Zhelaizhai in Gansu, the ancient city of Liqian, 7,000 kilometers from Rome
Alessandro13 Zhelaizhai is an isolated village (the nearest city is more than 300 kilometers away) on the edge of the Gobi Desert; the ancient Silk Road passed through here. It was 1955 when Homer H. Dubs, professor of Chinese history at Oxford University, developed a theory that he would publish two years later in the book "A Roman City in Ancient China". The inhabitants - he claims - descend from the 6,000 Romans taken prisoner by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae (eastern Turkey), in which the legions of Marcus Licinius Crassus were destroyed. Pliny recounts that one of these, led by Marcus Crassus, the general's firstborn, ended up deported to what is now Uzbekistan; but when 33 years later the Romans and Parthians signed peace and returned the prisoners, it had vanished into thin air. In China, meanwhile, the chronicles of the Han Empire report that when in 36 BC the Han army destroyed that of General Jzh Jzh of the Hun dynasty, it took prisoner a large g...