WEBVTT - How Druids Worked 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.560 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:13.120 dot com. Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.720 Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.320 guest producer Josh over there again and this is stuff 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:24.400 you should know. The led Zeppelin Edition, the Wet Edition, 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:29.920 the led Zeppelin Edition. Is that what you thought of? Yeah? 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.199 Anytime I see like that, Um, I guess it was. 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:35.600 It's not the Zoso album cover, but I think it 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.760 was like a poster that you'd see in Spencer's that 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.879 was like, I think from led Zeppelin four. It was 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.960 like a guy with a long beard. He looked like, 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.239 um oh, sure, he looked like what was his name, 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.159 the guy from Lord of the Rings. Yeah, yeah, he 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:56.240 looks like Gandalf. Basically. Yeah, Zeppelin was very You know, 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.200 if anyone who's ever seen song remains the same, they 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:06.119 it all sort of like mystical druid esque, right they were. 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.960 They were well known for their druid escu leaning. But 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.040 so that's what I think of with druids, and it 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:17.400 turns out that that is in one sense very much accurate. 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.640 That is what a druid looks like. But if you're 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:26.240 talking strictly about druids that came from the seventeenth century onward, 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.640 so like just a few hundred years ago, you would 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.680 be correct if you're talking about the ancient druids. The druids. 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.640 Druids the once that everybody thinks of is like like 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:42.000 the O G Druids, they we have no idea what 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.240 they were like. Really we or we have very very 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.840 little idea what they were like. And it's based on 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:55.880 such um potentially slanted evidence that some archaeologists refused to 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:01.040 agree with certainty that druids ever even exists the way 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.640 that we think they did. Yeah, and it's funny this. Uh, 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:06.600 the Grabster helped us out with this one, with the 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.600 research and he I don't know if Ed's been listening 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.799 to us for too long or what, because he fell 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.800 into the Josh and Chuck trap of not even saying 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.800 what the druid was until page four. So we should 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.240 just go ahead and say, when we're talking about the 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:29.160 ancient druids, Uh, it wasn't like a race of people 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.600 or anything like that. They were celts and as defined 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:38.840 by some history website. I went to UM, there were 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.680 members of the learned class of ancient Celts and ancient 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.440 Britain and France, and they acted as um, it was 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.360 really more like job based. They were teachers and judges 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.200 and priests and philosophers. So that's I mean, I never 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:56.520 knew that it was really just sort of um uh 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:58.640 che's I don't even know how to define it. Not 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.720 a class of people, well, sort of a class, yeah, 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:05.400 but it was kind of uh, job based. I didn't 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:10.520 know that an occupation yeah, occupational. Yeah, they had had 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.640 a union, They had pretty decent health insurance was ironic 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:16.520 because they didn't know what they were doing with medicine 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.000 at the time. Or if you you know, if you 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:21.440 had really good insurance, you could wind up in the 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:26.640 wicker Man getting burned alive, right, your family would would 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.520 benefit from that, you wouldn't potentially write. But that's I mean, 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.680 what you just said is basically the the most you 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:39.840 can say about druids with any level of of accuracy. 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.080 Are we done? Yep? That was It's true. It's everybody 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:50.120 short stuff. Um. Everything beyond that is is different varying 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.160 degrees of conjecture, And I don't want to like beat 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:55.720 this horse over and over again. So I think it's 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.080 really just good to kind of like just put it 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:00.839 out at the beginning, like everything we're talking about from 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:07.280 this point on is relatively UNPROVENUM archaeology is being very 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.800 stubborn and to their credit about what they will agree 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:15.600 about druids and what they won't agree about druids. UM. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.800 And I think that's great, But everybody else is like, hey, 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.480 that's good. You guys sit there and doggedly and methodically 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.800 figure it out. We're going to just let our imaginations 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:28.320 run wild and and come up with this conception of druids. Yeah. 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:30.599 And you know, one of the big reasons why we 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:33.760 don't have a lot of firsthand accounting is because the 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.159 druids did not uh and they had a very good reason, 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:39.200 but they didn't write things down. They didn't keep a 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:43.240 historical record about themselves. And the reason makes a lot 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:44.960 of sense. It was there was a lot of power 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.320 in the fact that they remained sort of mystical and 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:52.839 that a conquering enemy or foe can't just get a 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.760 bunch of druid I is that a word, Yes, druid 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.600 I writings to figure out what they're all about. So 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.560 there was a lot of mystery and mystique and because 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.560 of that a lot of power in just passing along 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:11.039 traditions orally within their own group. Uh, it really ended 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:15.480 up kind of being given them a stranglehold on their mystique, right, Yeah, 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.520 for sure. Um. The thing is, though, that's a super 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.600 important point. They didn't write things down, But almost as 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.640 important is to to say that they weren't illiterate. Now, 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.640 like the Celts wrote stuff down. And surprisingly when they 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.839 wrote stuff down, they wrote it in Greek. So the 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.200 later Romans who came along, as we'll see and had 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:40.680 a huge influence on Celtic culture when they encountered the Celts, 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:45.720 these heathens, these savage tribes, they are what the Romans 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:49.279 considered them to be. They they found that they already 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.240 wrote in Greek. But the Celts themselves, Chuck and I 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:57.039 didn't know this. Um they were. They were basically a 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:03.080 multi ethnic group. They were not just like you know, um, Germanic, 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:07.560 or they weren't just like Aryan or um, you know, 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.320 North African like. They weren't like an ethnic group. They 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:15.360 were apparently connected by language, but they were very tribal 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:19.240 and they warred with each other pretty much constantly. So 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.520 each little each little tribe would have its own kingdom, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.360 but they all were united under this culture, this Celtic 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.920 culture and Celtic language. Yeah, and um. Even though the 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:34.719 Druids didn't write about themselves, UM, early Greeks did UM 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:40.080 specifically Posidonius. And here's where, like you said earlier, it's 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:46.440 like someone writes about the Druids, maybe based on uh 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.440 lore or legend um, sometimes maybe first hand accounts, but 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.039 then other people write about those accounts, and then people 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.440 write about the accounts of the accounts, and pretty soon 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.640 all of the sort of quote unquote knowledge we have 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.280 about the Druids is based on It's like a game 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:07.719 of telephone essentially. UM. And one of the biggest contributors 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:12.360 to UM I guess druid I writing was Julius Caesar. 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.520 He wrote a lot about the Druids, but from the 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.960 perspective of a conquering army, you know, so that's a 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:22.640 it's definitely gonna have a slant. And he also based 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.520 a lot of his writings on Posidonius to begin with, right, Yeah, 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.280 Posidonius's writings were lost, like all of them were lost, 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.679 so we know he wrote a lot about the Druids because, 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.680 like you said, all those people came later and referenced 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.000 his writings before his writings have been lost, but we've 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:41.760 never seen his writings, which is a shame because we 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.760 probably could have learned a lot about the Celts and 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:49.160 the Druids firsthand. Um. But by the time so Posidonius 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.720 was was working in the first century b c. E. Um, 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.200 by the time Julius Caesar comes along, I think about 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:02.880 fifty sixty years later, um, he he has a different 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.120 slant than Posidonius probably would have like, because, like you said, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.520 he was showing up and saying, here are all these 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:12.360 people who we are subjugating, and then here's the reason 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.240 why we're subjugating them. He wasn't writing about the Celts, 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.840 and he wasn't writing about the Druids to document their culture. 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:24.240 He was writing propaganda to support the campaign of Roman 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:28.560 imperialism back home, so that everybody saw, oh, it is 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:31.000 good that we're going and conquering these people and bringing 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.800 civilization to these heathen tribes, because they're just running around 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:38.160 cutting each other's heads off and um, sacrificing one another 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:43.200 to their oak trees and possibly even eating one another. Um. 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.160 And and now it's up to historians and archaeologists to say, Okay, 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:49.600 how much of that is accurate, how much of that 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:51.640 comes from a kernel of truth, and how much of 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.320 it is outright just you know, fraudulent propaganda, which is 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.400 a huge job to undertake. Yeah, and we'll we'll touch 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:03.080 more on the human sacrifice stuff because that's certainly juicy. Yeah, 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:07.240 but um so, I guess Caesar writes a lot about this. 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.800 And it's like you said, from that perspective, when things 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:14.160 really get wacky is when our old buddy Plenty the 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:18.120 elder starts writing. And this is about what about a 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:22.160 hundred years later, and this is when things when this 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.520 is when the writing really amped them up as like 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:31.360 very odd wizard like people. Yeah. And Pliny, Pliny, so 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:35.319 he was a Roman citizen. He was a great traveler 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:40.440 though in a great um a great uhman. He was 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.640 a great wing man. He would just support you eat 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.080 whether you struck out or not. Um struck out? He 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.760 uh three's company. What's going on? Yeah, if you went 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.280 to the Regal Beagle with Pliny, you're gonna come away 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.560 happy one way or another. Um so. He but he 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:59.200 was like he was a documentary of all the other 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.360 cultures that's why he was going to do. But the 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:03.520 problem is that he was still a Roman citizen, so 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.280 he saw things through Roman I So that means that 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.320 he saw Heathens as heathens, like, yeah, their culture was 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.840 interesting and it was worth writing down, But it doesn't 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:16.200 mean that he had a respect for it or got 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:19.720 everything right or understood everything correctly. But you you, the 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.840 point is you could take Plenties writings potentially with a 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.400 little more of a grain of sand than Caesar's. But 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.199 but yeah, that's right, whatever you want to chew on. 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.920 But the but Caesar's writings have an advantage over Plenties 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.679 and that his were more contemporaneous to Celtic culture. By 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.400 the time Plenty came along, the Romans had already spread 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:46.480 their culture throughout the Celtic lands. They stamped out every 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:51.000 other culture basically. And what I found interesting from research, Chuck, 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:55.320 is that there were varying degrees of grudging nous at 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.120 accepting that culture among the Celtic tribes. In some respects 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:03.320 they were like, oh, yes, I love civilization. It's way 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.480 better than the life we were living before. There's so 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.679 many great trappings to it, and it's so much less 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:14.560 like you know, um hard and difficult and muddy. But 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:16.520 at the same time, I also don't like how the 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.480 Romans like just kind of like rape everybody they feel 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.680 like raping and tax us even though we're considered basically 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:27.160 slaves to them. So there was a real like um 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:32.319 weird period where the Romans started to permeate with their culture, 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:38.280 the Celtic culture of um I guess ambivalence towards that 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.480 that permeation, yeah, um so, I mean these are the 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.720 historical writings that we have as far as actual, real 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:50.920 archaeological evidence. It's not much better as far as conjecture 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.520 goes a couple of examples, because there's always you know, 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.240 this longing to connect the Druids and their paganism, their 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:02.640 brand of pagan him to this ritual sacrifice again because 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.600 it's juicy. So the lynd the very famous Lindau Man 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.240 who was Lindao to Lindau one was a woman. But 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:14.360 this was a body that they found in nineteen four 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.520 preserved in Pete and a Pete bog h. He was 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.959 a dude in his mid twenties and had a very 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.240 violent death. As it appears um they found food in 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:30.439 his belly, so they there's so much conjecture. The conjecture 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.240 there is essentially that he was ritually sacrificed, that was 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:37.719 his last meal, and then he had what's known as 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:41.240 three deaths. He was strangled. Uh, their ligature marks on 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:43.760 his neck very well preserved. You should look him up 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.240 the garrett. The leather strap is still around his neck um. 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.080 He was hit on the head after that, like blunt 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:55.000 forced trauma style, and then his throat was cut. So 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.240 the speculation is they gave him a last meal and 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:02.560 then gave him possibly three deaths, to satisfy three different 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:07.480 pagan gods. But it also he was found naked, so 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.960 there's speculation that he could have just been robbed of 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.760 his clothes and robbed of his money and uh maybe 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.679 by someone who it was a sick oh maybe or 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:20.760 somebody who is like, get that thing out of my 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:22.720 face and put some clothes on. I'm telling you for 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.840 the last time. And then it went it went south 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.120 from there. Yeah, and you can go see he travels 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.000 a little bit, but he's on permanent display in the 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.680 British Museum. If you want to go, uh, say hi. Yeah, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:35.880 if you ever want to be reminded that you're really 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.320 not a lot more than a bag of skin. Go 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.160 check out pictures of a lindau Man because that's basically 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.720 what he is. Yeah. They've also found mass graves um 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:49.280 from the Iron Age in in these areas where where 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:53.000 the druids were around, and again conjecture that this was 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:57.480 an example of like mass ritual sacrifice, but that's largely 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.280 been pretty much poopooed over the years as well. Yeah, 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:04.400 it's definitely up for debate whether they were just executed 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.640 or whether they were um killed in battle or whether 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:12.160 the yeah, they were sacrificed. Um. There's some other there's 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:17.080 some other archaeology that has has really tantalized archaeologist. There's 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.920 one called the Deal Warrior. Yeah, that's name. Yeah, it 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.240 really is, especially if you check out like how he 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:25.640 was found. He was found with a shield, a spear, 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.520 and a sword and wearing a crown. And as far 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.360 as they can tell, there's no other Celtic um burial 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.000 that that has been found thus far that had all 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.960 of these accoutrema. So this is an extraordinarily important person. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:43.520 But they have no idea who it was, but they 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.200 want to say druids so bad they can taste it 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:48.840 and then one of the other burials that was found, 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:53.800 they found him in a graveyard somewhere in I believe Britain, um, 0:14:54.880 --> 0:15:00.000 and he was found with a lot of weird stuff like, uh, 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.040 what appears to be a board game but that they 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:06.640 think possibly was was used for divining you know, the future, 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.360 like rolling dice or something like that. Um. He was 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.320 found with divining rods, you know, like they used to 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.920 find water and that kind of thing, so that indicates 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.200 some sort of ritual magic. He was also found with 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.640 a set of surgical tools. So they're calling this guy 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.920 the doctor. Because the archaeologists are being level headed. Everybody 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:27.960 else is saying, this is the grave of a druid. 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.120 It's the grave of a druid. Just say it, you 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:33.240 stupid archaeologist. And he's like, no, I won't say it. 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:35.720 He won't say it, but it's a it's it could 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.720 prove to be a really um important Fine. It probably 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.720 it probably already has proven itself that we just aren't 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.560 openly interpreting it yet. Yeah, and um, I should mention 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.440 if Deal Warrior is not the name of a death 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.640 metal band, then someone's doing it wrong. Yeah. All you 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.920 need is a picture of this guy on your album cover. 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.920 It is your first one. Should we take a break, Yeah, 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:58.920 let's all right, let's take a little break and we'll 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.600 come back and talk. Uh, we'll post some more conjecture 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:30.200 right after this. All right, Chuck, we're back. It's time 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:35.640 for more conjecture again. Some archaeologists refused to to say 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.920 that druids definitely existed, that a priestly class of Druids 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.120 and Celtic culture existed. Just chew on that one for 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:48.840 a while, alright, totally undermined your led Zeppelin poster. Yeah. Well, 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.640 here's the thing too about the Celts is we don't 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.720 know a lot about where their culture began or when 0:16:55.720 --> 0:17:01.040 it began exactly. Because Druids are Celts, we obviously don't 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.920 know much about where they began either. Um. We do 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:08.480 know that how how it kind of all ended. Um, 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.080 And when we say ended, I mean there, I mean 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.919 you can go to modern druid in Druidism websites today 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:19.600 and and go wear a flowery dress and frolic barefoot 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.359 in a field with people in any given country. Probably, 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:28.280 But that's not exactly the same thing the actual druids. Uh, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:33.600 we know because of writing from the first and second centuries. Basically, Uh, 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.640 there are laws all over the place that banned druidism. 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:41.560 Part of this Roman uh conquering way, which is like, Hi, 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.840 we're here, so forget everything, forget your way of life. 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:50.320 You are now Roman enjoy using toilets, right exactly, And 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.880 I like, I do like the toilets a lot, right. 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.680 So so with Claudia, I'd like a couple of um 0:17:55.720 --> 0:18:00.400 Caesar's Augustus and Tiberius said Okay, Romans citizen and aren't 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.360 allowed to participate in druidism. And then by the time 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:06.639 Claudius came around, uh, and by the time his rule 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:12.080 ended in fifty four CE UM, the Druids have had 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.480 been at least officially stamped out. Like not only could 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:19.560 you as a Roman citizen not participate in druidism, Druidism 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:24.080 in in totality was banned in the Roman empire um 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:29.119 under punishment of death. And uh, it had uh the 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:34.200 effect of driving Druidism underground, for sure. Yeah, but it's 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.240 not like it just went away. They still, like, you know, 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:39.960 they would go off and and and do their own 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:43.520 thing quietly as much as possible, right, and and so 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.000 I And I mean, when Claudius is banning this, it's 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.320 not just like no, we we don't like this. It's 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.960 a threat to to the Roman control over the Gallic 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:56.359 lands and these celts Um. That's not the reason that 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.240 he gave, although that was almost certainly the reason why 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.119 they outlaw druids. But the reason they gave were things like, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:08.840 these people practice an inhuman religion where they sacrifice people 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:13.760 to their gods. Apparently they would go through criminals and prisoners, 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:15.640 and then once they ran out of criminals and prisoners, 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:18.840 they would start sacrificing their own innocent people. They just 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.439 had this blood lust, so that religion had to be 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:24.800 stamped out and repressed. And of course the Roman citizen 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:27.239 around the world said, oh, yeah, that's great, get rid 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.879 of druidism. But like you said, it just kind of 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.280 went underground, it seems like. And then as rebellion started 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.080 to kind of crop up around them the British Isles 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:43.360 and in France um against Roman rule. It's pretty much 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:45.439 a sure bet that if there were such a thing 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.639 as druids, they were helping to foment that that rebellion 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.160 and that uprising. Yeah, and I think I get the 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:56.520 idea that the Romans were a little spooked by the Druids. Um, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.080 while they were like vastly superior with their military in 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.920 their might, um, they paid a lot of attention to them, 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:05.480 and like, they're not gonna make a bunch of hay 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:08.000 about something that they don't think is a threat. And 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:10.840 I think they were spooked out a little bit, like, uh, 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.640 when they were resisting, you know, after these laws were passed, 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.240 the Druids invoked a prophecy saying the end of the 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:19.479 world is coming near and the Roman Empire is going 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.760 to be destroyed by fire. And I don't think it 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:26.080 was just like the Romans just brushed that off. I 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:29.840 think they're like, oh jeez, those those guys are crazy. Um. 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.159 And also, how are we going to deal with a 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.479 big fire? Right exactly? So that's so that I mean, 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:41.040 I could see being spooked by that, couldn't you. Yeah, So, um, 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:44.160 they they definitely if they weren't spook chucking, at least, 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.120 they took them quite seriously and like again like outright 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:51.800 banned them. But not only did they did they prophecy 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.600 that they were going to um be burned by fire 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:59.119 like the some of these early writings of drewids, especially Pliny, 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.400 may did it seem kind of like creepy and magical 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.520 and wizardy, you know, like like Pliny described druids as 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:11.800 holding um blood offerings, like like slaughters of animals and 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.600 humans and their sacred oak groves. And we should say, 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:16.880 I don't think we said this, but the word druid 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.919 one of the suggestions for the etymology of it is 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:25.240 drew and wind, and drew means to know, and wind 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:29.280 means oak, So drew wid may mean nowhere of the 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:32.760 oaks or the people who who have the knowledge of 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:37.080 these sacred oak trees. Um and Plenty described these guys 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.119 and like white beards and long white robes, climbing up 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.959 oak trees to cut down mistletoe with golden sickles, you know, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:48.760 around saw wayne or um you know, the spring solstice 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:53.199 or summer solstice or spring equinox um, and and worshiping 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:57.119 this whole pantheon of gods that unfortunately the Romans didn't 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:00.720 bother to write down the names of. Yeah and once, uh, 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.520 isn't there speculation that Merlin from the Arthurian legend was 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:09.199 a druid, like he survived, you know, the not just 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.680 the Roman Romanization of Celtic culture and also the Christianization 0:22:13.720 --> 0:22:17.760 of Celtic culture, but into the Middle Ages, um, when 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.080 he was supposedly running around. Yeah, and again because they 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:23.680 weren't writing anything down. You know, when you're when you're 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:26.560 a conquering person, you can go in and like raid 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:29.520 the archives and get a lot of knowledge. I imagine 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:31.760 it was kind of creepy in and of itself to 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.440 just find that they had no writings at all, Right, 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.040 and then you're all of a sudden, I mean, I'm 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.040 sure there was like questioning and stuff, but then you're 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:42.080 just going on whatever they wanted to tell you, and 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.960 any Druid worth assault was probably like, you know, probably 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:50.120 tease them a bit about how creepy they might be. Sure, 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:53.840 you know. So that whole not writing things down thing, 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:56.800 that's that's an important point. So one thing, it means 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.960 that we don't have any direct understanding of the druids 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:03.600 from the druids. But um, the reason why they didn't 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:06.840 write things down was two fold. One, if they were 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:11.280 this priestly elite class that stood between the average celt 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:14.800 and the gods, Um, they were the ones who knew 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:16.919 the secrets of the oak and the wisdom of the 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:21.000 oak and all that um. One way they maintained that monopoly, 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:23.960 or that that have the market cornered on that knowledge 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:26.320 was to make it so that the only way you 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:28.880 could learn to be a druid was from another druid, 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:32.560 and to pass along this ancient tradition of knowledge, which 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:36.120 makes the whole thing way more mystical. Then even if 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.000 there was some main religious book or something like that, 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.240 it's oral ancient knowledge passed on from druid to druid. 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:45.520 That's how they passed it on. And that's why they 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:48.359 didn't write anything down. And then elsewhere I saw I 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:51.120 think it was maybe stray Bow or someone else said 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:53.960 that the reason they didn't write things down was because 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:57.400 they felt like by reading you didn't learn as much 0:23:57.680 --> 0:24:00.600 as from being immersed in it and in having had 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:03.480 explained to you over the period of something like twenty 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:06.359 years by another druid, Because that's about how long it 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:10.960 took to be initiated into being a full druid, a 0:24:11.040 --> 0:24:14.760 full rank druid, a full rank a black belt druid. Uh, 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:17.520 shall we take another break? Why not? Man? All right, 0:24:17.600 --> 0:24:19.000 let's do it, and then we'll talk a little bit 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:21.560 more about whether or not they practice human sacrifice and 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:24.399 stonehenge in all sorts of other good things right after this. 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:53.080 All right, So we talked a lot so far about 0:24:53.560 --> 0:24:56.800 or a little bit rather about whether or not they 0:24:56.840 --> 0:25:00.280 did practice human sacrifice, the sort of the sixty thousand 0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:03.800