Does Cambrian Chronicles do good research?

[@Masterhistory1492]

Cambrian is the king of citation hunting.

[@veritasetcaritas]

He sure is.

[@lordsiergiej9685]

​@@veritasetcaritas He's also a king when it comes to making us laugh while sounding so monotone

[@OutbackCatgirl]

he's a legend, honestly

[@lovecraftianwalrus4490]

As someone who studies Sub Roman and early Anglo Saxon England, I can really appreciate how much work Cambrian Chronicles puts in for his videos. The fact that we have so little contemporary information about Britain during time period makes it so difficult to research!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes he really does due diligence.

[@darthJ9]

I am not Welsh, never met a Welshman in my life, dont have a domain of interest in that particular time and/or place. But the way Cambrian does history is just so refreshing and thorough at the same time, I've actually developed a decent fascination for their history and culture and regularly watch his videos. A great professional!

[@zachklopfleisch8501]

One of the things that I've learned from KZbin is that if someone is knowledgeable in their subject, and excited about it, it doesn't really matter what the subject is. They're probably going to be enjoyable to listen to.

[@digit-zero]

CYMRU AM BYTH!!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[@veritasetcaritas]

He does a great job of narrativizing history while remaining accurate.

[@digit-zero]

@@veritasetcaritas As a welshman, I'm proud to have a person like him to represent us online.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@digit-zero you should be!

[@kckc4955]

His medieval cat video is one of my favorite videos of all time. Worthless milk!

[@grievuspwn4g3]

It's the implication of milking a cat and surviving that gets me.

[@davidogundipe808]

Cambrian chronicles is top notch, and deserves full praise.

[@veritasetcaritas]

He is a high tier history KZbinr, no doubt.

[@SHRUGGiExyz]

Lets absolutely go, lads! Another great spotlight on a fantastic creator. I love how small details and seemingly minor bits of history that most people wouldn't bat an eye at get the full shakedown on CC's channel. Really impressive and informative work from both of you, as always!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! I really enjoy these interviews myself, and I love it when the interviewees tell me about these occasions on which they found a historical gem or solved a historical conundrum.

[@L_Train]

I was hoping it was cambrian as in "pre-cambrian" or "cambrian explosion" but this is very interesting.

[@veritasetcaritas]

It's from the Latin form of the word "Cymru", the Welsh name for Wales.

[@fiona8081]

I always thought it was so funny how a bunch of the geological time periods had names just based on the locations where layers of rock from those periods were exposed and so were being studied by early scientists (see also Mississippian, Devonian, etc). It's like saying "the period of... whenever all these Welsh fossils are from." Interestingly, the Silurian Period, which also has a lot of Welsh fossils, was named after an ancient Celtic tribe in modern Wales, the Silures.

[@silphonym]

​@@fiona8081the Jurassic is named after the Jura mountains in southern Germany/Switzerland

[@BasedKungFu]

His videos are straight crack. His stuff has top notch presentation and research. Big ups to you both!

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you! As a fan of CC I was delighted to interview him.

[@MegaRabbitPower]

I came from Cambrian Chronicles and I knew the instant you mentioned lacunae and hapax legomennon that you're the real deal.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@lovecraftianwalrus4490]

I love this guy so much.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think he's great.

[@Enyavar1]

Watched and valued videos from both your channels! This was a lovely video about basic scientific rigour when dealing with history. 🐉

[@veritasetcaritas]

It's alarming how little rigor is displayed by the average history KZbin channel.

[@Coolmd-it4ck]

What a great collab🎉

[@veritasetcaritas]

Thank you!

[@hive_indicator318]

Sources, yes! And page numbers! I know I can ctrl-f the pdf, but that keeps me from sorting through all the instances that phrase comes up. I also once encountered a video that cited an entire website to back up claims made about some of the texts on the site. As if that wasn't laughable and so bad

[@veritasetcaritas]

Sourcing in history KZbin is woeful in most cases.

[@vapaus831]

1:56 most recent stuff 1:59 some people cite 50's before 2:05 wiki from 1800's 2:34 where do they come from

[@truedarklander]

ambitious crossover

[@odothedoll2738]

I now have a place to start my research about Wales for devious purposes. (Adding more lore to the insane scifi universe inside my head which involves a Welsh lady)

[@dayalasingh5853]

22:50 these two channels have definitely made me raise my standards a lot more, they weren't low before but I'm definitely very skeptical of any history channel I find know and will judge how they're citing.

[@theorder4592]

Will you ever make a video on the magna carta or the end of serfdom in England? I've seen lots of debate about whether the barony or the peasantry were the main cause of progress

[@veritasetcaritas]

I have thought of it. I have seen the 1215 Magna Carta in Lincoln Castle, and I found the accompanying display, which talked about the document as a foundational human rights document, to be very misleading.

[@matthewmcginty2169]

I would be careful dismissing material from the 1800s. While those historians had a lot issues, many of them did a great job preserving primary sources. For example, if you wanted to study early modern Ireland, you would have to cite the work of the 19th century scholar John O’Donovan, as he translated and preserved many important early modern Irish documents.

[@veritasetcaritas]

They shouldn't be dismissed, but they should be treated with great caution. They just didn't have the knowledge we do now. I think we both noted they can contain good information, but they always need to be verified.

[@Kim-the-Dane-1952]

I am not from Wales either but I love the channel

[@veritasetcaritas]

I think it's great that someone is covering ancient Wales in such depth.

[@andiemorgan961]

It's not a requirement to be a native of a country to have an interest in its history/culture.🤣 It's called general knowledge, a natural curiosity of the world. I am Welsh and find Cambrian Chronicles fascinating, but I also have great interest in Ancient Greece, China, the Roman and Ottoman Empires, the early Kingdoms of the Aztecs and Incas and the five great Kingdoms/ Empires of ancient Africa. And, as far as I know, I have no direct genetic links with any of these global regions.😉

[@angrysweetchili7816]

Suggestion for next video: Does The More Freedom Foundation do good research?

[@veritasetcaritas]

I'd say that's a definite "sometimes". The issue with that channel is its strong libertarian bias. At least he does a good job of critiquing people like Peter Zeihan and Whatifatlthist.

[@angrysweetchili7816]

@@veritasetcaritas ok. I remember him staying that he used to be a libertarian but that he started to drift a bit away from it and now he is a 'recovering libertarian'

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@angrysweetchili7816 thanks, I just found that now you've mentioned it.

[@veraxiana9993]

Good grief do I know the pains of trying to read old type fonts, I've been trying to look into a claim from Martin P. Nilsson that we know a word that is of minoan origin. He listed his source & literally wrote the word in the book itself, but the italicized font on it is so illegible that I've spent the last 2 days just trying to figure out what on earth this book is trying to say that one word is.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Sixteenth and seventeenth century typefaces can be almost illegible even without italicization.

[@tiffanyganton550]

nerds watching some nerds' video about a nerd who makes videos for nerds, neat.

[@odothedoll2738]

Let’s go nerds! NERDCEPTION!

[@firelite906]

OMG they're friends

[@veritasetcaritas]

Yes!

[@benjaminepstein5856]

Meow

[@EliInc.8.7.22]

Meow

[@EliInc.8.7.22]

Meow Meow

[@jacob2389]

You ran over your interviewee quiet a bit at the beginning. I would have liked to hear more from Cambrian Chronicles and less about your methods since he was the interviewee.

[@veritasetcaritas]

Right at the start of the interview Cam told me he was not great at impromptu speech and was not confident speaking at length. He also told me he had very little to say about his research methods since he had never really thought about them systematically. As a result he was only able to give me a bit of information at the start of the interview before he stopped talking about it after two minutes. In the video you can actually hear him say when he's done, commenting "I don't know if that was coherent". Much later in the discussion he warmed up a bit and talked some more, but at the start he said very little. Consequently, when I was creating the audio file I cut and pasted parts of our discussion and re-arranged them in an effort to make the research section longer; some of the comments he makes in the research section actually come from later in the interview. The result is a bit messy, and sometimes the two audio streams overlap more than they should. But the main point is that he had very little to say about his research method. I put in as much as he said about it, but he didn't have a lot to say in systematic terms. That's why most of the information about his research method is later in the video, when he started giving specific details.

[@EmyrDerfel]

​@@veritasetcaritas like asking a fish about swimming, they just do it.

[@veritasetcaritas]

@@EmyrDerfel it is kind of like that. When we were chatting before the interview he said he found it hard to describe his research process in detail since he doesn't think of it while he's doing it, it's just automatic at this point.