So I came across this article (REMOVED BECAUSE APPARENTLY PEOPLE GOT MALWARE? 0_o) while searching for the Lost Roman legion in Britain and thought it was super interesting but probably not super accurate.
Thought I'd ask anyone here if they know more about this :) I searched it on Reddit's terrible search function and the only result I found had comments saying it was probably busted but not much conclusiveness.
Thanks guys and gals :)
Edit: I didn't get any malware or virus when i went to it sorry guys :/ it's on the first page of google so it shouldn't be anything risky...
There is no truth to the idea of a city of Roman legionaries in China. However, it is within the realm of possibility - but not within the realm of provable history - that a number of Roman prisoners of war who were transferred to the eastern border of Parthia may have gone on to travel to, clash with, and perhaps settle in, China. As these soldiers didn't create any evidence that has stood the test of time, it's impossible to say credibly whether any Legionaries made it to China.
The primary piece of evidence in this case, and the source of the theory in academia, is an account by Ban Gu, a Chinese historian, of a group of men fighting in Roman formation under a warlord who resisted the Han. This theory is fairly unpopular in modern scholarship - simply put, there is no evidence that these men were Roman, only that they fought in a formation that may be similar to the Testudo. Similarly, it has been alleged that some villagers in Liqian were of Roman descent, but as far as I'm aware that is, again, circumstantial and not backed up in any way by the archaeological record.
The wikipedia page on Sino-Roman Relations provides a solid overview, and the academic publication that first purported the "Legionaries in China" theory is:
Homer H. Dubs: "An Ancient Military Contact between Romans and Chinese", The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 62, No. 3 (1941), pp. 322-330.
This thread has a lot of good answers. The answer is almost certainly not, based on DNA evidence, unlikeliness, and drawing pretty far fetched conclusions from the limited "evidence".
Yeah Idk guys the last thing I wanted was to risk anyones (including my) computer haha truly sorry guys. If you type "lost chinese roman legion" into google it's on the first page and i think googles sensor bots take that into account when assigning order but yeah not super sure..