I've never understood why people have this idea that people in the past didn't move around. I love how science shows people just how wrong they are. Thanks for sharing!
Nationalism. They're very heavily invested in the idea that Nation States are a natural, inevitable and unchanging things that have always existed. Rather than things that people have made up as a convenient form of political organisation, and that we're free to adapt, change and redefine to meet our new needs as our world changes.
Also, there's that English legend of juvenile Jesus travelling to England on a boat with his (step) dad, so Near Eastern trade is firmly part of English Christian folklore. "And did those feet in ancient times" and all that. The irony of xenophobes singing this reverently in church...
I don't know how widely this applies but there were periods of history when the majority of people were peasants / serfs who could not move without the local nobility's permission. And I believe like many such things it's actually an Early Modern state of affairs - closer to recent memory. So that may be one of the reasons people think that: that state of affairs did create rather sedentary populations. (Obviously it still does not mean no one moved. Just that it did create people very tightly connected to the spot of land they and their ancestors were born in who would give rise to that perception.)
I love your videos, especially in this one, I could be sitting across from you in a pub having a chat, I think you’re an excellent communicator. The framing and audio are great and the subject is (as always) fascinating. Thank you.
The Venn diagram of people in the UK proud of their Anglo-Saxon heritage and those against immigration makes me realize how powerful cognitive dissonance is. Good work, Jimmy. (I don't know if that diagram exists, but I'm pretty sure the overlap is big)
I wasn´t personally involved in this - a classmate was - but since you asked for more examples ... There is a fascinating series of studies about Bell Beaker people in the Lech valley in southern Bavaria (headed by Philipp Stockhammer). Basically, it turns out that the community there had close ties to groups in Bohemia, hundreds of kilometres away, and regurarly send their sons to grow up there with what was presumably their mothers´families (there was a fairly specific age cutoff point which I can´t really remember off the top of my head, but since a lot of it was based on isotopes in milkteeth vs second teeth, I think it was around seven or so?). Then the boys returned with wives from the Bohemian settlement groups, once they were adults, and the cycle started over. I know at least some of this was published in English and if you or anyone else wants me to dig up references, feel free to ask. I´m just not going to do it right now, because it´s after midnight and I can´t keep my eyes open anymore^^
Here's an easy merch. A coffee cup that says "Nuance". Maybe the logo. Also, always nice to see a new vid. The nerdy enthusiasm is contagious. Pernicious even.
"See the Habsburgs" is perfection. And yes: for as long as people have traded, there has been migration; trade across entire continents is not only not new, it was never necessarily infrequent.
Fascinating indeed. I feel a sort of kindship to these people, you see I was born in Argentina in 1976 and was forced to flee the country with my mother when I was 2 because of the then dictatorship. I arived in England by way of France in 1982 and grew up in London. After my degree was done I came back to my country in 1998, where I have lived ever since. I feel very priveleged to have been brought up over there, England forged me, and as much as I love my country and am proud to be from here and my kids to have been born here, I am partly brittish, through upbringing and pertinance. The spirit of Britain is beautiful and unique, should be cherished and honoured. It is a deep soul with a timeless pulse Been visiting your channel for years, always a pleasure, tah.
The different isotopes of oxygen being a means to determine where people grew up is awesome and so incredible fascinating to me. It tickles some chemistry class memories in the back of my brain. Can't wait to go down that rabbithole🤓
Fascinating is right! Thank you for sharing. As an American historian with Britsh and Northern European roots, I loved this! In many ways human=migrant. The sooner we stop seeing this as threatening and find the cool factor in all this the better of we will be!
As someone who is currently working in the TTRPG space I run into the "There were no black people in Europe, its not historicity accurate" BS a lot, mostly from OSR enthusiasts. Every time I see it I face palm and roll my eyes. If they actually took the time to learn real history they would know that that is just nonsense. Not that they care all that much for actual history or archeology, the reality of this kind of behaver is it simply a way to LARP that there are no black or brown people around.
When people have merch that includes an embroidered logo, you can sell the logo on its own as a patch, or have it sewn on to a beanie. I think that would be very on brand. Lovely to see you so enthusiastic (the best videos are full of enthusiasm). Hope this joy continues to inspire you throughout 2025!
There's an Icelandic saga that talks about Anglo-Saxon refugees from the Norman Conquest sailing to Constantinople, becoming Varangian Guards and being rewarded with land on the coast of the Black Sea, which they called 'New England'. There's debate about the historicity of the story, but there were definitely plenty of Northern Europeans who made similar journeys. Or consider just the basic facts about the Vandal people. They came from somewhere in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, entered the Roman empire via Poland and wandered all over the place. They settled in the Roman part of Germany, visited Gaul and maybe Italy and Britain and then moved to Iberia for a while until they were pushed out by the Visigoths. They then crossed into North Africa and wandered across modern Morocco and Algeria before founding a kingdom in what is now Tunisia. When they famously sacked Rome in 455, they invaded by sea from Carthage. A lot of these movements all happened within the space of just a few decades in the 5th century. The most interesting people are open minded and adventurous. I absolutely love that there have always been open minded and adventurous people from all over the world that wanted to see new places and meet new people, and set off to the ends of the Earth. I'd much rather be descended from a global assortment of the boldest and most curious than just a long line of people who never left home and married their second cousins for generations.
@@kathilisi3019 I think one of the runic inscriptions is in Hagia Sofia. I even went there in 2023 and wanted to look for them, but the upstairs areas of the Mosque/ Church were closed for conservation work. It was still an amazing place to visit.
Far from an expert, but the reason the samples are taken from teeth is they are to only part of the body that can't be regenerated. The isotope ratios you incorporate in utero and as an infant are locked into the structure of your teeth and don't change over time while those in bone and soft tissue will more closely match what you've been ingesting more recently.
I recently traced my family tree back pretty far. I have Chinese ancestors that slowly moved west in China, then eventually had relations with people in Kazakhstan, Armenia, Türkiye, Greece, France, England, Wales, Scotland, and then Canada leading up to me.
So Jimmy is a professional RUclipsr. Right---we need to feed the algorithm! If every reader left "like" and a comment, that would make a huge difference. Let's do it!
one of my favourite historical facts of all time is that one time moroccan coins minted by the abbasid caliph ended up circulating in the kingdom of mercia, and king offa was so impressed with them he figured hed ape the design. he didnt realise, though, that the cool squiggles he thought were so visually striking were actually words in arabic script, so while it is copied poorly by someone who clearly did not know that it was words, offa issued coins that said on them "there is no god but god and muhammad is the prophet of god" but yeah, for sure, everywhere before modern times was an isolated monoculture. that definitely holds up with even the smallest amount of research
Even better some of Offa's coins bearing the Shahada (the "There is no God except God and Muhammad (saws) is God's messenger" is called the Shahada and is the Islamic declaration of faith) were sent as gifts to the Pope. A Christian monarch accidentally gifted the Pope coinage inscribed with a core pillar of Islam because he thought Islamic coinage was cool and aesthetically pleasing. (edited for grammar)
I’ve always found the movement of humans fascinating! As a religious person - when you read the Bible, people were always moving about for many different reasons and it’s spoken about incidentally, so it must have been very normal!
*Thanks Jimmy for putting migration into historical perspective.* Perhaps because I left home at 17, and moved across the country at 19 I've never really understood the fear of migration...or immigration. Seems to me many young people have moved around the world over the centuries usually seeking a better life. Now if this video gets shared about a million times, it might make a difference in the US and the right leaning, anti-immigration EU countries over the coming years.
Very cool :) I do love it when we see things that show that other people were so much more like us than some might expect. We doodled in the margins, hid the pots with food burnt deep into, and we moved with our families or moved to make new families in new countries, now, and then.👍
Since my favourite reenactment display to do is "foreign merchant with all the silk you can eat" (usually a Sephardi Radhanite) I absolutely love seeing more data and recognition of how much people moved back in the early medieval period! One of my favourite things is just how much Islamic coins and other shiny goodies ended up in the Viking world and were clearly prized and used in fancy jewellery and even just as regular currency, not to mention the accounts of travellers like ibn Yaqub and ibn Fadlan that you've discussed before
I always think that its really cool, that just down the hill from my house where the Antonine Wall once stood there were hundreds of Syrian Archers stationed along it. I had read somewhere that its possible many intermarried with locals and stayed after reaching the end of their service. I think most went back down to Hadrians wall when the Antonine was abandoned, but there must have been a few still knocking about years later.
This is fascinating! Thanks for the video! My family comes from the Irish Moors that settled on the southern edge of Ireland. Unfortunately, all of the family that knew much about them are long since gone, so I don't have much more knowledge than this.
Merch: mugs/t shirts(one saying nuance seems to be on brand) would likely be good, if you have a way to do jewlery type stuff a small replica of an interesting archeological find or coin. But what I think would be fun would be small runs of fabric as a collaboration with artisan who could reproduce a facsimile of something that would be available in the viking era. Only available as a limited run thru your channel of course. Do be aware I have no idea how to do any of these or if they would be profitable. Also the science of oxygen isotopes is so interesting. Thank you for the reference paper. I think imigratigration/migration is fascinating as well. We are a very invasive species.
Isotopic oxygen testing is *SO* damn cool it's unreal. It's so precise we know that Ötzi grew up in the neighbouring valley, and then spent his adult life in the one his was found in. I often think about what my own dental isotopes would say about me.
The isotope analyses and genetic mapping done from Sigtuna and Birka are also super interesting for late viking age Swedish immigration! A notable percentage of people living in the biggest viking cities in all of sweden were first or second generation immigrants! Some from as far as the black sea. There are also many in there who were baltic finns based on grave goods... Worth looking into, to see how people moved around!
It is interesting how it has often been noted that the Welsh people can present with a darker cast to their features compared to their neighbours on the other side of Offa's Dyke - darker hair, slightly more olive skin. One such person would be Catherine Zeta-Jones, who people often speculate is mixed race, which is only true is you're going to define that as mixing Welsh and Irish (Efnysien apologists enter chat) - and it is fascinating to know that we have hard archeological evidence that supports the explanation that this is because of migration from Spain and other Mediterreanean communities. Also: "as much silk as you can eat" made me snort.
@@KateHistoryMysteries Yeah for people from the Mediterranean to single out the Silures as swarthy, it suggests that they really must have been notably dark.
Thanks Jimmy. Very fascinating topic. Just what i needed. buried under the quilt trying to keep warm with minus figures mixing with the snow from sunday. Getting down to minus 10 in the harrogate area tonight (wednesday) so looks like I'm stuck inside till at least the weekend. So got plenty of time to read and make things. Subject of merch, I'm partial to t-shirts, mugs and stickers. Design wise I'm thinking your logo, the dragon and "nuance". Also "question your sauces" 🙃
Yeah my brain is now going "I AM UHTRED SON OF UHTRED". Love the video (and the footnotes and corrections, much appreciated!) 🤓. In the Plantijn-Moretus museum in Antwerp, there are 16th century travel dictionaries and numismatic travel guides (because if you travel somewhere, you need to know about the coinage so you're not being ripped off).
I loved this episode and the proof that there was so much mixing of ethnicities in the Early Medieval period. I’d read in Peter Ackroyd’s book, Foundation about Hadrian and Saul but didn’t know that Bede wrote about them. The archaeology of Britain seems to turn up lots of cultural surprises. I love it that The Archer grave in Avesbury has been analyzed using the Isotope technology and found to have traveled back and forth from Gaul in the Neolithic.
👍👍♥️♥️ of course people have always been moving around. Love watching when you are so excited about the topics! Really looking forward to the podcast 🎉
Hold my cuppa, I’m going to do a deep dive on those links! Absolutely fascinating stuff. Thanks Jimmy, you have given even more food for thought. Stay warm (you rock the VicFish look btw!)
SO enjoy your channel. And yes, if you are not in a fairly large or important city public transport is very much borked in the States. And I love that high members of the church were not fish-belly white. (I am fish-belly white)
Now that I know oxygen isotope analysis is a thing, I'm immediately fascinated. Since DNA can only tell you so much, the idea that your teeth record where you grew up is so cool and kind of beautiful (despite it involving the outside bones). I love that if my corpse is still here thousands of years from now, people would know I grew up drinking some of the most delicious water in the world, Alaska well water. Merch ideas - definitely agree the word nuance should make an appearance. Also, since part of your brand is smacking your metaphorical rolled-up newspaper on the noses of racists using non-historical ideas about Old Norse culture to justify their beliefs, I'd dig a cooler version of "Vikings are not your Nazi fantasy". That's not remotely catchy - I'm hoping you or someone else in the comments can riff a way better version.
This is so fascinating! I absolutely love this kind of topic; Knowing people have always moved and mingled is something so beautiful, especially in a world filled with media that seems determined to pit us against one another. Diolch yn fawr!
Isotopic oxygen in teeth to track people is *incredibly* cool. "Pink and milk texture" is both an accurate and vaguely horrific way to describe skin. My mom's ancestry is pretty much all of northern europe and england while my dad's is the entire coast of the mediterranean and ireland. As such, I am that pink milk texture until I'm in the sun for 5 minutes and then I'm a tanned green olive 😂 I really dont understand why racists choose racism rather than wonder. The movement of people around the world is so cool. Different cultures embracing each other rather than exploiting each other would just be so, so much better
I do enjoy tell people (yes those people) about sub saharan people record in Tudor england (no not as slaves) or how the Royal Navy in Nelson's time had black sailors. Then the Jews from the middle east (their treatment being mixed depending on the era) as well as Ottomans! Yes these communities may have been small but so was the population. Diolch yn fawr.
I mean, for merch, you could slap your channel logo and name onto anything with the text 'neuance' under it/on the opposite side of the item 🤷♂ I'd buy that coffee mug :D
Excellent video! As the granddaughter of immigrants, it's always good to hear more evidence of how much of a melting-pot this island has always been (I do always wonder which half of me the xenophobes would deport...) Also, NUANCE badges for merch. Maybe with a dragon. I need one for my hoodie. Please and thank you.
That was really interesting. I always enjoy your videos. Most books on surnames say that the name Morris possibly derived from the person having a dark complexion i.e. Moorish.
Great video, thank you. If you sell shirts, please consider union made or fair trade, with 100 percent natural fibers. It is so hard to find brand new shirts that haven't been made in some awful sweat shop. And synthetics are difficult to recycle.
Damn IMMIGRANTS! Bringing their horoscopes, so now we have to have those 'what sign are YOU?' conversations!🤣🤣 Lovely video, Jimmy!♥️👍 Also, fascinating that the Bishop of Canterbury was a non-white person, and it doesn't seem to have been an issue in any way (back then!). I'm sure the racists will come out of the woodwork to have an issue with it now...🤦
Folks really got around. I told my daughter that she can't afford to be prejudiced, cause there are few places our ancestors aren't from. We do the best we can.
Superb video (as always!)! I have always had a feeling that something like this was the case, but it's great to hear that we now have ways of verifying it. Talking of crap public transport in the U.S.: on my little island (which is actually quite large in certain respects!) northwest of Seattle, we have one of two free public transport systems in the U.S., and it's actually very good! It is possible to do a full loop onto the mainland (with the help of a ferry on the south end of the island, which is free for foot passengers going to the mainland!) and barely onto the smaller island that's also a part of our county, with two intermediary bus services that cost money (around $1-2) that would be about a 150-ish mile journey, the majority of which would be on the free buses...it would take about five hours, and for reasons that aren't "just seeing if it would work," I've nearly done the full circuit a few times. Fifteen years ago, one of the legs that would be on another paid bus service now wasn't an issue, because there was a free bus on that leg as well, but it was eliminated due to inter-county non-competition agreements, unfortunately. But in any case...!
We tend to project our desires for the present onto the past. Those desires usually carry a very heavy political weight depending on whose voices are getting past algorithms in our modern world. So this kind of historical reality check is a very important!
The Byzantine Empire was a big thing in history that is generally ignored in western history. It was the continuation of Rome and would appeal to Britons. As we now, they also recruited Vikings.
I'm half Chinese, half English, and the centuries old family history of migration on both sides of my family means that my genetics have travelled and settled, and eventually travelled again, across a huge swath of Eurasia within the past
Another key point is that Romans didnt invent roads, many of the roads they used predated the Romans. Some of the techniques credited to the Romans also predated them or were also in use by their neighbors. The Romans certainly used roads effectively but they often used existing networks.
Leaving a comment to feed the algorithm, and making it useful too. I studied historical linguistics, predominant Old English and related languages like Old Frisian and further afield Old Norse. The stories, histories and later on romances are full of immigrants, too. And there's no reason to think 'they were all fictional' - why'd you feature, for instance, Saracen knights converted to Christianity if they do not give representation or aren't relatable to the audience? So many scholars and church leaders came from around the Mediterranean that I had a professor refer to them as 'belonged to Club Med.' By the way, why still use 'Anglo-Saxon' as a designator? As a Frisian I want a word and I guess the Jutes want one too. Northumbrians feel left out, and the Mercians are a bit miffed.
As a casual observer and not a scholar, I would be quite interested in hearing if these foreign dialects added anything to the local dialect of the day. Has any research been done on word origins in Welsh as it has in English?
I'm writing a TV pilot at the minute about King Arthur, combining the best bits of the Sub-Roman warlord type Arthur and the later high medieval king Arthur along with all the magical aspects. I already knew that there were people from Africa and the Middle East serving in the legions stationed in Britain, but I was also surprised to learn that there are non-white characters in the later legends too, so I've incorporated that aspect as well. Thus, we have a Nubian Pallamedes, an Avar Sagrimor, a bi-racial Berber-Breton Peredur, a bi-racial Palestinian-Briton Danbran and an Arabic Vivian to name but a few. Obviously, I took some licence with aspects of it, but regardless, both history and legend back up the presence of non-white populations in Britain prior to modern times, so the anti-woke crowd can eat shit. Diolch yn fawr as always, Jimmy.
@MrSinclairn actually, it was pretty helpful in figuring out how to properly present the world. Plus, unlike the Warlord Chronicles, the magical aspects are unambiguous. As always, if people can grasp dragons and wizards, they can grasp people with dark skin living in European settings provided the world building speaks for itself. That's the real issue with the way TV and film approaches diversity; robbing it of context rationality that might not be known to a way person, not the castings themselves.
That is very awesome. I've known of OIA before, read some studies using it and they have all been fascinating! Unfortunately I have zero understanding of how it actually works. It sounds logical, but don't ask me to explain it in my own words. I will fail and some scientist will cringe. I've known that people traveled around a lot, I have a slight fascination with trade routes and trading, but I didn't know many people also settled! That is so cool to know. Logical too, it's what still happens in essence and humans will always human. Also, fun tidbit regarding your fisherman outfit; I've played a lot of Dredge listening to you, so for me the outfit was very on topic! (and I have permanently associated Sospan Fach with Dredge now oops)
This is great! It’s amazing to me how people think that in the past, you couldn’t get around without a horse, etc. And I love learning that places were more diverse than people thought. It makes life so much more interesting when we’re not all the same. Some of my Norwegian ancestors (Mom’s side) were originally from Finland, on the border with Russia. When their reindeer herds kept getting poached by the Russians in the 1700’s, they fled on foot across northern Scandinavia with their remaining reindeer, sleds, lavu (like teepees), and the implements for a forge, to the far coast of what is now Norway. One of my paternal great grandfathers, in the 1870’s, was forced to fight in an Austro-Hungarian Empire war he didn’t agree with, and was made to march from Slovakia to the Balkans. He and a friend escaped that war and went on foot, from the Balkans to the coast in northern Germany, in order to catch a ship to the US. For that matter, how many armies across the world have crossed and re-crossed huge distances on foot? How then should it be surprising that people did so in peacetime? Whether on a trading trip or in a permanent move, when people really want or need to move, they move.
I always found it weird that some people think of viking age Scandinavia as somehow ”isolated”. It wasn’t even long before the viking age. Guess what i thought watching the tv series ”Vikings” as they are told about this ”mysterious” country to the east ( Britain )? 😂
Already in the bronze age the southern Scandinavians had relations with the myceneans and Baltic amber has also been found in Egyptian graves. And the agriculture in the Nordic countries came from Anatolia, and then dont forget the Yamna people that also came to Scandinavia. And the early Iron Age, the Scandinavians worked as mecernaries in ancient Rome.
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I've never understood why people have this idea that people in the past didn't move around. I love how science shows people just how wrong they are. Thanks for sharing!
Yes! There was much more trade than we mostly think. And somebody brought it.
Nationalism. They're very heavily invested in the idea that Nation States are a natural, inevitable and unchanging things that have always existed. Rather than things that people have made up as a convenient form of political organisation, and that we're free to adapt, change and redefine to meet our new needs as our world changes.
@@chrisball3778that's so crazy though, when you look at historical maps that show entire countries move halfway across Eurasia.
Also, there's that English legend of juvenile Jesus travelling to England on a boat with his (step) dad, so Near Eastern trade is firmly part of English Christian folklore. "And did those feet in ancient times" and all that. The irony of xenophobes singing this reverently in church...
I don't know how widely this applies but there were periods of history when the majority of people were peasants / serfs who could not move without the local nobility's permission. And I believe like many such things it's actually an Early Modern state of affairs - closer to recent memory. So that may be one of the reasons people think that: that state of affairs did create rather sedentary populations.
(Obviously it still does not mean no one moved. Just that it did create people very tightly connected to the spot of land they and their ancestors were born in who would give rise to that perception.)
I love your videos, especially in this one, I could be sitting across from you in a pub having a chat, I think you’re an excellent communicator. The framing and audio are great and the subject is (as always) fascinating. Thank you.
The Venn diagram of people in the UK proud of their Anglo-Saxon heritage and those against immigration makes me realize how powerful cognitive dissonance is. Good work, Jimmy.
(I don't know if that diagram exists, but I'm pretty sure the overlap is big)
I wasn´t personally involved in this - a classmate was - but since you asked for more examples ...
There is a fascinating series of studies about Bell Beaker people in the Lech valley in southern Bavaria (headed by Philipp Stockhammer). Basically, it turns out that the community there had close ties to groups in Bohemia, hundreds of kilometres away, and regurarly send their sons to grow up there with what was presumably their mothers´families (there was a fairly specific age cutoff point which I can´t really remember off the top of my head, but since a lot of it was based on isotopes in milkteeth vs second teeth, I think it was around seven or so?). Then the boys returned with wives from the Bohemian settlement groups, once they were adults, and the cycle started over.
I know at least some of this was published in English and if you or anyone else wants me to dig up references, feel free to ask. I´m just not going to do it right now, because it´s after midnight and I can´t keep my eyes open anymore^^
This sounds interesting to me!
Here's an easy merch. A coffee cup that says "Nuance". Maybe the logo.
Also, always nice to see a new vid. The nerdy enthusiasm is contagious. Pernicious even.
Oh yes, the people need “nuanced” merch! And definitely stuff yn cymraeg!
"See the Habsburgs" is perfection.
And yes: for as long as people have traded, there has been migration; trade across entire continents is not only not new, it was never necessarily infrequent.
16:53 - 😂😂 "as much silk as you can eat" oh I love your turn of mind 😅
I was not expecting to be ambushed by Hapsburg glamour shots on this video.
"DON'T LOOK AT THE CHIN!!!!"
Fascinating indeed. I feel a sort of kindship to these people, you see I was born in Argentina in 1976 and was forced to flee the country with my mother when I was 2 because of the then dictatorship. I arived in England by way of France in 1982 and grew up in London. After my degree was done I came back to my country in 1998, where I have lived ever since.
I feel very priveleged to have been brought up over there, England forged me, and as much as I love my country and am proud to be from here and my kids to have been born here, I am partly brittish, through upbringing and pertinance. The spirit of Britain is beautiful and unique, should be cherished and honoured. It is a deep soul with a timeless pulse
Been visiting your channel for years, always a pleasure, tah.
It is really strange that some people think migration is a modern und thus "unnatural" phenomenon
The different isotopes of oxygen being a means to determine where people grew up is awesome and so incredible fascinating to me. It tickles some chemistry class memories in the back of my brain. Can't wait to go down that rabbithole🤓
My daughter asked me if we had roads when I was a child. I told her we walked to school on the Roman roads.
"... as much silk as you can eat" made me cackle!
What a way with words you have, Jimmy 😊
funny how many people these days seem to think that there have always been these borders and everyone stayed home.
The Doggerlanders had a pressing reason to leave their traditional lands. 😄👍
Fascinating is right! Thank you for sharing. As an American historian with Britsh and Northern European roots, I loved this! In many ways human=migrant. The sooner we stop seeing this as threatening and find the cool factor in all this the better of we will be!
As always, you bring us amazing facts from the past. Thanks for another fascinating look at history, Jimmy. Take care.
Thank you, Nancy!
Love that you break in to correct yourself instead of just leaving it. ❤
I'm a final year geology student and oxygen isotope analysis comes up a lot. I never knew it could be used this way - so cool!
As someone who is currently working in the TTRPG space I run into the "There were no black people in Europe, its not historicity accurate" BS a lot, mostly from OSR enthusiasts. Every time I see it I face palm and roll my eyes. If they actually took the time to learn real history they would know that that is just nonsense. Not that they care all that much for actual history or archeology, the reality of this kind of behaver is it simply a way to LARP that there are no black or brown people around.
What a rockin video! I agree with you that this is absolutely fascinanating as well as importnt infomation. Fabulous job Jimmy!
When people have merch that includes an embroidered logo, you can sell the logo on its own as a patch, or have it sewn on to a beanie. I think that would be very on brand.
Lovely to see you so enthusiastic (the best videos are full of enthusiasm). Hope this joy continues to inspire you throughout 2025!
Merch idea - patches/badges/pins. Because people on the move *love* patches, badges, and pins.
The Victorian fisherman look really works for you!
I half expected Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson to come stomping in to the room behind Jimmy.
There's an Icelandic saga that talks about Anglo-Saxon refugees from the Norman Conquest sailing to Constantinople, becoming Varangian Guards and being rewarded with land on the coast of the Black Sea, which they called 'New England'. There's debate about the historicity of the story, but there were definitely plenty of Northern Europeans who made similar journeys.
Or consider just the basic facts about the Vandal people. They came from somewhere in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, entered the Roman empire via Poland and wandered all over the place. They settled in the Roman part of Germany, visited Gaul and maybe Italy and Britain and then moved to Iberia for a while until they were pushed out by the Visigoths. They then crossed into North Africa and wandered across modern Morocco and Algeria before founding a kingdom in what is now Tunisia. When they famously sacked Rome in 455, they invaded by sea from Carthage. A lot of these movements all happened within the space of just a few decades in the 5th century.
The most interesting people are open minded and adventurous. I absolutely love that there have always been open minded and adventurous people from all over the world that wanted to see new places and meet new people, and set off to the ends of the Earth. I'd much rather be descended from a global assortment of the boldest and most curious than just a long line of people who never left home and married their second cousins for generations.
I haven't heard of "New England" by the black sea, but I've seen pictures of Viking rune graffiti on the walls of old buildings in Istanbul.
@@kathilisi3019 I think one of the runic inscriptions is in Hagia Sofia. I even went there in 2023 and wanted to look for them, but the upstairs areas of the Mosque/ Church were closed for conservation work. It was still an amazing place to visit.
I mean, I can't think of a bad Jimmy episode, but this one is a fantastic one. Very excited at the prospect of a podcast, as someone who drives a lot!
You mean that history isnt simple!? You mean... It's NUANCED!?
cool.
Far from an expert, but the reason the samples are taken from teeth is they are to only part of the body that can't be regenerated. The isotope ratios you incorporate in utero and as an infant are locked into the structure of your teeth and don't change over time while those in bone and soft tissue will more closely match what you've been ingesting more recently.
Ah, so that's why isotopes are able to be used to reconstruct cold case victims' lives - they still have soft tissues that formed later!
I recently traced my family tree back pretty far. I have Chinese ancestors that slowly moved west in China, then eventually had relations with people in Kazakhstan, Armenia, Türkiye, Greece, France, England, Wales, Scotland, and then Canada leading up to me.
So Jimmy is a professional RUclipsr. Right---we need to feed the algorithm! If every reader left "like" and a comment, that would make a huge difference. Let's do it!
5:50 Unusual chat up lines. "Hey babe, why don't you and I genetically diversify this population?"
one of my favourite historical facts of all time is that one time moroccan coins minted by the abbasid caliph ended up circulating in the kingdom of mercia, and king offa was so impressed with them he figured hed ape the design. he didnt realise, though, that the cool squiggles he thought were so visually striking were actually words in arabic script, so while it is copied poorly by someone who clearly did not know that it was words, offa issued coins that said on them "there is no god but god and muhammad is the prophet of god"
but yeah, for sure, everywhere before modern times was an isolated monoculture. that definitely holds up with even the smallest amount of research
Even better some of Offa's coins bearing the Shahada (the "There is no God except God and Muhammad (saws) is God's messenger" is called the Shahada and is the Islamic declaration of faith) were sent as gifts to the Pope. A Christian monarch accidentally gifted the Pope coinage inscribed with a core pillar of Islam because he thought Islamic coinage was cool and aesthetically pleasing.
(edited for grammar)
Fascinating. Also, love the line “inbreeding is bad: See the Hapsburgs.” Is classic and should go on a shirt.
I’ve always found the movement of humans fascinating! As a religious person - when you read the Bible, people were always moving about for many different reasons and it’s spoken about incidentally, so it must have been very normal!
*Thanks Jimmy for putting migration into historical perspective.*
Perhaps because I left home at 17, and moved across the country at 19 I've never really understood the fear of migration...or immigration.
Seems to me many young people have moved around the world over the centuries usually seeking a better life.
Now if this video gets shared about a million times, it might make a difference in the US and the right leaning, anti-immigration EU countries over the coming years.
You know it's a hell of a video when you gotta pause to just absorb all the info for a sec
I do that with all of his videos 🤣
Very cool :)
I do love it when we see things that show that other people were so much more like us than some might expect. We doodled in the margins, hid the pots with food burnt deep into, and we moved with our families or moved to make new families in new countries, now, and then.👍
Since my favourite reenactment display to do is "foreign merchant with all the silk you can eat" (usually a Sephardi Radhanite) I absolutely love seeing more data and recognition of how much people moved back in the early medieval period! One of my favourite things is just how much Islamic coins and other shiny goodies ended up in the Viking world and were clearly prized and used in fancy jewellery and even just as regular currency, not to mention the accounts of travellers like ibn Yaqub and ibn Fadlan that you've discussed before
"As much silk as you can eat!" What a deal! 😆
Ah, paid in “as much silk as you can eat”
I always think that its really cool, that just down the hill from my house where the Antonine Wall once stood there were hundreds of Syrian Archers stationed along it. I had read somewhere that its possible many intermarried with locals and stayed after reaching the end of their service. I think most went back down to Hadrians wall when the Antonine was abandoned, but there must have been a few still knocking about years later.
Merch idea: I would LOVE a shirt or even better a hoodie, that just says Nuance on it, maybe with the dragon on your intro card as a bonus :D
What about those pink mittens?
I Could Listen To You All Day! I Love How You Light Up When Talking About All The Fascinating ‘Old News’ 😂 xo
This is fascinating! Thanks for the video! My family comes from the Irish Moors that settled on the southern edge of Ireland. Unfortunately, all of the family that knew much about them are long since gone, so I don't have much more knowledge than this.
One of my top favorite videos of yours! So cool, so informative, and so simple!
Yes! This one really was exceptional. Both in subject matter and in presentation. Jimmy, you are an absolute treasure ❤
Merch: mugs/t shirts(one saying nuance seems to be on brand) would likely be good, if you have a way to do jewlery type stuff a small replica of an interesting archeological find or coin. But what I think would be fun would be small runs of fabric as a collaboration with artisan who could reproduce a facsimile of something that would be available in the viking era. Only available as a limited run thru your channel of course. Do be aware I have no idea how to do any of these or if they would be profitable.
Also the science of oxygen isotopes is so interesting. Thank you for the reference paper.
I think imigratigration/migration is fascinating as well. We are a very invasive species.
*GASP* a Welsh Viking coin would be amazing!
As a perk, "all the silk you can eat..."! Who could resist?
Isotopic oxygen testing is *SO* damn cool it's unreal. It's so precise we know that Ötzi grew up in the neighbouring valley, and then spent his adult life in the one his was found in. I often think about what my own dental isotopes would say about me.
The isotope analyses and genetic mapping done from Sigtuna and Birka are also super interesting for late viking age Swedish immigration! A notable percentage of people living in the biggest viking cities in all of sweden were first or second generation immigrants! Some from as far as the black sea. There are also many in there who were baltic finns based on grave goods... Worth looking into, to see how people moved around!
It is interesting how it has often been noted that the Welsh people can present with a darker cast to their features compared to their neighbours on the other side of Offa's Dyke - darker hair, slightly more olive skin. One such person would be Catherine Zeta-Jones, who people often speculate is mixed race, which is only true is you're going to define that as mixing Welsh and Irish (Efnysien apologists enter chat) - and it is fascinating to know that we have hard archeological evidence that supports the explanation that this is because of migration from Spain and other Mediterreanean communities.
Also: "as much silk as you can eat" made me snort.
Even the Romans said that those in southern Wales (Silures) looked like Spanish tribes they knew.
@@KateHistoryMysteries Yeah for people from the Mediterranean to single out the Silures as swarthy, it suggests that they really must have been notably dark.
Thanks Jimmy. Very fascinating topic.
Just what i needed. buried under the quilt trying to keep warm with minus figures mixing with the snow from sunday. Getting down to minus 10 in the harrogate area tonight (wednesday) so looks like I'm stuck inside till at least the weekend. So got plenty of time to read and make things.
Subject of merch, I'm partial to t-shirts, mugs and stickers. Design wise I'm thinking your logo, the dragon and "nuance". Also "question your sauces" 🙃
Yeah my brain is now going "I AM UHTRED SON OF UHTRED". Love the video (and the footnotes and corrections, much appreciated!) 🤓. In the Plantijn-Moretus museum in Antwerp, there are 16th century travel dictionaries and numismatic travel guides (because if you travel somewhere, you need to know about the coinage so you're not being ripped off).
I loved this episode and the proof that there was so much mixing of ethnicities in the Early Medieval period. I’d read in Peter Ackroyd’s book, Foundation about Hadrian and Saul but didn’t know that Bede wrote about them. The archaeology of Britain seems to turn up lots of cultural surprises. I love it that The Archer grave in Avesbury has been analyzed using the Isotope technology and found to have traveled back and forth from Gaul in the Neolithic.
👍👍♥️♥️ of course people have always been moving around. Love watching when you are so excited about the topics! Really looking forward to the podcast 🎉
Podcast?! That is the best news I've heard today!
Hold my cuppa, I’m going to do a deep dive on those links! Absolutely fascinating stuff. Thanks Jimmy, you have given even more food for thought. Stay warm (you rock the VicFish look btw!)
SO enjoy your channel. And yes, if you are not in a fairly large or important city public transport is very much borked in the States. And I love that high members of the church were not fish-belly white. (I am fish-belly white)
I glow in the dark 😊
Now that I know oxygen isotope analysis is a thing, I'm immediately fascinated. Since DNA can only tell you so much, the idea that your teeth record where you grew up is so cool and kind of beautiful (despite it involving the outside bones). I love that if my corpse is still here thousands of years from now, people would know I grew up drinking some of the most delicious water in the world, Alaska well water.
Merch ideas - definitely agree the word nuance should make an appearance. Also, since part of your brand is smacking your metaphorical rolled-up newspaper on the noses of racists using non-historical ideas about Old Norse culture to justify their beliefs, I'd dig a cooler version of "Vikings are not your Nazi fantasy". That's not remotely catchy - I'm hoping you or someone else in the comments can riff a way better version.
Just let us know when to show up for the podcast. 🎉
Another fascinating video, thanks Jimmy!
This is so fascinating! I absolutely love this kind of topic; Knowing people have always moved and mingled is something so beautiful, especially in a world filled with media that seems determined to pit us against one another. Diolch yn fawr!
Your videos are awesome for inspiring research rabbit holes! Oxygen isotopes are mind-blowing as an archeological tool 🤯
Isotopic oxygen in teeth to track people is *incredibly* cool.
"Pink and milk texture" is both an accurate and vaguely horrific way to describe skin. My mom's ancestry is pretty much all of northern europe and england while my dad's is the entire coast of the mediterranean and ireland. As such, I am that pink milk texture until I'm in the sun for 5 minutes and then I'm a tanned green olive 😂
I really dont understand why racists choose racism rather than wonder. The movement of people around the world is so cool. Different cultures embracing each other rather than exploiting each other would just be so, so much better
I do enjoy tell people (yes those people) about sub saharan people record in Tudor england (no not as slaves) or how the Royal Navy in Nelson's time had black sailors. Then the Jews from the middle east (their treatment being mixed depending on the era) as well as Ottomans!
Yes these communities may have been small but so was the population.
Diolch yn fawr.
There was that John Blanke guy, wasn’t there? He was a court musician who performed for the King and even asked him for a payraise (which he got!)
I mean, for merch, you could slap your channel logo and name onto anything with the text 'neuance' under it/on the opposite side of the item 🤷♂ I'd buy that coffee mug :D
Excellent video! As the granddaughter of immigrants, it's always good to hear more evidence of how much of a melting-pot this island has always been (I do always wonder which half of me the xenophobes would deport...)
Also, NUANCE badges for merch. Maybe with a dragon. I need one for my hoodie. Please and thank you.
I recently read the book River Kings by Cat Jarman and it talks about the isotopes in teeth. It's fascinating.
That was really interesting. I always enjoy your videos. Most books on surnames say that the name Morris possibly derived from the person having a dark complexion i.e. Moorish.
You look wonderful as a Victorian fisherman.
Those people must have had a really good reason to give up the Mediterranean climate and food for Wales.
Great video, thank you. If you sell shirts, please consider union made or fair trade, with 100 percent natural fibers. It is so hard to find brand new shirts that haven't been made in some awful sweat shop. And synthetics are difficult to recycle.
Agreed
Due to your habit of wearing collared shirts, your Victorian sailor get up looks relatively modern 😂
Damn IMMIGRANTS! Bringing their horoscopes, so now we have to have those 'what sign are YOU?' conversations!🤣🤣
Lovely video, Jimmy!♥️👍 Also, fascinating that the Bishop of Canterbury was a non-white person, and it doesn't seem to have been an issue in any way (back then!). I'm sure the racists will come out of the woodwork to have an issue with it now...🤦
This was fascinating and so fun to watch! Thank you for sharing your knowledge 😊
Folks really got around. I told my daughter that she can't afford to be prejudiced, cause there are few places our ancestors aren't from.
We do the best we can.
Fascinating and insightful! This would make a fantastic BBC4 documentary. Dickie of Bishy Road
Merch idea. Your Welsh Dragon one proper 12oz coffee mug, and yes it will work for tea, cider, or cocoa.
This is fascinating! Thank you so much. Glad you got to do some fun research😊
Yes on the merch! What about your friend who designed your opening dragon animation for cool something’s or others? Also YES! on the podcast!
Superb video (as always!)!
I have always had a feeling that something like this was the case, but it's great to hear that we now have ways of verifying it.
Talking of crap public transport in the U.S.: on my little island (which is actually quite large in certain respects!) northwest of Seattle, we have one of two free public transport systems in the U.S., and it's actually very good! It is possible to do a full loop onto the mainland (with the help of a ferry on the south end of the island, which is free for foot passengers going to the mainland!) and barely onto the smaller island that's also a part of our county, with two intermediary bus services that cost money (around $1-2) that would be about a 150-ish mile journey, the majority of which would be on the free buses...it would take about five hours, and for reasons that aren't "just seeing if it would work," I've nearly done the full circuit a few times. Fifteen years ago, one of the legs that would be on another paid bus service now wasn't an issue, because there was a free bus on that leg as well, but it was eliminated due to inter-county non-competition agreements, unfortunately. But in any case...!
Fascinating stuff Jimmy, thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you!
We tend to project our desires for the present onto the past. Those desires usually carry a very heavy political weight depending on whose voices are getting past algorithms in our modern world. So this kind of historical reality check is a very important!
Great topic, needs to be widely publicised as so few understand that immigration is not new
The Byzantine Empire was a big thing in history that is generally ignored in western history. It was the continuation of Rome and would appeal to Britons. As we now, they also recruited Vikings.
I'm half Chinese, half English, and the centuries old family history of migration on both sides of my family means that my genetics have travelled and settled, and eventually travelled again, across a huge swath of Eurasia within the past
Another key point is that Romans didnt invent roads, many of the roads they used predated the Romans. Some of the techniques credited to the Romans also predated them or were also in use by their neighbors. The Romans certainly used roads effectively but they often used existing networks.
Measuring isotopic O2 is very, very cool. Love it!
Honestly, I think small merch like keychain and stickers would be cool!
Lovely video, yesterday's click bait definitely worked 😆. Interesting bit of (un)-related info: there's also a Roman British Martyr named... Socrates!
Really fascinating video, I’d love to see a look at this in the later medieval period too
Thank you, Jimmy. I really needed that today.
Excellent video! Let us know when the podcast starts, since that'll be an auto-sub!
Thank you for this Jimmy! It was very insightful and I know got some fools undies in a bunch. Keep being awesome and knowledgeable.
Thanks Jimmy - I feel smarter this evening thanks to your video.
Leaving a comment to feed the algorithm, and making it useful too.
I studied historical linguistics, predominant Old English and related languages like Old Frisian and further afield Old Norse. The stories, histories and later on romances are full of immigrants, too. And there's no reason to think 'they were all fictional' - why'd you feature, for instance, Saracen knights converted to Christianity if they do not give representation or aren't relatable to the audience? So many scholars and church leaders came from around the Mediterranean that I had a professor refer to them as 'belonged to Club Med.'
By the way, why still use 'Anglo-Saxon' as a designator? As a Frisian I want a word and I guess the Jutes want one too. Northumbrians feel left out, and the Mercians are a bit miffed.
As a casual observer and not a scholar, I would be quite interested in hearing if these foreign dialects added anything to the local dialect of the day. Has any research been done on word origins in Welsh as it has in English?
I'm writing a TV pilot at the minute about King Arthur, combining the best bits of the Sub-Roman warlord type Arthur and the later high medieval king Arthur along with all the magical aspects. I already knew that there were people from Africa and the Middle East serving in the legions stationed in Britain, but I was also surprised to learn that there are non-white characters in the later legends too, so I've incorporated that aspect as well. Thus, we have a Nubian Pallamedes, an Avar Sagrimor, a bi-racial Berber-Breton Peredur, a bi-racial Palestinian-Briton Danbran and an Arabic Vivian to name but a few. Obviously, I took some licence with aspects of it, but regardless, both history and legend back up the presence of non-white populations in Britain prior to modern times, so the anti-woke crowd can eat shit. Diolch yn fawr as always, Jimmy.
You seemed to have miss MGM+/ITV X one season's failed adaptation of Bernard Cornwell's 'THe Warlord Chronicles' ! 😐
That sounds very cool!, good luck with your pilot
@MrSinclairn actually, it was pretty helpful in figuring out how to properly present the world. Plus, unlike the Warlord Chronicles, the magical aspects are unambiguous. As always, if people can grasp dragons and wizards, they can grasp people with dark skin living in European settings provided the world building speaks for itself. That's the real issue with the way TV and film approaches diversity; robbing it of context rationality that might not be known to a way person, not the castings themselves.
@hircenedaelen thank you!
Sounds amazing!
Our world is freaking cool ! I think it was very weird for a native bizantine dude to go to England X)
Thanks for this video.
There was a TimeTeam dig in Breamore, Hampshire in 2001 which turned up a Byzantine Bucket from the 6th century
Can you imagine how cold they were! Poor folks 😆
That is very awesome. I've known of OIA before, read some studies using it and they have all been fascinating! Unfortunately I have zero understanding of how it actually works. It sounds logical, but don't ask me to explain it in my own words. I will fail and some scientist will cringe.
I've known that people traveled around a lot, I have a slight fascination with trade routes and trading, but I didn't know many people also settled! That is so cool to know. Logical too, it's what still happens in essence and humans will always human.
Also, fun tidbit regarding your fisherman outfit; I've played a lot of Dredge listening to you, so for me the outfit was very on topic! (and I have permanently associated Sospan Fach with Dredge now oops)
This is great! It’s amazing to me how people think that in the past, you couldn’t get around without a horse, etc. And I love learning that places were more diverse than people thought. It makes life so much more interesting when we’re not all the same.
Some of my Norwegian ancestors (Mom’s side) were originally from Finland, on the border with Russia. When their reindeer herds kept getting poached by the Russians in the 1700’s, they fled on foot across northern Scandinavia with their remaining reindeer, sleds, lavu (like teepees), and the implements for a forge, to the far coast of what is now Norway.
One of my paternal great grandfathers, in the 1870’s, was forced to fight in an Austro-Hungarian Empire war he didn’t agree with, and was made to march from Slovakia to the Balkans. He and a friend escaped that war and went on foot, from the Balkans to the coast in northern Germany, in order to catch a ship to the US.
For that matter, how many armies across the world have crossed and re-crossed huge distances on foot? How then should it be surprising that people did so in peacetime? Whether on a trading trip or in a permanent move, when people really want or need to move, they move.
Jimmy, "Inbreeding; see,the Hapsburgs."
Charles II, "Oi, Jimmy, you could have used Pandas as your example!"
I always found it weird that some people think of viking age Scandinavia as somehow ”isolated”.
It wasn’t even long before the viking age.
Guess what i thought watching the tv series ”Vikings” as they are told about this ”mysterious” country to the east ( Britain )? 😂
Already in the bronze age the southern Scandinavians had relations with the myceneans and Baltic amber has also been found in Egyptian graves. And the agriculture in the Nordic countries came from Anatolia, and then dont forget the Yamna people that also came to Scandinavia. And the early Iron Age, the Scandinavians worked as mecernaries in ancient Rome.
@ Yup! 👍