Скачать или смотреть Druid Sacrifice? Was the Lindow Man a Celtic Sacrifice to the Gods?

Druid Sacrifice? Was the Lindow Man a Celtic Sacrifice to the Gods? #CelticHistory - The mysterious ancient Celtic priesthood of the Druids have long been associated with human sacrifice. Yet outside of biased Roman sources such as Julius Caesar, there is little concrete evidence to prove that the Druids actually practised human sacrifice. Or is there?

On the 1st of August 1984, peat cutters were working in a bog in Cheshire, England. When a piece of wood got stuck in their shredding machine, one of the workers threw it away without a thought. His co-worker however noticed something odd about it, and after closer inspection, it turned out to be the remains of a human leg.

The police were called and after further examination, they realised that they had found the well-preserved remains of a man killed nearly 2,000 years ago. Today, he is known as the Lindow man. The body was so well preserved because the peat bog kept out oxygen, with the watery bog also being rich in iron and sulphur. This has meant that can even still see the groomed stubble on the man’s chin.

There are many fascinating features of this man’s death that indicate that he may have been the willing victim of a Druid sacrifice. Firstly, the stomach of the man contained mistletoe pollen, a substance the Druids were known to use in rituals.

Secondly, there was no obvious signs of a struggle outside the blows that killed him, leading to the theory that the man willingly participated in his own sacrifice. The way the man was killed also seemed to suggest he was sacrificed, probably to three Celtic gods, Taranis, Esus, and Toutatis. He was struck twice on the head and once in the back. He was then strangled by a thin cord around his neck. Finally, after death, his throat was cut and he was placed in a pool in the bog.

Following examination of the body, it is believed that the man, who was in his mid-20s to 30-years-old, was most likely a member of high class in Celtic society. He had a lack of calluses on his hands and feet, meaning he had not worked in the fields, and his physique suggested good nutrition. This has led to the speculation that the man may even have been a Druid prince.

Evidence from the man’s stomach has sparked one theory that the man drew the short straw in an ancient Druid lottery that determined who would be sacrificed to the gods. After pathologists examined his digestive tract, a partially digested cake was found. It is believed that this was bannock, a ground barley cake that the Druids used in their rituals, which was estimated to have been consumed 30 minutes prior to death.

One side of the cake, or bannock, was allowed to be scorched when cooking. The Druid priests would then break the bannock into small pieces, place it in a bag, and pass it around the group. The person who drew the scorched piece of bannock would be sacrificed to the gods, or so the story goes at least.

Determining for certain whether the Lindow man was sacrificed by the Druids is an impossible task, yet all the evidence seems to point this fact.

Sources:

Druid, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/Druid

Erin Blakemore. Why do we know so little about the Druids? National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi...

Malcolm Browne (Jan. 1988) 'Bog Man' Reveals Story of a Brutal Ritual, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/26/sc...

Creative Commons Imagery:

Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Einsamer Schütze https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... GNU Free Documentation License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Fre... Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Roger Gittins / Lindow Pete's final resting place - prior to British Museum. / CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Lindow Man - Druid Sacrifice - Druid - Sacrifice - Human - Lindow -
Man - Druid Documentary - Lindow Man England - Lindow Man Documentary - Lindow Man Death - Lindow Man History - Lindow Man Sacrifice - Lindow Man Druid

#History #Druids