Druids committed human sacrifice, cannibalism?

[Aurelia]

By suggesting that the ancient Celts committed such atrocities is also suggesting that they were ignorant and didnt value human life. I argue differently. I think human life was their highest value. And although it was celebrated when they passed away because they were going to a better place in the heavens but it is doubtful that they went willingly without living out first their life on this realm.

 

I think you are assuming here that the ancient Celts (or any ancient people for that matter) shared our Judeo-Christian values. Remember, there was no such thing as human rights and the concept that all men should be equal before God (or the gods) was not exactly widespread either. However, this does not make anyone living at that time less smart than us just because they did not value human life the same way we do today. Besides, as someone has already pointed out, we are still surrounded by war and violence in this supposedly enlightened age of ours.

[DecimusCaesar]

It wouldn't be completely out of the question for the Druids to have practiced cannibalism as well as ritual sacrifice. After all the Maya and Aztecs priests did the same - the Aztecs on a massive scale. Then again it might be a mistake on the Romans behalf, considering they thought that the early Christians were cannibals, based on a misinterpritation of the rites of communion, I believ. Does anyone have the source for that story? Perhaps it was Tacitus in his annals.

[Formosus Viriustus]

I hadn't heard of the Druid cannibalism thing before, either, and I wish the author of that piece had given a more specific reference to Pliny. All I could find in Pliny's Natural History was Pliny's mention of the Scythians as being a people who ate human flesh (Book 6, Chapter 20). I could have missed the Druid/cannibalism bit, though.

 

-- Nephele

Could they be one of the peoples mentioned here ? The ones with one eye in the middle of their forehead or the ones with backward facing feet ? Pliny certainly seems to be a reliable source on such subjects as cannibalism. About as reliable as NatGeo I would say...

 

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/holland/pliny7.html

(The Natural History Book 7, Chapter 2)

 

"... if wee were not credibly enformed, that even of late daies, and goe no farther than to the other side of the Alpes, there be those that kill men for sacrifice after the maner of those Scythian people; and that wants not much of chewing and eating their flesh. Moreover, neere unto those Scythians that inhabite toward the pole Articke, and not farre from that climate which is under the very rising of the Northeast wind, and about that famous cave or hole out of which that wind is said to issue, which place they call Ges-clithron, [i. the cloisture or key of the earth] the Arimaspians by report doe dwell, who as wee have said before, are knowne by this marke, for having one eie onely in the mids of their forehead: and these maintaine warre ordinarily about the mettall mines of gold, especially with griffons, a kind of wild beasts that flie, and use to fetch gold out of the veines of those mines (as commonly it is received:) which savage beasts (as many authors have recorded, and namely Herodotus and Aristeas the Proconnesian, two writers of greatest name) strive as eagerly to keepe and hold those golden mines, as the Arimaspians to disseize them thereof, and to get away the gold from them. Above those, are other Scythians called Anthropophagi, where is a country named Abarimon, within a certain vale of the mountaine Imaus, wherein are found savage and wild men, living and conversing usually among the brute beasts, who have their feet growing backward, and turned behind the calves of their legs, howbeit they run most swiftly. These kind of men can endure to live in no other aire nor in any other clime els than their owne, which is the reason that they cannot be drawne to come unto other kings that border upon them, nor could be brought unto Alexander the great: as Beton hath reported, the marshall of that princes camp, and who also put downe his geasts and journies in writing. The former Anthropophagi or eaters of mans flesh whom we have placed about the North pole, tenne daies journey by land above the river Borysthenes, use to drinke out of the sculs of mens heads, and to weare the scalpes, haire and all, in steed of mandellions or stomachers before their breasts, according as Isogonus the Nicean witnesseth ...''

 

Formosus

Edited June 18, 2009 by Formosus Viriustus

[Formosus Viriustus]

Those wicker giants that the Gauls used for making human sacrifices, according to Caesar : they are still around, I believe, or at least some descendants of them.

Every self-respecting little town in Belgium has at least a few. They also have them in the south of the Netherlands and the north of France. What used to be Belgica in Caesar's time.

 

Here you see a big parade of them.

 

They are paraded around once or twice a year

Edited June 30, 2009 by Formosus Viriustus