Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bolga Baum Here. Pay pretty much any topic on the planet, and you can go straight to Google with as many questions as you like, emerging from your search with answers from at least a few solid original sources. A glaring exception to this fact finding rule of thumb, though, is the Druids. We spoke by email with Owen Jaris, journalist who specializes in history and archaeology,
and whose name I hope I am pronouncing correctly. He said, what's fascinating is how little we know about the Druids. The written references we have are written by non Druids, and their writings may be affected by anti Druid Roman sentiment. When and where the Druids originated, and much about their
practices remains unknown. In fact, famed Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar is considered the world's pre eminent expert on all things Druid, and the fact that he died in forty four b c. May indicate just how little we actually know about this class of Celtic speaking experts in magical and religious practice who inhabited northwestern Europe about two thousand years ago. But we also spoke via email with Mariah Williams, a lecturer in Celtic studies at UC Berkeley.
She said, because we don't have any accounts of druids from early Celtic speaking people's themselves, there remains an air of mystery around them. Perhaps this air of mystery is attractive. Without concrete evidence of who druids were and what their role in society was, they can be shaped to fit different molds for different purposes. The basic definitions of Druidism as we know it can be tied to two main sources, ancient Greek and Roman writings and portions of medieval Irish literature.
The former sources have an advantage in that these writings originated from people who were actually alive at the time that the druids existed. The main issue, however, is that almost all of these writings relied on second hand information,
and none of it was very fleshed out. Williams said, according to the accounts of classical authors, who will have had their own biases, and only some of whom may have been direct witnesses, Druids seemed to have been a learned class of Celtic speaking peoples who may have wielded some political authority and who acted as religious intermediaries. Some Greek sources described them as philosophers. According to Caesar, they
had to spend twenty years in training. Caesar also said that there were two groups of men in Gaul, which is a historical region of western Europe inhabited by Celtic tribes who were considered honorable, the druids and the nobleman, and that because druids were in charge of public and private sacrifices, many people went to them for instruction. It's also thought that the druids assembled annually to review all
legal disputes. The other main source of Druid knowledge, ancient Irish literature, has the advantage of being produced by a society that once included druids and involved more frequent references to the group. But this source also has two big problems. Like the Greek in Roman texts, the ancient Irish texts also include widely varying depictions of druids, and so it's hard to glean whether they were considered wise powerful figures
or quote savage pagan priests. The other main problem is that these accounts were written long after Druids had ceased to exist, hundreds of years after the Irish were largely converted to Christianity. What is known about the Druids can be boiled down to their basic roles in society. Jara's credits scholar Sir Barry Cunliffe with much of what's known
about the Druids today. Jaras said, as Cunliffe wrote in his book Druids a very short introduction, the Druids performed a variety of roles, including quote philosophers, teachers, judges, the repository of communal wisdoms about the natural world and the traditions of the people, and the mediators between humans and the gods. The ancient form of druids and seems to have died out during the Middle Ages before being revived centuries later, although there may be little to no continuity
between ancient drudism and more modern forms. One major misconception about the Druids is that they were the group responsible for building Stonehenge, the iconic English monument constructed of massive rocks. While you may have heard that the Druids built the mysterious landmark to serve as a Temple. The approximately five thousand year old site is actually thought to predate the
group by at least a few thousand years. Jaras said, One important thing to note is that while modern Druids have a special reverence for Stonehenge, there's little evidence that the ancient Druids did. Stonehenge was constructed between about five thousand to four thousand years ago, while the earliest written references to Druids date back two thousand, four hundred years. While the Druids may go back further than the surviving written records, it's a big jump to say that they
were involved with Stonehenge. While little is known about the original ancient Druid, Jaris says he can see why modern people continue to be fascinated by this enigmatic group quote. The fact that ancient Druidism is poorly understood makes it easier for people to put their own beliefs and hopes into modern Druidism. Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tyler. Playing. For more and listen lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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