Explanation: Plenty of European cultures and languages directly owe their existence (or nonexistent, see: Gaul) to the actions of the Roman Empire. The idea is that colonialism apologists like to say colonialism is too far into the past for its effects to matter to African development (and therefore it’s not Europeans’ fault for stealing incomprehensible amounts of wealth from the continent) while speaking in languages that wouldn’t exist if not for nonsense a some Italians got up to millennia ago.