Why Don't We Know Much About Druids?

The surviving records about who Druids were and what they did aren't considered reliable. Learn what we know and don't know about Druids in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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

(00:23):
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.

(00:46):
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

(01:07):
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.

(01:29):
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

(01:50):
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

(02:13):
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

(02:34):
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

(02:57):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:43):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:25):
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

(04:46):
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.

(05:06):
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.

(05:27):
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