Response to the Cambridge University Labour Club

An invitation I, Tom Rowsell, received to speak at the Cambridge University Conservative Association, in my capacity as an historian and YouTuber, has recently been rescinded after a “cancel-culture” attack-posted to Instagram by the Cambridge University Labour Club.

The post highlighted objections to me and another guest, Jack Anderton. The post cites four items as evidence of my alleged 'racist, anti-black, and anti-Semitic' views; a misleading and unverified claim by Labour funded, far left, anti-white hate group Hope not Hate, thumbnails for two of my videos, and a screenshot of a tweet I made comparing two Direct-to-consumer genomics companies.

In this public statement I will defend all four examples as rational, factual, scientific and not “racist, anti-black and anti-Semitic”, as is claimed and/or implied by the either ill-informed or dishonest author of the post.

1. "The screenshot from a March 2025 Hope Not Hate article describes a Christmas dinner I attended in London as a 'gathering of…Neo-Byzantium.' It claims I was filmed -though no footage has ever surfaced- by an infiltrator, Harry Shuckman, who allegedly used a hidden camera at the dinner, and is known to have broken the law by using an illegal fake passport to commit identity fraud.
   
   The text confusedly claims I used the term “negrophilia” in reference to America, and then also complained about the French.
   
   In reality, it was the other way around. I was talking about the well documented historical phenomenon of popular jazz music in 1920’s Paris known as “Negrophilia” and which is referred to as such by the far left newspaper The Guardian. The text misleadingly implied that this word referred more generally to areas outside this specific, and accepted historical meaning. The use of the term, in the way I used it, is not considered racist, even by The Guardian. 
   
   
   



  The term is here used by The Guardian in the same way I used it




2. A thumbnail for my video titled “The Origin and Purpose of Blue Eyes” (Jan 2024) is posted with the intended implication that I consider blue eyes a mark of superiority or to be somehow preferable to other eye colours. In reality this video merely elaborated on the recent findings of a preprint published on biorxiv by Cain, Yamaguchi 2024, entitled ‘Effect of iris pigmentation of blue and brown eyed individuals with European ancestry on ability to see in low light conditions after a short-term dark adaption period’. The video was not racist and also presents the preprint critically - suggesting that this is a possible explanation for the phenotype in some periods of history. 
   
   
3. A thumbnail for my video titled “Hyperborean Odyssey 01: Norway” (Aug 2024) is posted with the intended implication that this video about Norwegian Viking age history, filmed while I was working aboard a cruise ship as an historian guest-speaker, was somehow racist. There is nothing about race in the video, which merely presents uncontroversial facts about Norway's early medieval past. The title "Hyperborea" comes from an Ancient Greek word meaning "furthest north", widely agreed to refer to Scandinavia, and is not inherently racist.
   
   
4. A screenshot of a “tweet” posted to X on 11th Oct 2025 is intended to imply an anti-Semitic opinion. This tweet highlights how consumer genomics companies may prioritise ethnic categories based on their leadership or market focus. For instance, a British-owned firm often identifies 'English' ancestry distinctly, while dividing Ashkenazi Jews into other categories, while an American firm with a Jewish CEO emphasises 'Ashkenazi Jewish' ancestry as a single discrete category, while regularly assigning English ancestry to neighbouring regions. This observation critiques data presentation, not any group, and interpreting it as anti-Semitic would illogically imply it's also anti-English. 
   
   

While I cannot be certain of the extent to which these misrepresentations were made out of a deliberate will to mislead and distort reality, rather than out of innocent ignorance, I feel it is necessary to state the true position here. I remain open to constructive dialogue on these topics and hope this invitation can be reconsidered based on evidence rather than assumptions.

JIVE TALK: Ancient DNA news: Greece and Italy

Sources

Florian Clemente et al, The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations, Cell (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.039 Saute et al, Ancient genomes reveal structural shifts after the arrival of Steppe-related ancestry in the Italian Peninsula (2021)

Map of affinities to ancient Greek samples in modern populations

Gothic DNA heat maps

JIVE TALK: Where did blondes come from?

How Anglo-Saxon are the English people?

Sites from which samples were extracted


EDIT: a subsequent study in 2022 by Gretzinger et al has revealed that Anglo-Saxon DNA is actually as much as 48% in the most populated region of England. Read more.

This paper, Schiffels et al (2016), was a revealing study in ancient Anglo-Saxon DNA. It looked at DNA from 10 skeletons from 3 sites in East England: Hinxton, Oakington and Linton dating from before and after the Anglo-Saxon invasions. This study is better at estimating the genetic impact of Anglo-Saxons on England than other studies which only compare modern British people to modern populations on the continent.

"we estimate that on average the contemporary East English population derives 38% of its ancestry from Anglo-Saxon migrations."

They reach the 38% figure by looking at the unique Dutch-like DNA that was not present in early Iron Age samples from Hinton but appears in post AS invasion England. We can say that 38% of the DNA of modern people in East England comes from the invading Anglo-Saxons, but this figure somewhat obscures the reality of what Anglo-Saxons were.

"The middle Anglo-Saxon samples from Hinxton (HS1, HS2 and HS3) share relatively more rare variants with modern Dutch than the Iron Age samples from Hinxton (HI1 and HI2) and Linton (L). The early Anglo-Saxon samples from Oakington are more diverse with O1 and O2 being closer to the middle Anglo-Saxon samples, O4 exhibiting the same pattern as the Iron Age samples, and O3 showing an intermediate level of allele sharing, suggesting mixed ancestry."

In other words, Anglo-Saxons mixed with the Celtic Britons very quickly but there were also subsequent arrivals of more Germanic people from the continent. Geneticists using the term Anglo-Saxon in relation to the 38% figure are specifically referring to the newcomers. But when historians refer to the Anglo-Saxons, they don't just mean the Germanic people who arrived in the Migration era, they are referring to a full 600 years of English history!

If you were to ask the question of how much DNA we have from an average Anglo-Saxon, ranging from the mixed woman labelled O3, who lived in the early AS era around 500 AD, to any Anglo-Saxons living in the 7th, 8th or 9th century, then the % would be MUCH higher than 38%! The fact is that the DNA of Anglo-Saxon England from was for most of the AS period the same as that of modern ethnically English people ie: a mix of continental Germanic and Iron Age British Celtic.

Big-brained Barbarians! with Dr. Edward Dutton (The Jolly Heretic)

Cognitive evolution and European history.
Modern population genetics shows that enormous genetic replacement occurred in Neolithic Europe which, as well as changing the religions in Europe, surely had an effect on heritable traits like intelligence and behaviour. I am speaking to Dr Edward Dutton aka The Jolly heretic about what the implications of these genetic shifts are in terms of the cognitive evolution of Europeans - can cognitive archeogenetics help us to understand the massive success of the Indo-European cultures over the Bronze Age compared with their Neolithic predecessors? Were the Indo-Europeans really clever chaps? Watch and find out!

Where Did Celts Come From?

While Germanic language is widely agreed to have emerged around 3000 years ago in Northern Denmark, amongst a people who were genetically like modern Danes, and then to have spread from 750BC as neighbouring peoples adopted the language for some reason, it is harder to pin point who the first Celtic speakers were or explain how their languages got to Britain.

As I have said in videos, the modern British genetic profile emerged 4500 years ago with the arrival of the beaker folk from Holland, but these people did NOT speak a Celtic language, as linguists agree Proto-Celtic isn't that old (maybe 3000 or 3500 years old). This means that either: 

a) The peoples of the British Isles adopted a Celtic language due to trade with continental Celts
b) A small Celtic elite took over Britain and Ireland and somehow changed the culture and language but not the genetics
c) A continental population of Celts took over Britain and Ireland and did change the genetics, but this change is only very slight because they were already closely related to the people of the British Isles.

Archeologically, the Hallstatt culture of the 8th to 6th centuries BC, is seen as the first proper Celtic material culture. The two black stars on the PCA chart above, made by Eurogenes, represent two skeletons from the Hallstatt culture, and it can clearly be seen that one plots among the Dutch and one among the Northern French, but neither among modern "Celtic" areas. However, the purple Iron Age Celts on the chart are between the older Bronze age British samples and the Halstatt samples indicating there WAS an invasion of continental Celts to Britain who were related to these Halstatt samples and that they changed the DNA of Britain and Ireland.

Modern English people plot between these purple Iron Age Celts and the red Anglo-Saxon samples, but there is always the possibility that other 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders from Frisia, Holland etc would have plotted like modern Dutch people just as the much older Halstatt sample does - thus making the job of distinguishing "Celtic and Germanic DNA" very complicated! Especially when you also see that the Anglo-Saxon samples are closer to the Bronze Age Britons than the Halstatt Celts are.

EDIT: Eurogenes actually said there may have been as much as 10% admixture from a Celtic source in the iron age.

Read more

Reich and the Genetic Barbarians at the Gates

Leading geneticist David Reich's recent interview with Atlantic reveals so much about how the field is simultaneously challenging left wing narratives of history and science, and also being used to shape them.

Since WWII, historians and archaeologists have disputed long held beliefs about ancient population replacements. Epochal events like the Anglo-Saxon migration, the spread of the Indo-Europeans and the Northern origin (Corded Ware) of the Aryans of India were all either "re-examined" or dismissed entirely as the product of "old" Nationalistic ideas. Genetic science is now vindicating many of the early 20th century theories, causing a great deal of kvetching in the ivory towers.

"Reich: So after the Second World War, there was a very strong reaction in the European archaeological community—not just the Germans, but the broad continental European archaeological community—to the fact that their discipline had been used for these terrible political ends. And there was a retreat from the ideas of Kossinna.
Zhang: You actually had German collaborators drop out of a study because of these exact concerns, right? One of them wrote, “We must(!) avoid ... being compared with the so-called ‘siedlungsarchäologie Method’ from Gustaf Kossinna!”
Reich: Yeah, that’s right. I think one of the things the ancient DNA is showing is actually the Corded Ware culture does correspond coherently to a group of people. [Editor’s note: The Corded Ware made pottery with cord-like ornamentation and according to ancient DNA studies, they descended from steppe ancestry.] I think that was a very sensitive issue to some of our coauthors, and one of the coauthors resigned because he felt we were returning to that idea of migration in archaeology that pots are the same as people. There have been a fair number of other coauthors from different parts of continental Europe who shared this anxiety."

Although population geneticists like Reich are regarded as a threat to the comfy hug-box that modern historians and archeologists have created, with Reich comparing his team to "barbarians at the gates", he is still just as much a part of the zeitgeist as the archeologists. He says, "You have to be more open to immigration. You have to be more open to the mixing of different peoples. That’s your own history."

Slavs, Germanics, Celts, the Romans, the Iranics and the Aryans etc are all directly descended from the Corded Ware peoples of Northern and Eastern Europe and these people were like modern Nordic/Baltic/Slavic people. This fact makes the establishment nervous so it needs to be sanitised by calling them "immigrants" saying they "came from the East" etc - They want to equate a conquering, ruling people with modern economic migrants, so that instead of being ignited with pride by the achievements of your ancestors, you instead shame them by destroying their legacy. Don't dismiss modern science as "left-wing lies", instead pick out the real facts from within the narrative-friendly media statements.

Sardinians are like Early Neolithic Farmers

Who were the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

Autistic Neanderthals

The frequency of autism in modern humans follows certain patterns. Why is it that autism is more common in boys than girls? Why is autism more common in some populations than others? There seems to be a relationship between autism and exposure to testosterone in uterto. Although no proper scientific research exists devoted exclusvley to this subject, people have begun to speculate that there is a relationship between autism and neanderthal DNA. We know that all non-African humans have neanderthal DNA, but how does this DNA effect us?

It is now thought that the 2-4% of neanderthal DNA found in the average Eurasian today is different in each individual so that as much as 20% of the neanderthal genome exists in modern human populations. It doesn't manifest itself in the same way in all people, but rather is more pronounced in some than in others. Certain hormonal conditions during gestation may in fact cause latent neanderthal genetic tendencies to develop in children. Such tendencies were an evolutionary benefit to neanderthals existing on the edge of arctic regions during the ice age but are diagnosed as medical conditions today. There is evidence to suggest that lactose intolerance, crohn's disease, gluten intolerance, IBS, aspergers and autism may in fact be related to neanderthal traits passed on in mitochondrial DNA (that's the Mother's side) and then manifested physically as a result of high exposure to testosterone during foetal development.

In the future, research will show whether all this is nonsense or not, but the following video includes clips of scientific discussions on neanderthal DNA and how it effects modern humans, autism and its efffects and potential causes, and the nature of mitochondrial DNA. The juxtoposition of the different clips is intended to show that there is a relationship between said conditions and neanderthal DNA. Judge for yourself if you happen to have 2 hours and 18 minutes spare.



There is more information in this PDF

Legacy of eugenics: mini-lecture

the exhibit on francis galton is at UCL now