Asian in Italy 2,000 years ago, Canadian team discovers
Canwest News ServiceFebruary 2, 2010

A team of Canadian archeologists working in Italy has unearthed a 2,000-year-old set of bones that shouldn't be there. The male skeleton with DNA from East Asia -- buried at a time when the Roman Empire had no direct contact with civilizations in the Far East -- is forcing scholars to re-examine what they thought they knew about the first century following the birth of Jesus Christ. The Asian man's grave was found in a cemetery at Vagnari, which experts have determined was the site of an imperial estate. Seventy-five skeletons from the first, second and third centuries AD have been excavated at the estate in a project led by McMaster University archeologist Tracy Prowse. A tooth recovered from the man's grave was used to trace his roots. "The work being done at the site is showing us that there was considerable economic activity going on in the area, and this activity had connections beyond Italy's borders. It is changing our understanding of the economic and political history of the region," Prowse said.
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