Hunt for Roman legion reaches China

LANZHOU - Anthropologists are looking into the possibility that some European-looking Chinese in Northwest China are the descendants of a lost army from the Roman Empire.

Experts at the newly established Italian Studies Center at Lanzhou University in Gansu province will conduct excavations on a section of the Silk Road, a 7,000-kilometer trade route that linked Asia and Europe more than 2,000 years ago, to see if a legion of Roman soldiers settled in China, said Yuan Honggeng, head of the center.

"We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China's early contact with the Roman Empire," said Yuan.