The re-release of an old BBC cartoon documentary about life in Roman Britain has sparked controversy for its depiction of a dark-skinned man. It seems that the very existence of an animated black father as the patriarch of a fictional Roman Britain family was enough to spark a twitter war of intellectuals between Infowars editor, Paul Joseph Watson who argued that the depiction is historically incorrect.
Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse.
I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right? pic.twitter.com/SqE83Pmf2h
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 25, 2017
Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, who asserted that the depiction of ethnic diversity in Roman Britain is actually historically accurate.
this is indeed pretty accurate, there's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain https://t.co/hC4rdwbQL7
— mary beard (@wmarybeard) July 25, 2017
And with that, the battle began. It wasn't long before philosopher and cultural critic, Nassim Nicholas Taleb piped up to refute Beard's claim that a mixed family could have ever existed in Roman Britain.
Some ignorance on the part of Ms Beard: classifying Pple of Tiddis, Roman times "nonwhite" equiv. to classifying London Italians as such
— NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) August 3, 2017
The argument quickly devolved from history to DNA to all out personal attacks. All this theoretical ballyhoo over a cartoon, ya'll. Can we live?
