If Mary Beard is right, what's happened to the DNA of Africans from Roman Britain?

There are many reasons why a genetic legacy might not be seen in contemporary populations - Mary Beard was right to defend the BBC's cartoon

If you have been on social media at all for the last couple of weeks, you are likely aware of what may be one of the silliest controversies ever: whether a dark-skinned man should be present in a BBC cartoon for children about life in Roman Britain. Critics have raised multiple objections on the theme: whether dark skin was "typical" (even though no scholar has claimed that it was), what percentage of the population must be nonwhite before it can be called "diverse," and statements like this.

People upset by the cartoon have shifted goalposts, ignored or distorted cogent arguments, and mocked the knowledge of experts. It's been ugly, particularly the attacks on Professor Mary Beard, a renowned classicist. The theme uniting all these efforts is rhetoric accusing scholars and the BBC of "rewriting history" while simultaneously projecting contemporary notions of race backwards in time onto a society that didn't share them.