Скачать или смотреть Did ancient Druids really burn people alive in giant wicker men?

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Did ancient Druids really burn people alive in giant wicker men? It's a chilling image, popularized by the horror film, The Wicker Man. But how much of it is true?


The idea of a "wicker man" comes primarily from Julius Caesar's writings in the 1st century BC. He claimed Druids, the Celtic priests, would fill these massive wicker figures with living humans and animals, then set them ablaze. Criminals were preferred, but innocents could also be sacrificed.


Other Roman writers like Strabo and Diodorus Siculus also mentioned Celtic human sacrifices by burning. They suggest the ashes were even believed to help crops grow. However, much of this information might trace back to an earlier Greek historian, Posidonius.


Now, here's the crucial part: modern historians are skeptical. Romans and Greeks were often at war with the Celts. It served their agenda to portray them as "barbarians" capable of gruesome acts. This could have led to exaggerations or even outright fabrications.

While there's rare archaeological evidence of human sacrifice among Celtic peoples, the specific "wicker man" method is almost exclusively from these potentially biased Roman accounts. There's no concrete archaeological proof of these massive burning effigies used for human sacrifice.

So, while the image of the Wicker Man is powerful, it's more likely a Roman propaganda tool than a widespread Druid ritual. Today, wicker figures are sometimes burned at festivals like Burning Man, but definitely without human sacrifices!