Il libro per bambini ritrae i Pitti come neri

I really don’t care when fictional worlds based on medieval British/European folklore gets diversified for a modern audience. It’s fiction, after all.

Doing it with actual history though gives me a major ick.

“When the idea was initially conceived in 2021, the creative team behind the work released a video stating: “We’re proud to bring together some of Scotland’s leading archaeologists, with a host of queer, marginalised and disabled voices to dispel misconceptions of the past.”

A genetic study published in 2023 found that the Picts – who were concentrated in north-east Scotland – were descended from ancient Iron Age populations who had long lived in Britain.

The same study also found that there was clear genetic continuity between the Picts and modern-day Scots in the same region.”

We shouldn’t allow people to invent a history that did not exist to fit contemporary social narratives. The stories involving ancient Black people that are likely most interesting and factual are those relating to continental Africans.

Does it matter that Scotland or anywhere else was or wasn’t racially diverse a couple of thousand years ago? What matters is now, surely. I know it’s helpful to know that our society has been multiracial (albeit on a smaller scale than in the last 100 years or so) for a long time but there’s no need to just make stuff up; surely later finding out the Picts were not black would be upsetting to a black kid who had read this and believed they were?

There’s plenty of evidence of black Britons in the past, just not *that* long ago and not in that area. But this is like claiming there were white people in South Africa two thousand years ago. I get it’s done with good intentions but it’s not very educational if it’s incorrect, is it?

People of different races *did* find their way to Britain occasionally throughout history, but those were individuals, traveling traders and ship crew members and the like.

The core population of Britain throughout history has mainly come from waves of migration from Scandinavia, where limited sunlight ensures any long term population trends towards lighter skin.

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Just don’t buy the book? We don’t need censorship into children’s books.

> The book also claimed that “Britain has been a mostly white country for a lot less time than it has been a mostly black country”.

Is there any evidence to suggest this? I would’ve thought that, as a cold, northern European country, we would’ve evolved to be as white as every other northern European country. Not mention being invaded by the Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Normans etc – all of whom would’ve been of European origin. The Moors didn’t make it as far as Britain.

I’d be curious to know the source of this claim, just out of academic interest.

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I was reading about skin colour recently, and a thing I learned which seems relevant here is that skin colour is, ultimately, a local adaptation formed (or eased) in response to amount of UV radiation around. What that means is that although in the gen-on-gen term skin colour is something dictated by the parent’s genes, over the term of dozens of generations, skin colour is dictated by local necessity. It’s reckoned that about 100 generations / 2000 years is all it takes to turn a fully black population fully white, which is within the timescope of the settlers this article discusses.

So, this all said, I think it’s maybe worth asking the question here of “actually, were they?”. I don’t have an answer (genuinely, the only thing I know about Picts is that they were the people who built all the in-loch islands in Scotland, which was very kind of them, since it’s created excellent habitat for ospreys), but I suspect that whatever the consensus answer is is probably a little greyer than the Telegraph are letting on with this little bit of ragebait.

It’s a guide book for a table top role playing game.

Do we really care that our table top role playing games aren’t 100% historically accurate and reflects the intended audience more than the setting its based on?

Because if so, you guys are going to *hate* dungeons and dragons.

it’s a children’s book

they have talking animals, for god’s sake

After looking it up, this is a system agnostic setting book for a TTRPG where ghosts, magic, spirits and monsters are all assumed real. Describing it as a ‘children’s book’ is incredibly dishonest. Almost every illustration I can see depicts light skinned people – and we know at the time there were significant dark skinned population in britain (the romans described the welsh tribes as ‘swarthy’ and compared them to the spanish for example).

[https://carvedinstone.scot/](https://carvedinstone.scot/)

Complete non story.