What a writer, and what a speaker. See her if you get a chance. Rather than dragging through some uninteresting confrontation with Taleb, spend that time reading her review essays at NYRB - http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/beard-mary/ . Some are subscriber-only, but many are open.
There are also her essays in the London Review of Books [1] and, as mentioned in the article, her long-running blog for the Times Literary Supplement, A Don's Life [2].
Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks. They're very weird and bitter.
And I can't tell what his actual point is! He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.
> Taleb isn't painting himself in a very flattering light with these attacks. They're very weird and bitter.
This is his default style as a polemicist and it distracts indeed from the points he is trying to make.
> And I can't tell what his actual point is!
The first 3 bullet points are his actual message. The rest is a reaction to some preceding drama on twitter.
His point is basically that Africans were a statistically insignificant subgroup among Romans in Brittain, and by adding them so prominently in a short animated cartoon for school children (who hardly know anything about antiquity) the BBC is performing historical revisionism.
He also casts doubt on the assumption that these Africans were black, pointing out that Northern Africa was inhabited by Berbers and Phoenicians.
> He furiously complains that the BBC and Mary Beard are "bullshitters" but I can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.
He wants scientific rigor to prevail over political correctness.
We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall). For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans were a "statistically insignificant subgroup" (which by the way doesn't even make sense as a statistical statement). As Beard points out, even Norman DNA is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.
> We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall).
That "evidence" consist of one fleeting mention in a biography about Septimius Severus.
> For 101 reasons, the genetic evidence is not very informative, and certainly can't be used to justify that claim that Africans were a "statistically insignificant subgroup"
The lack of evidence (genetic or historical) puts an upper bound on the proportion of subsaharan Africans in Roman Britain that is several orders of magnitude lower than the BBC animated cartoon suggests.
> As Beard points out, even Norman DNA is not very well represented in the modern population, and we know for sure that plenty of Normans came over as a result of the Norman invasion.
For the presence of the Normans there is plenty of historical evidence. For the presence of subsaharan Africans there is just about nothing. So we should stick to the null hypothesis.
The term "Moor" does not translate precisely to any modern ethnic term, and is perfectly compatible with dark skin. In fact, the article notes that "The unit is likely to have been composed of Berbers from North Africa, but may also have had darker-skinned soldiers from Nubia."
If peoples from far flung regions had been present in numbers and those people tended to have rank (garrisoned, etc), one would imagine we'd have more bone evidence (from burial sites, given their ranks).
But as portrayed, it looks like there were more people from far flung areas than there were picts in the north.
In any event, it's interesting ironic in that its seen as progressive that an occupying force might have been slightly multi-ethnic, and this celebrated. The English in South Africa were also much more multi-ethnic in that they brought peoples from the Indian subcontinent and other places; let's celebrate that too, then.
>If peoples from far flung regions had been present in numbers and those people tended to have rank (garrisoned, etc), one would imagine we'd have more bone evidence.
We don't have many human remains from that period. So not really.
>But as portrayed
Portrayed where? Not sure what you mean by this.
>and this celebrated.
Who's celebrating it? I'm confused by your comment.
>We have no reliable evidence regarding what proportion of Roman Britain was "black". We have good historical evidence that there were Romans present in Britain who we'd these days describe as black (e.g. an Ethiopian soldier garrisoning Hadrian's wall).
Ethiopians were black. The majority in ancient Rome were not like that, not even the majority of people in the northern Africa countries.
We don't need some magical list of figures to know the general distribution.
We have descriptions, from many sources, even before Herodotus, of what this or that country's people looked like. We also have actual depictions of populations in the various hellenistic, then Roman and Byzantine provinces in mosaics and other painted scenes.
Feel free to link to some relevant data or source if you have something. As far as I'm aware, historical data on skin color demographics are extremely scanty. Even in the case of major historical figures like Cleopatra, we just don't know for sure.
There is no historical consensus on Cleopatra's skin color. Plenty of people have their own favorite speculations about it, but there's no hard evidence.
In the depicted cartoon case of an Ethiopian that has a local Briton or Celt wife, who has multiple children with her, there is the valid question of seeing what is in the genetic record, though, wouldn't you agree?
The reaction, and Beard's answer, was specifically about the family shown and not the narrow question of whether or not an Ethiopian conscript would have ever set foot in Roman Britain.
Beards answer points out among other things that there are exceedingly few traces of Normans in the genetic record as well, and gives a plausible suggestion that most might simply have left, like the Normans did. She also points to more examples than a single Ethiopian conscript.
So the reality is that we know there has been people here that are poorly reflected in the genetic record, and that makes it rather pointless to point to the genetic record to demonstrate the family in question is implausible.
In any case, what troubles me much more than whether or not the depiction is plausible is just how incredibly unprofessional and rude Talebs reaction was. If he wants honesty and a focus on the science, he should grow up and act professionally.
I'm not sure why you assume he would have been a conscript.
There is no reason to think that a few interracial marriages in Roman times would have left much of a trace in the modern genetic record. Surely no-one would get so up in arms about a cartoon that showed a Saxon married to a Norman, but we have no modern "genetic record" of this either. We know with a reasonable degree of certainty that interracial marriages existed in Roman Britain, often involving soldiers.
Talk about the "genetic record" might seem sciency sounding, but its really the historical evidence that's much more informative in this instance.
I think we are not far from each other in what we understand... the issue raised between Beard and Taleb seems to revolve around the meaning of "typical" .
Beard seems to say, "it was possible that it could have happened, here are a few Ethiopians for instance that we know were in Roman Britain, for example".
Taleb seems to say "typical means what is likely to have happened 50% or more of the time; since there was no chance that Roman Britain had 50% of marriages with children that involved Ethiopians/Berbers/etc. thus Beard is very wrong"
Beard's point is that we really have no idea what "typical" ethnic backgrounds were for Roman families in Britain. There's just no reliable data, and it most likely would have varied enormously between different parts of the country.
It's not obvious to me that the cartoon character is unambiguously black rather than brown. Berbers and other North African groups that were well-represented in the Roman army have brown skin. In any case, Beard points to instances of Romans in Britain who were either described as having black skin ("Ethiopean") in the historical record, or whose skeletal morpholgy suggests Sub Saharan ancestry.
Also, nothing is "well known" about the skin color of populations thousands of years ago, for obvious reasons.
Can't you deduce skin colour from chemical analysis of bog bodies, or is melanin unstable in those conditions? Also, can't we deduce skin colour from analysis of DNA (and from the climate: sunlight affects skin colour)?
Perhaps the problem is that scientists are not particularly interested in skin colour, for which I wouldn't blame them.
Not sure about bog bodies, but there's so few of them that it's unlikely to be useful information. There is no way to determine skin color via DNA analyses of ancient remains, so far as I'm aware.
This is a Tuareg berber boy [1]. The Tuareg moved South into the Sahel in antiquity, but their traditional areas included parts of modern day Algeria and Libya.
Gaddafi was Bedouin, but their skin color varies greatly. I'll go out on a limb and assume that Gaddafi spent decades spending a lot less time outdoors in the sun than many other Bedouin would. Here is an example of a much darker Bedouin man [2]. Note, however, that the main Arabization of Libya happened after the Romans moved out.
Berber men in Morocco [3].
Ghurara Berbers in Algeria [4]
Toubou man - The Toubous traditional area stretch into Libya [5].
In case you would assume the Berbers whose main areas were in Southern Libya would not make it North, consider that Septimius Severus' hometown of Leptis Magna on the mediterranean coast was frequently raided by berbers until the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. During Septimius rule a whole Roman legion (Legio III Augusta) was stationed there to protect against Berber raids (the legion was also been stationed in present day Algeria for a long time)
Septimius also extended roman rule to Garama - one of the main homes of the Garamantes Berber people who shared Fezzan (the South West of Libya) with the Toubou, Arabs, Berbers, Tuareg and Dawada.
Here's a Dawada man [6].
Now, I'm not an expert on the region, and I don't know the exact mix of Roman Libya and other Roman holdings in North Africa at the time, but the above is enough to at least suggest that unless you are an expert (in which case I welcome sources), there is sufficient reason to at least not jump to the conclusion that there were no dark skinned Africans in Libya in Roman times on the basis of Gadaffi - a person from an ethnic group that most certainly had a far lower presence in Libya until after Roman times.
I suspect that a Libyan and Caribbean kid would be considered "black" in the western societies - just as likely to be stopped by the cops etc. face the same discrimination.
What about the aboriginal people living there? Some of the original colonists where not black yes - but over time there would have been considerable intermarriage.
What position in the distribution is suitably "scientifically rigorous"? Should all children's cartoons represent only the population mean? Or perhaps the median - at least that is guaranteed to actually exist. Maybe the mode would be better - but what if there is more than one? We could be willing to be a bit more relaxed, and allow anything within the middle two quartiles. Or, perhaps, we should just remember that there is a distinction between material produced for children and the academic consensus.
>but I can't figure out exactly what corrections he wants made.
He wants accuracy in historical depictions, not over-representation of (insignificant at the time and place) populations the way they do in stock photos to show how "diverse" a company is.
He also doesn't like the historical revisionism of considering all the people coming from Africa or called african in Roman years as black, whereas the whole northern Africa was full of white populations. Those were not Ethiopians, Nubians, etc...
It's bad that the English were racist and colonialists, but that's their problem. They don't get to say their "sorry" today (after the fact) to the black people, by washing out whole populations of Mediterranean people, that were actually there at the Roman era, because they want to feature more prominently some populations they put down.
> He wants accuracy in historical depictions, not over-representation of (insignificant at the time and place) populations the way they do in stock photos to show how "diverse" a company is.
“Accuracy” is not possible if your depict a smaller group then the whole, as any story (regardless of media; visual, text, or otherwise) that focusses on a small number of focal characters to illustrate something about broad society and time period will not accurately represent the composition of the broader society.
You either exclude lots that was present by focussing exclusively on the most common or overrepresent minorities that were present in the broad society by having them present at all in the small focal group, and in practical terms you end up doing some of each. But you can't losslessly compress history; you just have to choose what's appropriate for your purpose.
>“Accuracy” is not possible if your depict a smaller group then the whole, as any story (regardless of media; visual, text, or otherwise) that focusses on a small number of focal characters to illustrate something about broad society and time period will not accurately represent the composition of the broader society.
You're talking absolutes, which is neither possible, not the point.
If taking any random sample of 3 people in e.g. Roman Britain, you had e.g. in 1/1000 chances of having a black person among them, then showing 3 persons and having 1 be black is not a representative picture. It's that simple.
When trying to create something representative, it often gives a better result to over-represent than exclude, because the latter may imply there were none.
I'd argue a large reason we're having this discussion at all is exactly because the idea of black people in Britain at that time is surprising to a lot of people, exactly because a lot of people have an image of the Romans as being mostly white Italians to the point where seeing a black character at all is a surprise, rather than out of concern that they're not accurately representing the precise proportions.
dragonwriter was talking about the limitations of a numerically "representative picture" to tell a history, not about "absolutes," whatever that means. I thought it was pretty clear.
This shouldn't even be an argument, since history over-represents minorities all the time. It's not a mystery as to why. Trade and war have a couple of things in common. They feature prominently in histories because they are a catalyst for change, and they are practiced as often as not by "minorities" - ethnic, religious, racial, etc.
Tell a history well (or poorly) or try to make some kind of historical point and it is likely you are going to be talking about minorities. Over-representing them, to be sure. Taleb knows all this, and his recommendations regarding written histories have been pretty good. Regarding this thing, he was just being a combative douche. (or he has some other goofy racial agenda, as some have speculated... who knows)
You can read pretty much any historical account describing the peoples of those regions, see frescoes and mosaics, and so on.
Besides, this couldn't be more racist towards Mediterranean people - perhaps they all look black to some. It wouldn't be the first time, mediterranean people (from Lebanese and Egyptians, to Italians, Greeks and Spanish) were also classified as "non-white" when immigrating into the US by racist WASP populations.
Frescoes and mosaics are not reliable sources for the composition of the overall population, as they generally will over-represent specific social-strata and specific demographics, so without a control we don't really know what they tell us.
Considering Libya where the Roman presence itself in the North quite possibly was quite light-skinned and where the elite under Roman rule likewise quite likely was white than average for the population, with a lot of people coming from elsewhere in the empire. But a lot of the rest of the population was berbers, which range from relatively light brown to the darkest sub-Saharan black.
We know that sub-Saharan berber groups went to the North, because we know that a whole Roman legion was stationed on the coast to repel raiders from the South.
But I don't think we do know how large a number of the Northern population was made up of Romans from elsewhere and lighter skinned berbers vs darker skinned berbers and/or other groups at any given point in time. If there is data on this, I'd love to see it.
Though we also know that the bedouin population that dominates the North of Libya today, largely came with the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, so modern day Libya is at the very least a very poor indicator of what it looked like 2000 years ago.
(focusing on Libya because Septimius Severus - one the persons mentioned in Beards response - was born in Libya, and because I've covered it in other comments)
No-one is suggesting that everyone or even the majority of people in North Africa have "black" skin, but I'm awaiting references showing that North Africa was majority white at the time of the Roman empire. The guy in the cartoon has brown skin.
White as in not black. Not as in red-haired blue-eyed WASPs.
Of course it can have "brown skin". Egyptians, Tunisians, and co, including people in Souther Spain, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, the Middle East, and so, had, and still have brown skin, but are not black like e.g. Ethiopians (which ancients also describe), nor are depicted as such.
Well, in Europe (and hopefully modern US) white includes the peoples not considered black (or asian etc).
Arabs for example are still white, Egyptians too, etc. Outside of racist circles were only WASPs or northern europeans were considered white (which was historically the case for most of the 20th century where white was hijacked for "northern European ancestry").
Egyptians for example, are also white. As are Arabs, middle eastern people, etc. But e.g. Ethiopians, or Ghana people are not (the majority of course, not that all citizens are not).
Many of the groups you're mentioning don't even self-identify as white in English-speaking countries. Not really sure what you're trying to get at any more.
> Beard is an expert on the history of the Roman Empire, and says that this is not a misrepresentation.
Her academic credentials are the very reason why she got criticized for what she said. Saying that the BBC school video is accurate is an extraordinary claim. And as a historian you might want to back that up with some evidence.
And weirdly, they continue to pretend to children of the UK that humans from all over the globe and all through time speak perfectly understandable English.
And don't get me started on the talking animals. British zoological research is unlikely to ever recover if they can't get basic details like that right.
There should really be an Attenborough version of Finding Nemo where his mate switches genders and fornicates with his daughters, like any self-respecting clownfish would do.
I once talked to a Somali woman who insisted black women were inferior. I tried to suggest to her that most people would see her as black, and she got terribly angry that I dared suggest she was black, on the basis of some obscure historic split that would not matter to anyone trying to classify her. (And to be clear, she was very dark skinned)
Having been married to a Nigerian woman, I've also experienced plenty of racism: Whenever I went to gatherings with her where most people were black, such as weddings etc, as "the white one" I was on one hand regularly fussed over to and extent none of the other men were. While everyone was always friendly, it was extremely embarrassing to be treated that way, but parts of West Africa still has a tendency to elevate white people (e.g. I more than once was told I should take my family to Nigeria, as lots of companies would pay high salaries to get a white person in an important position), and on the other hand I more than once overhead racist comments directed at Caribbeans and African Americans - believe it or not, but there's a segment of West Africans (I don't know about elsewhere) that see Caribbeans and African Americans as inferior. Their justification being that they're descendants of "people who were to dumb to escape the slave traders".
I'm not suggesting that these views reflect Talebs views - I have no idea if he's racist or just contrarian.
Just pointing out that not being of paler European origin does not in any way preclude people from holding messed up racist views. Even about your own ethnic groups in some cases - people manage to find ways of defining themselves out of whichever group they hold negative views about.
Not really. He really does have an obsession with proving that his particular ancestry (Lebanese/'Levantine') is distinct from and pure regarding Arabic ancestry. To the point he wants to make some historical assertions that are not at all supported by fact.
I've seen this said now multiple times in multiple places by what I'm pretty sure are ideologically disjoint groups of people, and I gotta say, it makes me glad I skipped alot of his work. Racism is a hell of a drug. Was just talking with my mom this very morning about the anti italian racism in the early 20th century in the US and the subsequent change in perception of italians (especially southern, which I partially am) as "white". David Roediger wrote an excellent book on this from a labor standpoint, I need to finish it soon......
To be honest it’s slightly misused in the article, because Beard is from Cambridge, where “don” is less commonly used (or at least was when I was there 20 years ago). It’s more an Oxford word.
In my Cambridge college there is one 'dean' (not the same as the Master or Mistress of the college - who is essentially the figure-head of the college) - who is responsible for the students welfare. Any member of staff formally associated with the college is a 'fellow'. Each speciality have 'tutors' and 'senior tutors' as well as one 'director of studies'.
Wikipedia says that a 'don' would apply to a 'fellow' or 'tutor'.
Attenborough is deeply beloved but (and possibly because) few people would describe him as an "intellectual"; his career has been one of "professional" broadcaster but "enthusiastic amateur" naturalist.
(There's an interesting sub-discussion to be had here on what "intellectual" means in English public life and why it's not a popular category)
First of all, that's just the title. The substance of the article is not in its title, it's in its content.
Second, even considering the title alone, it's a trivial phrase, that is not supposed to mean much aside that she is among the most popular public intellectuals in Britain. Nobody put out a love-o-meter and measured who the "most beloved intellectual" is with a precision to judge who is #1 or #5 or anything.
Lastly, the denotation "intellectual" here is not meant to be about the hard sciences, I'd say. They'd say "scientist" if that was the case.
It's the eye-catching headline of an interesting article. HN has a policy of reproducing headlines more or less verbatim.
Favouring Brian Cox over Mary Beard is rather STEM-centric. He may be more your cup of tea, but I'm pretty sure that my wife, for example (who has a shelf of Mary Beard books) has never heard of him.
Please don’t add to that by making this your first comment from a new account. Help make HN the place you want it to be by submitting good articles, upvoting those you like, and making substantial comments.
I have read a small bit of Talebs work. He seems focused on haplogroups and genetics, which I find to be a Pandora's box. His book Black Swan I found very good, though I disliked his tone. I think everyone should read it because it discusses two kinds of knowledge, Techne versus Epistme. Techne is how to do a thing. Epistme is future prediction or past prediction. He claims man has a horrible track record at predicting and that due to the nature of the backwards process is likely just as bad at looking backwards. So in short It's odd to me Taleb is trying to look backwards.
How this relates to Hacker news? I believe it should be Techne focused and not Epistme focused.
> "How this relates to Hacker news? I believe it should be Techne focused and not Epistme focused."
The HN guidelines are pretty clear on what is considered on-topic:
> "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
> "If you think a submission or comment is inappropriate for HN, you can flag or downvote."
