Look up the recorded sub Saharan expeditions, really amazing stuff

I second @@michaelstevens9256 great suggestion. Absolutely wild read, if you haven't yet, you'll most certainly NOT be disappointed!

As it happens, I have a video on that topic coming relatively soon. Stay tuned...

@@toldinstone Wait really? Can you also cover Periplus of Erythrean Sea in that video? Your channel is amazing my friend!

They had detailed maps of India and Southeast Asia through what is now Thailand. Roman coins have been found in Vietnam and Japan.

Argh! You've reminded me of a nightmare weekend camping in Glentrool!

or a tory

Or a cranky in a Sturgeon you don't want that ever 😯😳🤭

@@paulbeard3238 the one who has won every election since 2014 and seen every other witless leader off...all together now...ding dong the union's dead...ding dong the wicked union's dead :) xx

Bloody midges !!!, what have the midges ever done for us ?.

the firth of forth sounds like a bad tongue twister lol.

@@CreateHarmony or anyone that knows anything about walls!!!!!

It's very well documented in fact and in every documentary on the topic of Rome in ancient Britain

I agree it should get more attention .People just think it ended at hadrians wall and it didn't..

@Phr34ky PHY The Antonine Wall was built of turf. A number of the Antonine Wall forts were built of stone too.

The Romans were turned off by the plaid kilts.

Lol I was about to comment “because the Scots were there and they didn’t have whiskey yet”

Also they found that the scottish had a habit of coming south and lurking around the area that would one day become kings cross. They would drink excessively and act belligerent to passers by. The scottish of today continue this tradition, with every single scottish emigrant south doing at least one “tour of duty” outside Kings Cross, clutching their cans of tennants and spesh.

LOL. Bravo!

@@finn013 thanks for the racism. Indyref2 please.

errand boy

Praise Dionysius

Ash, tell us more about the intimate relationship you have with your "errand boy".

Well said Tony

Yep totally agree. No 4 minute intro about "The land of queen Elizabeth was once a very different place...blablabla". Instead he immediately dives into the subject with the assumption that the listener has more than a middle school education. Told in Stone is truly a great channel

Well put. Consistent vibes of putting being a historian well before being another algorithm-chaser. Dude's cool

@@sdhflkjshdfskdhfskljdhf582 spoken even better than i. Was having difficulty getting the general idea of what I was trying to say into actual words But it always ends up too wordy. I like how you put it much better. Thank you lol.

Hear hear

Make sense

That’s very fair. With modern luxuries like radiators and electric lights, the winter can seem more like an annoyance or a gimmick than anything. For large fractions of the world’s current population nowadays and almost everyone just 200 years ago? The winter was hell. That was when your children died and you desperately attempted to stay warm and alive. Christmas and winter celebrations were a reminder of the good parts of life when they were all but gone. To go from the warm and temperate Italy, France and Greece to place that would be frozen over 4 months of the year if it wasn’t for rainforest levels of annual rainfall (really, look it up) would be deeply discomforting and facing people who simply lived there their whole lives would be gruelling. The difference in general moral alone would play significantly into whether both soldiers and generals would want to fight, especially when there isn’t anything to really fight for.

@@themk4982 It's why they use such grim cinematography for movies in the northern parts of Europe, while the Mediterranean is always that vibrant summer with colorful architecture.

I agree with your analysis.. Except the story about the teotoburg forest in Germania The Roman lost 3 legions because a Roman Knight of German origin, Arminius, prepared a trap in that forest So nothing to do with the cold weather.

Angus mc bagpipe....

History tells us that it was not uncommon for soldiers stationed at Hadrian's Wall to desert or even join in with arriving raiding parties. I imagine the pay was not worth the posting.

Honestly, not a lot. They were very low IQ. Think about they, they were convinced to be footmen lol.

@@Nikolaj11 Oh dear, I'd be seriously annoyed if I was living at the border. Imagine you are being controlled by this occupying force, then they join in with raiding you as well.

I remember reading an article some years ago about letters or scraps of correspondence written on parchment found in a midden at one of the castles along the wall. So many referred to cold feet and the need of thick knitted wool socks! One, by the wife of a Roman officer was an invitation to a birthday party and she stressed bringing warm socks and cloaks. And those stone castles must have been iceboxes. I spent a week one August filming in a castle in La Mancha and although outside you could fry an egg on the pavement, inside it was dank and chill.

These are the letters of vindolanda fort

"Hadrian, oh Hadrian!"

Logical, make sense

Then why keep Britannia for so fucking long? Was poor as fuck and rainy all day. God.

@@kingbjorn1832 tryna exterminate celts

@@kingbjorn1832 perhaps natural resources (metals), but I can easily be wrong

Or they where just defeated. They did bother with it. When you retreat with broken armies it is easy to say it was not worth it. Remember we don't have the Scots or the Germanic tribes version of events. We just have the Roman excuses preserved in writing. And what about the Parthians? Rome fought them for hundreds of years because that was cost effective?

@Phr34ky PHY pretty sure taxing livestock would be enough to feed the troops - and in that sense it’s logical that Antonine Wall failed since there would be little trade

Exactly in comes down to money. We see empire maps and they have huge areas covered but the truth is most are more patchy based on $$. The romans were in Iberia about 200 BC til after rome fell yet never really took the north or Pyrenees mountains. They have ports on the coast but little inland on spains northern coast so ships could port every night or every couple but they were small. When an area was To rough, no great value, going to be an expensive expedition to take and then to garrison in an area guerilla warfare is made for, many empires are smart enough to save the money. Easier to build a wall/ or come to an agreement with those tribes and just trade them for the few things worth it. In spain I'm saying good cheese and honey were the commodity worth the most in the mountains. Now the places to grow grain like the ebro valley, wine and olive oil in the south of Spain, the silver mines in the West and lets not forget fish and the Romans loved fish sauce which the best came tuna caught off Spain, that the romans did like and made $$$.

@Phr34ky PHY Most of the 'walls' in the Roman empire were used for tax purposes, Hadrian's wall was built to mark the northern boundary of the empire, but in all probability cattle were driven through it to be sold.

@@theodoresmith5272 it's absolutely true that trade was worth more than conquest, but Romans didn't think of themselves as mere merchants. Before they invaded Britain it had already been established that peaceful trade would be far more profitable than occupying a rather backward, remote and strategically insignificant country, but later on they did it. Not for profit but for the glory of their empire. Rather like countless civilisations before and since.

Hear hear!

It's also completely bogus in Scotland too. You'd get laughed back to the wall if you tried to (fake) Lord it up round here...

You presumably have no office of trust with the US Government so it's not unconstitutional. That only binds agents of the state, a Congressional rep or Vice President or whatever needs the consent of Congress to accept a title. The bigger issue is that established titles is a scam.

You don't understand that provision of the constitution. It means what it says. If you are a US Citizen that is not in holding governmental office, nothing stops you from getting a title from a foreign state. You don't even have to renounce citizenship.

Who cares? I have a star named after me. That's bogus, too.

A future Medieval Pope,after having visited Scotland, declared that civilization ended at Durham!

@@tolrem A young Viking on his second voyage, asked a older member of the crew if the Scots were tough as he had never been there. The response was 'well put it this way, they LIVE here'...

@@christopherharmon2433 Icelandic Viking to younger Viking.."Never fancied the tropics personally."

Similar problem today

@@Oobido haggis

@@Oobido someone pissed in your haggis

@@Oobido someone pissed in your tea

True, the Romans decided that it was more economical to fortify the easily subjugated, submissive lands south of Caledonia. The Romans were simply not used to a people they couldn't completely dominate

Ugh! I’m jealous! Did you find anything? I live in Canada and the most I could find is a few coins. Not much history here!

@@omomo202 I was beat to it by a TV crew doing a documentary about antonines wall they unearthed a roman Fort a small one but a Fort none the less no coins found though just bits of pottery etc

@@ianbrown3493 well, keep digging! When I lived in Romania a family I knew found a small clay oil lamp in perfect condition! It was tiny but very cute! You never know..

@@omomo202 hopefully they missed something that I can find then I'm fortunate enough to live in a town where the Romans built a lot of structures time will tell if I find anything of interest

*segues

Hi scotty. Do you see northern lights at the antoniuswall?

@@aka99 from time to time it will get as far as the central belt on extreme occasions so that would be a yes but incredibly incredibly rare.

Glass windows? I find that hard to believe. Sorry.

@@cerberus6654 well I have seen the fragments being excavated with my own eyes. Sorry if this does not fit your preconceptions of the past

@@robertosans5250 No need to be so snarky. If they did use glass then I am happy to know that. I assumed it was probably something much cheaper like horn or even vellum. Or nothing other than a wooden shutter.

That is fine. I do not like this kind of exchanges. Enjoy your day

@@cerberus6654 they did have glass windows. Romans had the most advanced glass technology till modern era and because they invented the glass blowing technique, for the first time in history glass was cheap to mass produce and easily available for (almost) everyone. ps they also invented colorless glass

Lucky you. Few British can afford the entrance fee!

@@donaldhoult7713 these days no one can on either side of the Atlantic!

Thanks man I didn't know that 🤔

Ceaser had a fleet of about ~630 ships made in less than a year, to ferry his troops across the channel. As the video suggests, the reason the Romans didn't bother conquering Scotland, is much simpler than a lack of boats. There simply wasn't enough wealth in Scotland to steel to make it worth the effort. Personally I wonder if that was a bit of a short sighted attitude - perhaps if they had pacified the Northern frontier they would have less problems later on, but who knows.

General Agricola actually did conquer much of Scotland for a time, before his recall by a jealous Emperor Domitian

What do you mean the Romans didn't have boats? The Roman had a perfectly functional fleet and were able to support joint army-navy and amphibious landings without problem. If anything the Roman technological superiority was even greater on sea than on land. Even if we only look at the North Sea, just sea how easily Caesar dealt the nautically minded Veneti (of Armorica, not the Adriatic ones), or wiping out the druids on Mona.

Excellent post✨

It was - I had a great time

Yeah, guess will neverhappend

Thanks as always!

Other Roman history creators have called him the common enemy of mankind not without reason.

@@Moredread25 Caracalla Gave All people of the roman empire their citizenship how he can be enemy of humankind ?

@@starcapture3040 everything else the guy did. One good deed does not redeem his term of office.

@@Moredread25 this is huuuuuuuuuuuuuge one

@@starcapture3040 He only did that to make everyone pay taxes. It wasn't a kind gesture at all

And I, as a Bruce, could not agree with you more!

I second that.

@@johnstewart1590 And my other family names are, Lyons and Stewart. I'm a Canadian. My ancestors came over in 1757, first to Florida, then Boston then Nova Scotia. Expelled first by the Spanish, then by the Americans.

And it's full of Scots...

@@johnstewart1590 me too, i'm a McGregor

Aye! And we have better sweary words.

they weren't even speaking the same language as today...

there was no such term as the Scots in the roman period. pointless and inaccurate quote

@@fanroche8573 it was a 17th century historian writing on the topic

Sounds like Groundsman Willie from the Simpsons

@@wstevenson4913 😂

@@duriuswulkins4324 yes but why use a quote that is non sensical

I still use coins. In fact, I will probably use coins at least a couple times today, as I prefer to use cash instead of cards or other digital payments.

do you happen to know if there is any "bad blood" between the Scots and the Welsh? I am an american so my perspective is different. I have a good amount of welsh heritage and have always been drawn to other people with Irish/Scottish/English/Welsh ancestry, but i have noticed that the Scots, while they can be your best friend they can be difficult to read/understand sometimes. Is that a thing or is it just me?

@@nn-dj2nu no animosity. Until the mid 1800s you could travel from the north of Scotland down the west through Wales to amorica speaking Celtic languages the whole way.

@@davidgalloway266 ok thanks for the reply

British food can be quite nice(surprisingly) the big problem is that its extremely unhealthy.

@@georget5874 Pretty telling that even you only thought the food might be defensible lol

Have you heard the squadie on Geoff Hoon? The Basra comment?

@@georget5874 At a fast food joint in Yorkshire, the menu included blood pudding and kidney pie. I ordered a hamburger. When I got it, it turned out to be a really thin ground-beef patty that had been breaded and deep-fried, in a plain bun. There was ketchup on the table tho, so I added it to my sandwich, and it wasn't bad. Maybe I should have been more daring and gone with the kidney pie. A normal pub sandwich was ONE slice of bologna between two slices of white bread. No mayo, no lettuce or tomato. In London we stuck with the foreign restaurants: Indian, Chinese, Hungarian, and American, all excellent. However I did have a solidly British roast beef dinner at one restaurant that was outstanding. So, maybe you need to know where to go to find the best British food.

Definitely the weather, less the other two. We’ve sampled them all and decided we’re the best, just need some more land to go in holiday.

Arthur's O'on was an impressive Roman structure in Stenhousemuir, probably visible from the Antonine Wall, until an 18th century landowner decided to demolish it to build a dam with the stones.

So, Romans wanted to conquer and subjugate what became England and Wales and managed it with aplomb. Fine. The Romans wanted to exterminate the northern tribes, tried repeatedly, couldn't manage it and so they withdrew and built fortified defences against those same tribes. But the takeaway is what? They didn't want to exterminate them or they simply couldn't?

@@paulbradley7410 They wanted to exterminate them (or beat them into submission) but couldn't. Both Agricola and Septimius Severus's campaigns against them are very well documented and their reasons for failing to subdue/exterminate them are really quite simple: The tribes were small and mobile, they refused to engage the legions in battle and left scorched earth behind them. The legions had to rely on long supply lines from England which were open to raiding once they crossed Hadrian's Wall. There was scant/nil foraging to be had for the legions so they inevitably became riddled with hunger and disease. Ultimately spending years campaigning there to wipe out a minor nuisance, gaining absolutely nothing in return (no loot, no fertile land, no large populations to tax, no gold or silver mines, no large amounts of slaves, absolutely nothing) just wasn't worth it for Rome. Building a wall to keep them out was much easier.

The above video states that even those parts of Britain that the Romans held for centuries were not worth the cost of maintaining large garrisons. In fact it would have saved the empire money and men if they had eradicated the northern tribes, which they certainly tried to do but ultimately failed and so they withdrew from the north and spend huge sums of money and manpower building fortified walls and keeping it manned.

@@Aethelhald That's the issue though, they wanted total dominance, be it subjugation or eradication, both of which the Romans spent many years attempting but in the end they could not do it. We can agree that the local tribes made good use of the landscape to hide and launch attacks and raids then disappear again, but that still means that the most formidable army in the ancient world could not defeat those tribes without bringing in far more soldiers than they wanted to. That is warfare. The Romans used the same tactics and warfare that had worked almost everywhere they used it. In this case they withdrew, which I've no doubt was a major blow for morale and the army's sense of Gloria Exercitus

@@paulbradley7410 Nah, they still could, they just didn't have the will to ultimately see it through because it wasn't truly worth it and the defensive mindset had already kicked in. Severus actually won his campaign in Caledonia, occupied territory and forced the tribes to surrender to his wishes, despite him losing considerable amounts of his army and the whole campaign being a clusterfuck. He was even preparing another army to invade and finish the job but he died, and his successors had much bigger things to worry about than the nuisance Caledonians for the rest of the history of the WRE.

A bit early for the bagpipes.

@@patrickporter1864 oh dang.

The scots mostly lived in what was Ireland at the time they hadn't settled in what became Scotland.

Have u looked for Alexander the Great in youtiube?

@@aka99 yes and I have also watched a couple videos but I'd love to hear the story in the toldinstone style

Stay tuned...

@@nodruj8681 Well I'm so glad that you took the time to engage constructively, rather than adopting a mocking tone while not even being able to spell "nope" correctly. That would have made you look like a moron.

It didn’t seem like a particularly easy conquest either. They never managed to win the war against the lowlanders and then that’s the lowlanders, never mind the people in the highlands who were very spread out and in even colder, rugged, cave-filled and mountainous terrain. As someone else mentioned, large portions of the highlands just couldn’t be accessed by land for people in large groups and certainly not armies. Especially back then when there was far more forest, it would basically be like the Romans trying to take over a more populated Sweden. Of course they could have done it, but diminishing returns would be the least of their worries. They were smart to cut things off below the already rather hilly borders.

@Phr34ky PHY what do you personally think they were losing out on conquering Scotland? The hills? Most places with the geography of hills has something that would at least break even for the emperors like cities and ridiculous gold mines.

Was not to ward off raids, it was ti control trade. The wall was only ever like 5 feet tall

Naw, it was the tacky shortbread tins.