Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge

by Graham Phillips

  We can glean some idea of how the Roman Catholic Church regarded such institutions from various medieval accounts preserved at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and compiled into Origines Anglicanae (A History of the English Church) by the historian John Inett in 1704. Such monasteries, we are told, consisted wholly of priests, nuns, and monks who had not taken vows acceptable to the Catholic Church and where no one took an oath of celibacy. Men and women lived together in the same buildings, along with their children, and, perhaps most distasteful of all from the Roman perspective, women were even elevated to the position of abbess in charge of the entire establishment.34 From what we gather from early Irish literature, the hagiographies, and the classical sources, the Druids had previously lived a very similar lifestyle to the people who dwelt in these Celtic Church communities.

  That the Druids were a distinct class who only procreated among themselves actually explains a genetic conundrum: why so many Irish people have red hair. Scientists have determined that a gene known as the melanocortin 1 receptor, MC1R for short, is responsible for red hair, as well as fair skin and a tendency toward freckles. According to genetic research it first appeared in humans around forty-five thousand years ago in central Asia, where it afforded an advantage in weak sunlight and harsh winters: pale skin enabled the production of more vitamin D from sunlight, strengthening bones and increasing the survival rate during pregnancy and childbirth.35 After the Ice Age ended around 10,000 BCE these people migrated into parts of northern Europe and were the first humans to recolonize the British Isles after the ice retreated by crossing the Doggerland land bridge (see chapter 3). They were the original Neolithic inhabitants of the British Isles, those who built the first megalithic monuments starting around 3100 BCE.36

  MC1R is what is known as a recessive gene, and a characteristic such as red hair must be inherited from both parents. Although neither parent necessarily has to exhibit this physical trait, MC1R must be present in both. In short, unless the two parents possess this gene there is no chance their children will have red hair. Consequently as a proportion of any population, relatively few individuals have red hair. The British Isles were colonized by wave after wave of migrants in prehistoric times. The Beaker people and the Wessex culture came from what are now Belgium and the Netherlands, and the Urnfield and Hallstatt Celts came from Germany and Austria (see chapter 9). All these groups were already interrelated and had, for the most part, brown hair, and they settled throughout the British Isles. England and Wales had an additional influx of people from throughout the Roman Empire between the first and fifth centuries CE, many of whom were from the Mediterranean region and had dark hair. In addition, England was further invaded by the Anglo-Saxons, from what is now northern Germany and southern Denmark, having light brown hair, and the Vikings from Scandinavia with blond hair, who also settled throughout Scotland and much of Wales. The Normans, from medieval France, who shared a blend of just about every European heritage, invaded England and Wales in the early Middle Ages, and the totally mixed bag of peoples who were the English by the late thirteenth century went on to settle in large numbers in Scotland. Neither the Romans nor the Anglo-Saxons invaded Ireland, although many Vikings settled there, but the Norman invasion of the country in the late twelfth century marked the beginning of a turbulent period of over eight hundred years of English rule and an influx of new people from throughout mainland Britain.37

  Although today red hair is popularly associated with Celtic nations, such as Scotland and Ireland, that leads to a serious misconception. The original Celts, who spread out from what is now Germany and Austria, had brown hair. The abundance of red hair in what are now considered to be Celtic countries has nothing to do with the genetic makeup of the original Celts. With all the interbreeding that went on for thousands of years in northern Europe, red hair became less and less common, and today is found in around only 2 percent of the general population. Ireland was just as much of an ethnic melting pot, and its inhabitants, we would expect, should have the same low proportion of red-haired people. But it doesn’t. An astonishing 10 percent of Ireland’s population has red hair. Scotland also has a higher number of red-haired people than usual, around 6 percent, but this is due to Irish migrations during the Dark Ages and the county’s abundance of remote islands. For red hair to have persisted for so long requires that certain groups of the original Neolithic people continued to live in isolation through these successive waves of migration. Ireland does have a few remote islands, but nowhere near as many as Scotland, so that cannot account for the high percentage of the Irish population with the MC1R gene.38 A caste system, which kept specific groups of descendants of the original inhabitants isolated from the general population, could well account for the enigma. Early Irish literature tells us that the Druids were direct descendants of the pre-Celtic people of Ireland—those that had red hair—and that they lived in their own separate communities.

  Might something similar have previously been going on for hundreds of years throughout the entire British Isles: a select group of people, the caste that maintained whatever function the stone circles served, living separately from the general population? A social class descended directly from the original Megalithic people? What the Celts called Druids may well have been this same exalted caste. The reintroduction of the stone-circle-building tradition in Ireland, when the Beaker people migrated from Britain around 2000 BCE (see chapter 10), may also have been accompanied by the general acceptance of this ancestral caste who came with them. (Just why such a caste should have been so embraced by a foreign culture is something we shall examine shortly.) If this was indeed the case, as the Megalithic age lasted much longer in Ireland, communities of red-haired people would have been living separately for centuries, years after the practice was abandoned in Britain. Such a practice would indeed account for the higher percentage of red-haired people that Ireland has today.

  Accordingly it might not only have been the stone circles that were adopted by culture after culture throughout the British Isles, but also the elite group of people who actually used them. Others helped build the megalithic monuments, venerated them, and presumably attended whatever ceremonies occurred there, but those who oversaw the use of the stone circles—their trustees, guardians, or whatever they were—may always have been the direct descendants of those who first built them. It’s a radical theory, but one that could be tested by DNA analysis of Druid remains. The problem is, according to the ancient Greek and Roman writers, that the Druids were cremated and their remains were scattered to the winds. However, there does appear to have been a supreme Druid at any given time whose body was interred in a more lavish and permanent fashion. Julius Caesar, for instance, tells us, “Of all these Druids, one is chief, who has the highest authority among them.”39 Early Irish literature also refers to these chief Druids, saying how they were given a splendid burial. Many of them were women referred to as bandrui, found in such accounts as “The Cattle Raid of Cooley” and The Book of the Taking of Ireland, a collection of poems and narratives purporting to tell the history of Ireland before the coming of Christianity that is preserved in The Book of Leinster. There is indeed archaeological evidence for the leading members of some elevated, perhaps priestly class of the Megalithic period being given elaborate burials.

  In Britain there are the cist barrow of Bryn yr Ellyllon near Mold in North Wales, where the occupant’s golden shoulder adornment, the Mold Cape, suggests that the person buried there was a priestess (see chapter 9), and the Rillaton Barrow on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, in local tradition associated with a Druid, where the stone compartment contained the remains of a man buried with many elaborate items, including a gold cup (see chapter 1). In 2008 archaeologists announced that they had excavated what is thought to be the tomb of a chief Druid dating from just before the Roman invasion. The site, at the village of Stanway in the county of Essex, consisted of a burial chamber beneath a stone cairn. The individual, it is not known whether a man or woman, was int
erred with his or her belongings, including a cloak decorated with brooches, various gems, and what is thought to have been an ancient medical kit. It consisted of thirteen instruments, including scalpels, forceps, and a surgical saw. There was also a “tea strainer” containing artemisia pollen, commonly associated with herbal remedies such as deworming.40 Whoever the person was, he or she was a healer, which all the historical sources suggest was the prerogative of the Druids. Moreover, the person was buried with some strange metal poles, identified as diving rods used by Druids, as described in early Irish literature. The problem with these tombs is that nothing remains today to be subjected to DNA testing. The Stanway occupant had been cremated, while the Bryn yr Ellyllon and Rillaton Barrow bones were exhumed and disposed of before modern scientific analysis had been developed.

  In Ireland, important Druids do seem to have been buried in a specific fashion, in unusual box cairns (see chapter 9). Although most Celts were either cremated or buried without tombs or markers, during the late Iron Age chieftains were often interred beneath large mounds of stones called cairns. Specifically, they were buried beneath such cairns standing upright, dressed in their armor, facing toward the land of their enemies. In The Book of the Dun Cow, for example, we find accounts of these royal burials, and archaeologists have discovered a number of them, such as one in the tumulus called Croghan Erin at Kiltale in County Meath and another in a cairn near Belmullet, County Mayo.41 But the box cairns seem to have been reserved for important Druids, and they date right up to the period when the Christian missionaries arrived. They are unlike anything else found in Ireland from this period. They consisted of a rectangular structure, averaging about 12 feet long and 6 feet wide, made up of large slabs of rock, some 5 feet high and 6 inches thick, and divided into two parts by a further vertical slab set across the middle. The body was buried in one side of the chamber and the grave goods deposited in the other; a series of capstones was then placed over the top, and the entire structure was covered with a large stone cairn. Such box cairns have been excavated at sites throughout Ireland, such as at Ballykeel South in County Clare, Brackloon in County Mayo, and Kilgowan in County Kildare, all of which were constructed adjoining stone circles between 350 and 450 CE.42 Burial goods similar to those found at the Stanway tomb, such as “medical instruments” and “divining rods,” have been unearthed at these tombs, suggesting that, like the Stanway tomb, they too were the graves of leading Druids. Unfortunately even though some still contained human bones, they are too degraded for DNA analysis to render reliable results.

  Fig. 11.3. Late Iron Age tombs in Ireland.

  In conclusion, Irish oral tradition, as transcribed by the first Christian missionaries, held that the Druids existed before the Celts arrived and that they were an illustrious class among the previous inhabitants of Ireland. Moreover, it’s quite possible that those the Celts referred to as Druids were the actual descendants of the very faction who had overseen the use of stone circles during the earlier Megalithic age. But what could it have been about the Druids that would have made them so indispensible?

  12

  Astronomy and Medicine in the Stone Circles

  PERHAPS BY UNDERSTANDING THE DRUIDS we can finally discover the true purpose of the stone circles. For over three millennia these megalithic monuments continued to be used, despite successive waves of migrants settling throughout the British Isles: the Beaker people, the Wessex culture, and the Urnfield and Hallstatt Celts. Based on the archaeological evidence, such as modes of burial, these groups evidently practiced diverse religions, all quite different from those of the original Megalithic Britons and Irish (see chapter 9). Yet for some reason, stone circles—first built by the Neolithic inhabitants—continued to be erected, maintained, and used by all these foreign cultures, even though they had previously created no such monuments in their homelands. By the time the first written records appeared concerning Britain, and later Ireland, those who officiated at whatever practices took place at stone circles were called Druids, and from the assorted evidence examined in the last two chapters, they appear to have been an elite caste descended from a distinguished class among the Neolithic residents of the British Isles. The word “druid” derives from a Celtic term meaning “truth sayers” (see chapter 10), though what such people were previously called is unknown. So what do we know about them?

  To start with, it is most unlikely that they were the kind of fanatical savages, up to their necks in bloodletting, portrayed in the works of some Roman writers. They do appear to have uniquely performed sacrifices in Celtic society, but these were mostly animal sacrifices. Strabo does relate how the Druids would sometimes perform the ritual killing of humans, although Caesar implies this mainly involved the execution of criminals. There may actually have been few or no human sacrifices, the notion being disseminated for political propaganda. The Greeks and Romans often accused foreign cultures of such abhorrent rites when there was no archaeological evidence for such practices. In fact, as Hippolytus of Rome, who was a Christian and writing to defame what he regarded as the superstitious beliefs of the Druids, fails to mention their supposed human sacrifices, it seems unlikely that such occurrences were genuine, or at least were rare. Remember, his book was actually titled The Refutation of All Heresies (see chapter 11) and was written to deliberately defame all alternatives to Christianity. Hippolytus would certainly have made much of such abhorrent behavior had he been aware of it.

  Hippolytus of Rome does, however, reveal something fascinating about the Druids. He likened them to the contemporary Brahmins of India: a priestly caste only permitted to procreate with one another (see chapter 11). Although they lived in isolation, there were many communities of such people scattered throughout India, and marriages were arranged between settlements, preventing inbreeding. It seems to have been the same with the Druids. But there was one big difference between these two sects from opposite sides of the known world. The Brahmins were the Hindu elite among a Hindu population, whereas in the British Isles the Druids seem to have held markedly different religious views from the rest of society. According to Julius Caesar, the Celts worshiped a variety of gods, the chief of which he equates with the Roman Mercury, the guider of souls to the underworld. The Druids, on the other hand, venerated a different god, whom Caesar likens to Apollo, a solar deity who was additionally the god of prophecy and healing.1 Diodorus Siculus also implies that their god was similar to Apollo. When referring to the circular temple that seems to have been Stonehenge (see chapter 9), he tells us that it was sacred to this sun god and that the priesthood who gathered there were devotees of this deity.2 One thing we do know about stone circles is that they were associated with the sun, as many of them have king stones, avenues, and stone rows aligned with the sunrise or sunset at significant times of the year. The Druids also seem to have held a belief in reincarnation that was not necessarily shared by the Celts in general. Caesar says that “the cardinal doctrine which they [the Druids] seek to teach is that souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another.”3 Strabo and Pomponius Mela relate something similar.4, 5 Conversely the Celts as a whole seem to have believed in an afterlife in an abode of the dead. Tír nAill, pronounced “cheer na awl,” or the otherworld of spirits, deities, and fallen heroes, is frequently referred to in early Irish literature.

  The Druids, it seems, maintained independent religious concepts to those of the general population of the British Isles, and judging by their funerary customs, they—by whatever name they were originally known—had done so right from the time the first wave of migrants, the Beaker people, had arrived. It went way beyond mere tolerance: they were not only tolerated by newcomers but also respected, venerated, and held in the highest esteem, even accepted as a kind of judiciary (see chapter 11). This all seems a most unlikely scenario—comparable, perhaps, to Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims all revering an autonomous Jewish elite—unless, that is, the Druids served an invaluable function for the wider society that was of a practi
cal rather than a religious nature. (In chapter 1 we already considered that stone circles may have served some practical function, accounting for why they continued to be used for so long and throughout such a large area without the infrastructure of civilization.) So were the Druids really the priesthood of the Celts? Or were they something else, perhaps more akin to an academic or learned assembly of some kind, with wisdom, knowledge, and skills deemed essential to everyday life?