Located between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, in the middle of the Irish Sea lies one of the oddest political jurisdictions in the world.

It's not a country, nor is it a territory of another country.

For the most part, it has autonomy over its affairs, yet it depends entirely on another country for its survival.

It has an ancient history, one has had its own language, and is probably the world center of motorcycle racing.

Learn more about the Isle of Man, its history, and how it functions, on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. The story of the Isle of Man goes back about 8,500 years when sea levels were rising due to the retreat of the polar ice sheets of the last ice age.

As the waters rose, the British Isles were

disconnected from continental Europe, and the Isle of Man was disconnected from

Great Britain and Ireland. Here I should give a brief explanation of the

geography of the region. The British Isles

consists of all of the islands off the northwest coast of Europe. This includes the

large islands of Great Britain and Ireland as well as 6,000 other smaller islands, including the Channel Islands, the Orkneys, the

the Inner and Outer Hebrides, and the Isle of Man.

At its closest point, it's 51 kilometers or 32 miles from Ireland and approximately the same distance to England

and 29 kilometers or 18 miles from Scotland.

Despite being so close to both Ireland and Great Britain, it has had a very different history.

There's evidence of humans on the island dating back to the Stone Age.

It's probable that the first humans crossed the land bridge connecting it to Scotland. During the Iron Age

the Isle of Man fell under Celtic influence and its culture became fundamentally

Celtic. Despite how close it is to Great Britain there's no evidence that the Romans ever bothered

sailing there, and if they did, there are no records of them doing so and no

artifacts have ever been found. The name Man probably comes from an ancient

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