Hi, I've been very interested in medieval and ancient history as of late, along with this, a lot of history around Rome, it's battles, society, etc as I've mostly been a big WW1 onwards buff of history.

I keep seeing 2 answers to black people in Rome, and both of them are nonsense.

One side believes there were millions of black people living as kings, soldiers, peasants, and so on everywhere, even in Brittania and Gaul, and led the Romans to glory.

The other side just says, "Oh black people? Yeah, they didn't exist until 1500 lol ;)"

I've tried to look for actual studies, but everything is inconclusive or heavily biased. The most likely answer I've been able to find so far from actual studies and historical records from universities and archeological findings is that black people definitely existed in Rome and Egypt as immigration from Sudan and Ethiopia, plus slavery from West Africa and the Roman-Aksumite trade routes, but black populations even in Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, places relatively close and appealing for black people were not heavily populated, and probably had less than 2% of the population being black.

If someone would be so helpful as to include some actual studies and historical material so I can get a conclusive answer on this instead of "Black people? Didn't exist." or "Actually, every single emperor of Romeme was black :)"