Researchers from China and abroad are once again teaming up in an effort to solve a decades-old mystery over whether hundreds of blue-eyed residents from a village in Northwest China's Gansu Province could be the descendants of Roman soldiers.

The research is a prior project of the newly established Italian Cultural Research Center at Lanzhou University, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported Sunday.

The center is the first in Northwest China to focus on comparative studies and research into Chinese and Italian culture.

In 1957, sinologist Homer Dubs from Oxford University presented his idea that a group of Roman soldiers were captured by the Chinese army during the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) and sent to an area now known as Yongchang county in Gansu. He proposed that the Romans settled down there, and the people living in the area Monday are their descendants.

Hundreds of people living in the village have physical appearances similar to ancient Romans, including fair skin and blue eyes, according to the paper.

They are accustomed to eating a kind of pancake that is similar to a pizza, while many structures in the village resemble the architectural style of ancient Rome.

In 2006, the college of Health Sciences under Lanzhou University initiated a research project aimed at determining the origins of this group of people, but no conclusion was reached.

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