon (talk) 02:17, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Move to Sino-Roman relations

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request as the more common name per evidence provided and as less ambiguous given other uses of Romano.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:25, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Romano-Chinese relations → Sino-Roman relations – Per WP:CONSENSUS as well as WP:USEENGLISH WP:COMMONNAME. This really should go without saying, but since a particular editor has objected very strongly over several years, let's run the numbers:

The page was established in 2005 as "Roman embassies to China". It was moved to "Sino-Roman relations" by the page creator the same year. In 2010, Gun Powder Ma arrived and converted the page to BC/AD from its original usage. He subsequently moved the page to "Romano-Chinese relations" without any discussion, calling it a "minor change", on the argument "our perspective". He has since repeatedly restored BC/AD dating and reverted other editors' restorations of the English name of the page without taking note of the discussion on the talk page, where three (now four) editors have objected and none have supported him.

At first glance, vanilla Google seems to leave them equivalent: 8.6k for "Romano-Chinese -wikipedia" and 7.3k for "Sino-Roman -wikipedia". Closer examination, however, shows every single S-R reference is on topic while almost none of the R-C references are. (And of the few that are, they're directly cribbing this article.) Google Books produces ~30 results for "Romano-Chinese" (mostly referring to people named Romano, medieval Rome, or cribbing Wikipedia) versus ~250 for "Sino-Roman" (on point). Google Scholar has 3 uses of "Romano-Chinese" from an Indian researcher, a Chinese researcher, and a blogger versus 36 scholarly, native-English uses of "Sino-Roman".

(As a side point, the same editor has also removed this much clearer Roman/Chinese map at least three times from three different editors on the idea that it "violates WP:NPOV " in an article about those two countries. It would be helpful if someone could convince him otherwise or somehow stop his repeated removal of the more helpful image.) [edit: Turns out the image has its own issues, albeit not those GPM was claiming.] —  Llywelyn II   02:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Not that it's binding on the English wiki, but the Italian version of this page (which you'd think would have more reason to be persnickety about slights against l'imperio Romano) is at Relazioni diplomatiche sino-romane. — Llywelyn II   06:51, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. The only two embassies which established a direct contact between Rome and China were sent by the Romans, the Chinese never returned any envoys. Therefore Romano-Chinese relations is the more adequate article name, because it puts the active force in the relationship first, not the passive, merely receiving one. According to the Oxford Dictionary "Romano" is a common form, defining it as "Roman; Roman and ...". The hyphenated forms Romano-British, Romano-Germanic and Romano-Gothic etc. are all used in WP, wherever the (more) active element is Roman.


 * PS: LlywelynII is a user who is entirely new to the article to which he has not contributed so far, but yet somehow thinks he needs to create the impression that he is already in the know about the topic and tries to bring an unnecessarily personal tone into it. I wasn't aware that the original notation in 2005 was BCE/CE, not BC/AD, so I support this change back to the original choice. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 15:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The current name fails NAMINGCRITERIA . In fact, it meets precisely none of the six criteria listed there, as documented above: it is un recognizable, un natural, &c. &c. As mentioned elsewhere, Romano-British does not mean "prominently Roman": it means a British person who has been Romanized: the equivalent would be a Chinese national living in Syria speaking Latin. And, ignoring that and my arguments, even on your own, the importance of Chinese sources on the (in any case, bilateral) relationship belies your point.


 * The ad homs are only going to work against you. You should have checked the page history prior to your edit. User:John Hill made you aware of the page's status the first time he reverted them. You simply ignored that later on. (And all the same, good that you're letting it alone now.) Beyond which, my history at this page has no bearing on any of the points made above, which you are simply continuing to ignore. — Llywelyn II   15:55, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * That said, the page ownership is strong so I'll try to bring in some other voices so I don't shout myself hoarse and we can get a decent consensus. — Llywelyn II   16:00, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * [rfc|hist|lang|style|policy rfcid=4D7D509 went here]
 * Could use some more feedback on this move request. — Llywelyn II   16:03, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Look, Romano- is a common prefix for all kinds of things which establish a relationship between Romans and others. Your equivalent example is bizarre. As for your apparent inability to refrain from ad hominem, I do you a favour and ignore it. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 16:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I cannot see where anybody else has engaged in arg. ad hominem. AGK  [•] 02:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Strong support Chinese-Roman relations. Romano is a cheese and Sino is unnecessary--both Roman and Chinese are fully recognizable which is one of our naming criteria. I am fully opposed to the Eurocentric current title (listing Rome first?? Why? We always put titles like this in alphabetical order) that made me think it was referring to the group of people often known as "gypsies" (see Romani people). I would never have guessed that "Romano" would refer to Romans, since we have the word Roman to refer to Romans. I also strongly oppose the proposed title as Sino is unnecessarily unrecognizable. Sure, I know what it means, but "Chinese" is clearer. And "Roman" would go before "Sino" anyway. Red Slash 16:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In regards to uniformity, we generally use the "Sino-" prefix when dealing with China-related topics, a la Sino-Japanese relations, Second Sino-Japanese War, Sino-Korean vocabulary, Sinophobia. "Chinese-Roman" would be a bit of a break from general trends. -- benlisquare T•C•E 02:17, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per common name and nomination. Alternatively but to a lesser extend, support "China–Rome relations" per conventions in all the other diplomatic relations articles. --Cold Season (talk) 03:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME. "Sino-" is one of the most widely used country-name prefix in English, while "Romano-" is confusing and rarely used. -Zanhe (talk) 03:52, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Support.  If Sino-Roman relations is the term used in literature, it should be what's used here.  The only context I have ever heard "Romano-" in is "Romano-British" which means something entirely different. SnowFire (talk) 17:58, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Support Sino-Roman. According to this Ngram, Romano-Chinese, Roman-Chinese, and Chinese-Roman are statistically insignificant usages. Keahapana (talk) 23:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not that I don't agree with you for other reasons (see my searches above), but your ngram was rather badly formatted. See, e.g., this one. — Llywelyn II   09:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Strings containing symbols other than letters must be included in parenthesis in Ngrams. Like this ¨ walk victor falktalk 11:29, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That had been bugging me for the longest time. Er, could you look at that again? I'm pretty sure what you're doing there isn't telling it to look for (e.g.) "Roman-Chinese" results. I'm pretty sure what you're actually telling the ngram to look for is how often (e.g.) "Roman" shows up and then to subtract those results from the "Chinese" results. Look at (e.g.) how your (Roman-Chinese) and (Chinese-Roman) results are direct inverses of one another. — Llywelyn II   04:36, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Both Roman–Chinese relations and Roman–Sino relations are sensible enough, though the reader is more likely to search for the former term than the latter. Romano will be alien to most readers, and while it may (per GPM) be a prefix sometimes used in this sense, it is obviously nowhere near as common as the simpler Roman. The current article title isn't at all optimal, and both the proposed titles are better, in my view. I notice that similar articles about modern states use the nouns for titling, e.g. India–United Kingdom relations. Rome–China relations might avoid this whole argument, and have the added benefit of being the simplest form of all. AGK  [•] 02:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * "Sino" is a prefix, so it would be switched in as in "Sino-Roman relations". If using nouns, it would be convention to alphabetize it as in "China–Rome relations". --Cold Season (talk) 03:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As CS points out, since "Sino-" is a prefix, it has to go first. Any combination of nouns or adjectives would use an en dash, not a hyphen: Roman–Chinese relations; Rome–China relations; Roman–Han relations... It's not necessarily a bad idea but it's not an actual convention to alphabetize the two countries' names; did it become a Wikipedia policy at some point? —  Llywelyn II   08:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No policy or guideline for so far I know, but it is generally the preferred format with these kind of "country–country relations" naming (WikiProject_International_relations). --Cold Season (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per Google Books and Google Scholar data. Holdek (talk) 05:21, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Support Seems to be more common. I'm don't think "Sino" is too obscure - it's a pretty well-known term. Neljack (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Map
Actually, I just noticed this. The map has an ongoing edit war over whether Korea counted as Han territory and it doesn't include Britain. I'll pull it myself, but we should replace it with something similarly focused once the borders are fixed. — Llywelyn II   06:51, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem with maps showing the political extension of the two empires is twofold:


 * 1) the Tarim basin was never incorporated into Han China's civil administration, but was only a military protectorate. Since 95% of the basin is anyway uninhabited desert, the question remains why huge stretches of this territory should be painted in a colour at all.
 * 2) The second issue is that any date chosen is bound to remain POV as the two empires peaked at different points in time. Therefore, a non-territorial Eurasian map is generally to be preferred. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not at all. A clearly focused map on the two empires in question is to be preferred. That one just has a ton of issues. — Llywelyn II   14:30, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Ptolemy
For what it's worth, his names were in Greek. Presumably, it was translated into Latin at some point in antiquity but we have no basis for suggesting how. What we've got is Byzantine Greek from earlier Greek; Arabic and Persian from Syriac from earlier Greek; and Renaissance Latin versions of the Byzantine Greek. I say just use English (Golden Chersonese or, better, Peninsula; Great Gulf; etc.) and let the linked pages go into details about the rest. — Llywelyn II   15:23, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Northern Wei embassy
I've been massively expanding this article over the past two weeks or so. The details are quite solid, except for one in particular that's still nagging me.

I felt compelled to remove that passage about the Cao Wei of the Three Kingdoms period, since I could not find it in any of the sources at my disposal, until I finally got around to reading Henry Yule (1915). His work, although dated and not up to speed with recent archaeology, is very reliable when it comes to the details of the accounts in official Chinese histories. Yet this one bit about the Wei Dynasty is out of place in regards to his other passages. Curiously he does not mention the primary source used as the basis of this account, and it is certainly not mentioned by Friedrich Hirth (1885) in any of his translations. It's all the more curious when you look to Yule's footnote on the matter for the claim about "Emperor T'ai Tsu" (p. 53, footnote 4, citing Deguignes in Mem de l'Acad., xlvi, 555):

"Idlib. [There is something wrong in the passage from Deguignes as there is no T'ai Tsu of the Wei dynasty.]"

Yet in his following footnote (p. 53, footnote #5), he clearly demonstrates that other academics have discussed the topic:

""Klaproth, op. cit. Pauthier, probably by an alternative translation, calls the presents "glasses of a red colour, stuffs of azure silk figured with gold, and the like" (p. 49)."

I don't have the time or patience to track down dated sources like Klaproth and Pauthier, so God/Ahura Mazda/Shangdi/Buddha/Allah/Zeus/Jupiter bless the saint and sage who investigates this and clears it all up for us! Cheers. Pericles of Athens Talk 05:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Some evidence for people of 'East Asian' ancestry living in Roman London
The study reported here (Some evidence for people of 'East Asian' ancestry living in Roman London) indicates that out of a sample of 22 burials from Roman London, two or three individuals appear to be of 'East Asian' ancestry, which might have a bearing on this article BabelStone (talk) 11:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's interesting, but perhaps tangential since the only evidence is the DNA analysis. There's no proving that these were Han Chinese. They could have easily been steppe nomads from Mongolia who share a genetic affinity with other East Asian population groups. If there was some sort of other connective piece of evidence, like Han grave goods buried with them, then it would make this article far more relatable. Thanks for sharing, though! At the very least it is food for thought. Pericles of Athens  Talk 16:24, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

The article discusses both African and Asian people in Roman Londinium. The section concerning East Asian people in particular is the following"

"The individuals in question are two men, aged 18–25 and 26–35, who were buried in the second and fourth centuries AD, respectively, and who are both identified as being of 'Asian' ancestry on the basis of a macromorphoscopic trait analysis (that is to say, their macromorphoscopic trait results are comparable to those of the modern populations of China and Japan), along with a woman aged over 18 who was buried in the second century AD and whose results are possibly indicative of Asian ancestry. None of these three people had oxygen isotope results consistent with an early life spent in the London area, although pinning down their childhood residency beyond this is difficult. Drinking water that would produce tooth enamel oxygen isotope values similar to those of the man and woman from the second-century AD is found across a broad swathe of the globe from western Britain and southern Europe across to China. Equally, although the oxygen isotope result of the man buried in the fourth-century AD is outside both the British and European ranges, it would still be consistent with a childhood spent in, for example, large areas of North Africa, the Near East, India, Central Asia or the western parts of Han China, making identifying where he spent his early life problematic. Finally, as to question of whether these people were resident in London or simply passing through, it is worth noting that the dietary isotope ranges of the two individuals who were tested for this are within the local ranges encountered in other Romano-British cemeteries, suggesting that these people, whatever their childhood origins and ancestry, may well have spent the last decade of their lives in Britain, something that is in itself notable."

The article also mentions findings of East Asians remains in other Roman areas:

"Needless to say, the presence of people of 'East Asian' ancestry in Roman London is a matter of considerable interest. As to the circumstances of their apparent residency within the western Roman Empire, it needs to be emphasised that these inhabitants of second- to fourth-century AD Londinium are not wholly alone nor without context. Most notably, a recent isotopic and mitochondrial DNA study of burials on the Imperial estate at Vagnari, southern Italy, has indicated that one of the adults buried there in the first or second century AD was likewise a migrant of 'East Asian' ancestry, given that 'all modern mtDNA matches to her available haplotype sequence are from Japan'."

The author seems to thing that these individuals could have followed the trade routs from east to west. Dimadick (talk) 14:16, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The fact that we can't distinguish the remains as either being Chinese and Japanese is perhaps enough to withhold this from the article. I heavily doubt they were "Japanese", considering how the land of "Wa (Japan)" during the Yayoi period was nothing but petty chiefdoms that maintained rare correspondence with the Chinese. However, the 4th century marks the beginning of the more advanced Kofun period in Japan. In either case I'd like to see more conclusive evidence about this before even considering giving it a blurb in the article. Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:18, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * User:Goldsmelter has added this info to the article with better sources, namely the BBC and an academic journal. These are reliable enough, I suppose, although the section certainly doesn't deserve anymore additions or undue weight seen how these are brand new discoveries. The evidence isn't even all that conclusive and, for that matter (from what I can tell), there's no evidence they were actually Chinese. Again, they could have been East-Asiatic Mongolic steppe peoples. That seems far more plausible, actually, given the Migration period (and how this is dated as late as the 4th century, although the skeletons could be as early as 2nd century). Pericles of Athens  Talk 13:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * A note of caution about the methodology employed is given in this piece (Chinese Skeletons In Roman Britain? Not So Fast) by Kristina Killgrove. I think that this is a fascinating topic, but until there is some more solid evidence to back up the "macromorphoscopic trait analysis", such as DNA, I think we should be very cautious about jumping on the bandwagon, and I would support removing the section from this article. I would also note that, finding 2 or 3 possible East Asian skeletons out of a sample of 22 means that: a) about 10% of the population of Roman London was Asian in ancestry; b) the sample is very unrepresentative of the overall population, and they were just very lucky to find the 2-3 Asian people living in Roman London in their small sample; or c) their methodology is flawed. I favour the latter explanation. BabelStone (talk) 12:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * User:BabelStone: removing it altogether might cause a needless edit war with other editors who might come along and want to add this info yet again. A better solution would be to heavily trim the details and provide Killgrove's input from that Forbes article for the sake of balance. Feel free to edit the article accordingly using Killgrove (I would ask that you simply cite the article in the format I have used for other news articles thus far, with an access date placed at the end). Pericles of Athens  Talk 13:51, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * According to Roman Burials in Southwark: Excavations at 52-56 Lant Street and 56 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 (2013) the excavations at Lant Street occurred in 2003, so unless there have been more recent excavations at the same site (which seems unlikely in the context of urban archaeology) these are not new archaeological discoveries, but new analysis of skeletons excavated in 2003. BabelStone (talk) 18:59, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Good find, BabelStone! Cheers. Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:11, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Possibly Chinese skeletons found in Roman cemetery
See and - which emphasises the 'possible'. Doug Weller talk 18:17, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I know. I just cited Killgrove's article. And we already have a section about this above. Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:24, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Too much haste on my part, sorry. Doug Weller  talk 18:29, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No worries. I'm sure others will create more talk-page sections about this in the near future, since topics like this create a lot of momentary buzz. However, the discussion about specific findings in the research are less sexy than sensational headlines. In either case the article should limit this to the smallest blurb possible. Any expansions should probably be curbed until a thorough DNA analysis is provided and then confirmed by several different scientific journals. Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure. Doug Weller  talk 19:30, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Illustration
Here's an old illustration of the Byzantine embassy to Tang Taizong in 643 CE. Feel free to use it in the article if needed. 神风 (talk) 12:20, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Fantastic. I'll see if I can make room for it. Pericles of Athens  Talk 23:37, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy
After much work and a laborious but successful GA candidacy process, I've decided that this article is in good enough condition for a Featured article candidacy. If you have any suggestions about how to improve the article, speak now! Right here on the talk page. Or feel free even to go to the FA review page and offer your thoughts/support/objections there. Pericles of Athens Talk 15:45, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Woo-hoo! The featured article nomination was successful! Thanks once again to everyone who reviewed the article. Pericles of Athens  Talk 08:24, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

ENGVAR
This early version of the article appears to use "colour" rather than "color". Was there a reason the spelling dialect was changed? --John (talk) 11:47, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I'm the chief editor of this article and I'm American, so perhaps I unconsciously choose American spelling conventions over British ones. Is it a pressing issue or just something in which you needed clarification? As it stands now the article seems fairly uniform in terms of choosing one spelling convention over another. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 14:20, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, per MOS:RETAIN we aren't supposed to change the dialect like this. --John (talk) 14:42, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * +1 to Pericles' comment. RETAIN is, in my view, enormously helpful when there's a dispute, which there isn't here. (I doubt Pericles intended to violate "An article should not be edited or renamed simply to switch from one variety of English to another" when rewriting the article.) I don't see a compelling reason to change it. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm disputing it. --John (talk) 05:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * first of all, greetings! I'm simply happy that someone actually cares about this article enough to nitpick it. I don't have any strong feelings about British versus American spelling conventions. I simply write articles using American spelling conventions because it comes natural to me and I don't give it a second thought. I didn't have some villainous intention about systematically changing spelling conventions; I honestly didn't notice until the issue was raised here. If you want to conduct a vote on the matter to reach consensus that's fine with me. I am far more concerned about content and sourcing than I am with formatting issues. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 06:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * ENGVAR is not really a formatting issue. I accept your explanation. It would be too disruptive to change this while the article is TFA. This should really have been picked up at FAC; it's unfortunate that it was not. We can take care of it tomorrow. --John (talk) 10:43, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've fixed that. In doing so I noticed that the article is way overlinked. --John (talk) 06:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've fixed that too. --John (talk) 19:50, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason why you expunged every instance of the word "although" from this article? Also, you're a bit too zealous in the removal of links from the prose body of the article. We are allowed to have one link to an article in the main prose body while still having the same link in the lead section, "further information" headers, and image captions. For instance, you removed every instance of a link for Europeans in Medieval China from the main prose body. Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:53, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * FYI: footnotes do not count as being a part of the prose body either. I'm assuming that's why you removed the link for Europeans in Medieval China, for starters. Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:58, 19 April 2017 (UTC)


 * "Although", "however" and "while" are words that were way over-used; it's a stylistic issue and I believe the article reads better with the same information conveyed in simple, neutral and unambiguous (consider "while John did the dishes, he also picked his nose") language. (It's a wonderful article, but honestly the prose could still do with polishing to meet FA criteria.) Re linking; tastes differ, but one (or two) links in prose, one in an image caption and one in footnotes and sources still gives the reader three or four opportunities to click the link, which I think most reviewers would regard as adequate. Thanks for your fine work in creating this and for your collegiate approach to the changes others have made. While we are discussing, did you notice one of the books referred to (Book of the Later Han) had two different titles, with and without "the"? I've standardised on the Wikipedia article title. Finally, would you have any objection to simplifying the reference syntax? --John (talk) 20:40, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi John. Thanks for the reply and for providing your reasoning here. I didn't notice the alternative title for Book of Later Han, although for sake or clarity we should use only one variant, with "the" in the title. As for simplifying the reference syntax, be my guest! I have absolutely no objections there. Kind regards, -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:36, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Ref issues

 * What's up with the multiple locations? Only the first listed in the book is needed. We could also get rid of the ampersands wherever possible ("and" is more professional).
 * Hill, Through the Jade Gate to Rome is a WP:SPS (BookSurge).
 * I have doubts about APH Publishing being a reliable publisher per WP:QS? (Kumar, A History of Sino-Indian Relations)
 * Ref 151 - Globalsecurity.org isn't reliable. Surely there's an academic source for this?
 * Also, the ref formatting is pretty weird. Why both BBC News and bbc.co.uk? Huffington Post and huffingtonpost.com? The name of the news organization should suffice. I'e gone through and fixed most of these. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:05, 18 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Huh. Good questions. I added most of the citatations and references in this article, but not all of them. I'll try to address these tomorrow when I am not inebriated and have overcome the inevitable hangover with lots of H20. Lol. Thanks for bringing these up, though! A featured article should meet certain standards, after all. Pericles of Athens  Talk 06:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * No worries. Don't forget ibuprofen/aspirin. ;-) On the multiple locations, you'll see more for my reasoning on that over at Featured article candidates/Macedonia (ancient kingdom)/archive1. Best, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * hi again! Thanks for the hangover advice (lol), and thanks also for reviewing this article in addition to my featured article candidate (and current good article) Macedonia (ancient kingdom). I have tried my best to address the concerns you have for both articles. As for this one, I've removed the multiple publication locations and ampersands as you've requested. I have also replaced that inline citation for "globalsecurity.org" with a suitable academic reference from The Cambridge Ancient History series. I see what you mean about the BBC and Huffington Post. I was only able to find one other instance of this with "Forbes.com", which I changed to Forbes. As for John E. Hill's 2009 Through the Jade Gate to Rome, I had no idea that was from a self-published source. The other Hill sources that I used (2003 and 2004) were both published online by a credible academic institution, the University of Washington, so I just readily assumed his other tome was by an academic press. Goes to show that you have to trust but verify in each of these instances! It will be quite a headache trying to fix these, though, because there are eleven inline citations relying on Hill 2009. That's a lot of stuff to find replacement citations for, especially since I was not the one who added any of the Hill 2009 citations (although I did add the other Hill citations from the aforementioned academic source). I'll certainly remove Hill 2009 as you suggest, but I've devoted enough time to Wikipedia for one day. If someone else would be so kind as to fix this mess then I would be eternally grateful. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 20:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I think we are OK with Hill; the SPS is stocked by several university libraries and he is obviously something of an authority. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah! I just read this bit in WP:SPS: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." That would seem to include John E. Hill, who otherwise publishes similar works through academic presses and institutions like the University of Washington. That's a relief for me! I was earnestly going to hunt down a bunch of sources to replace his stuff. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to continue beefing up existing citations with more sources, though, just for the hell of it. Cheers, guys! -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 00:11, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, fair enough there. Still wouldn't be my preferred source, but it meets RS. :-) Thanks, Pericles! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Just a note on this old convo - publishers look at the bottom line, and such a specialized book, when taken into account with so much competition from other material published elsewhere, could very well have been a factor in a university press/et al turning it down and not a comment on its content, and Hill resorted to a vanity press. - HammerFilmFan

BC/AD versus BCE/CE dating system
hello. While I appreciate you introducing a new (properly sourced) map for the lead section, that and other changes to the article should have been brought up here for discussion first, before you edited the article. This is a featured article and as such it is held to higher standards and requires community consensus before drastic changes are made. Systematically changing the entire dating system used in the article falls under that category and is not merely a minor edit. Furthermore, you didn't even apply this rule consistently, leaving various instances of "CE" and "BCE" throughout the article that I then had to replace per the AD/BC system that you chose without consultation. I agree that the AD/BC system is preferable and CE/BCE beats around the bush, so to speak, but that doesn't give any editor the right to make such arbitrary changes to a featured article. Please refrain from editing the article any further unless it is a minor edit, and bring up topics for discussion here and seek community acceptance before you make another significant change. Pericles of Athens Talk 22:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that - I missed the featured bit; I did try as much as possible to apply the BC/AD convention, but evidently I missed a few (not intentionally). Thanks for the heads-up; I'll be sure to be more careful when next I edit something.Ecthelion83 (talk) 00:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I should have assumed it was just a mistake that you missed some of them. I'm going to sweep through the article one more time to see if there are any stragglers left. If you could do the same that would be much appreciated. It might seem like a small thing, but the very status of this article as a featured one depends not only the quality of the prose and sourcing, but also on seemingly minor details like punctuation or use of similar terms and spelling conventions throughout the article. I believe that some (now former) featured articles have even lost their status over such trivial things in follow-up peer reviews. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 00:31, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

could you and everyone else please refrain from making massive edits to this article, a Featured article (which is supposed to have higher standards and talk page discussions BEFORE sweeping changes are made). I also wouldn't have much of a problem with it if it weren't for the fact that yet again someone is not only changing the dating system, but is once again introducing inconsistencies by leaving behind instances of "BC/AD" after trying to switch everything back to BCE/CE. If you're going to make the claim that you've removed all instances of the former, then I shouldn't be able to spot so many that you clearly missed. Pericles of Athens Talk 23:45, 24 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that -- I wasn't aware of the protocol for featured articles. Sorry also I didn't pick up every instance. But I am surprised at your statement (higher above) that BC/AD is better. The international scholarly convention is BCE/CE. Especially given that this is not an article about the (Christian) West, I would have thought it should reflect that. Vortimer (talk) 06:01, 23 September 2017 (UTC)


 * No worries. If you want to make significant changes to the article, then please build consensus here first. As for CE/BCE, I'll never understand why the academic community decided to essentially use the Christian dating system if they wanted to be secular and avoid associating it with religion and the (alleged, traditional) birth year of Jesus of Nazareth. Why not choose something utterly unrelated to Christianity, then? For instance, they could have gone with Ab urbe condita (i.e. the founding of Rome) or even the Greek Olympiad, choosing the first ancient Olympic Games as their start date. I'd have infinitely more respect if they chose one of those instead of simply mirroring the Christian dating system and glibly calling it something else. The argument that "well that's what everyone's already using" doesn't it cut it either, because that's a fallacious statement when considering the entire Islamic world uses a completely different dating system (i.e. the Islamic calendar), from the time of the first preaching of their prophet Muhammad (meaning that we are now in the year 1439 AH, according to their calendar). All of that being said and putting my personal opinion to the side, as far as Wikpedia is concerned BCE/CE is just as fine as using BC/AD and I've had no problems editing articles using the BCE/CE dating system, using it consistently when that precedent was already established. -- Pericles of Athens  Talk 12:39, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Words have power. I speculate that the "BCE/CE" idea is a way to distance historical disciplines from the words "christ" and "domini" without having to do any maths. I'm sure there are better calendars, but none easier to those working in the historically christian-dominated European cultural sphere. Snuge purveyor (talk) 16:33, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Apparent contradiction
Am I missing something? The two dates for the end of the renewal of contact are inconsistent: "followed by a long hiatus until the first recorded Byzantine embassy in 643 AD. ...

In classical sources, the problem of identifying references to ancient China is exacerbated by the interpretation of the Latin term Seres, whose meaning fluctuated and could refer to several Asian peoples in a wide arc from India over Central Asia to China. In Chinese records, the Roman Empire came to be known as Daqin or Great Qin. Chinese sources directly associated Daqin with the later Fulin (»), which scholars such as Friedrich Hirth have identified as the Byzantine Empire. Chinese sources describe several embassies of Fulin arriving in China during the Tang dynasty (618 to 907) and also mention the siege of Constantinople by the forces of Muawiyah I in 674-678 AD. Kdammers (talk) 22:29, 14 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't think there's a contradiction -- 618 is the beginning of the Tang dynasty, while 643 is the first recorded embassy. AnonMoos (talk) 00:42, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, 618 to 907 AD are the dates for the existence and reign of the Tang dynasty, not the beginning and terminus dates for embassies. Pericles of Athens  Talk 15:24, 16 October 2021 (UTC)