Steve - yes, precisely my point & precisely my metaphor. The vast majority of cells in the body are static, but red blood cells get everywhere & transmit stuff... ;-)

Anne - Perhaps you should read what I've written more carefully. I know what you're saying. I've also said we are talking at cross-purposes; congratulations on proving my point. I never said people didn't travel; I said that the majority never did. More than once. My "special few" was an unfortunate choice of words & perhaps that's stuck in your head. There is no "especially in the 12th & 13thC"; you're focused on that perhaps because it's what you're currently looking at. There have always been a proportion of people who move around for whatever reason, some very few over remarkable distances. But for most of human history, the primary employment of most folk has been the acquisition / production of food, or some craft connected with that, and that, for the most part, ties you to a place. Most people (percentage wise in their time obviously, given that population has exploded, more than quadrupled, in the last century, when folk certainly have been very mobile) have not had one or both of the opportunity or the need to travel.

Oh, and one other thing. Don't get snotty & rude about academic qualifications, etc. I'm sure you didn't mean to be, but read back what you wrote to me & imagine how you'd feel if I'd written that to you. I don't think you'd be very happy with it, would you? I've already said, I think, that I'm nothing more than a knowledgeable amateur. But I am a very knowledgeable amateur and yes, the no-longer-so Dark & Middle Ages is my particular area of interest, along with the lead up to & happening of WWI. I have read widely, I am well-informed & I'm also not stupid enough to declare that I am "just as well" or "better" informed than you are! I don't know what you know, after all. ;-)

Steve seems to have understood the point I've been trying to make. Not that no-one ever travelled, but that relatively few ever did until relatively recently (Homo Sap has been around for about 200,000 years, so it is reckoned). You seem to have decided that You Are Right And Therefore I Must Be wrong. But we're not making the same point. If I haven't managed to get this across by now, I think I'd best give up! ;-)