Little authentic information regarding the ancient Celts’ priestly caste, better known to the world as the Druids, has survived to the modern age. The mysterious segment of the Celtic hierarchy is thought to have first arrived in the British Isles, along with the rest of their people, between the 5th and 6th centuries BC.

With a name that translates from Gaelic as “knowing oak tree,” the priestly sect was tasked with guarding the sum of their civilization’s theological, philosophical scientific knowledge. Some of their responsibilities were similar to those of shaman in Pan-American cultures and included calendar recordation, the dispensation of herbal remedies and seasonally oriented mystic rites in designated sacred groves.

The practice that has most heavily influenced the popular conception of the Druids, however, is human sacrifice. One of their victims was the so-called Lindown Man – the remarkably well-preserved corpse of a Druidic priest that was found in a Manchester bog in 1984. His throat had been slit and he had, apparently, willingly offered himself up for sacrifice.

Following the Roman occupation of Britain, however, the Druids’ predilection for outlandish rituals soon drew the ire of the Empire and the Emperor Claudius had the sect outlawed in AD 43. The final blow came during the battle that followed that decree, when a battalion of sixty Roman troops assaulted a Druid outpost on the island of Mona. No quarter was given and the majority of the Druid population – men and women alike – was wiped out, their sacred meeting groves razed in the aftermath.

This left the Romans left in advantageous of being the first to record the history of the Druids, albeit from a skewed point of view that saw them as little more than barbarians. In fact, Roman historian Pliny the Elder provides the very first recorded account of a Druidic ritual in his Naturalis Historia, wherein he provides an in-depth description of their annual mistletoe harvest – a ingredient they frequently utilized in the making of charms.

The fact that the Druids conducted their rituals in sacred groves and arbors, and not stone circles, rules out their long-suspected connections to the monoliths at Stonehenge. That notion was the product of an 18th century outsider cleric, Dr. William Stukeley, who theorized that the Druidic sect was the direct forbearer of a pure British religion – later to be embodied, in his view, by the Church of England.

Though it is the modern adherents of Stukeley’s view who continue to congregate annually on Salisbury Plain for solstice rites at Stonehenge, there is no archaeological evidence linking the Druids to the site in any capacity. Any definitive information as to their true beliefs and practices were lost the years following their extermination by Romans - leaving the tenets of their dark religion as intriguing and mysterious today as they were at the turn of the first millennium.

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Sometime between 4500 and 1200 B.C. an ancient civilization created large megalithic monuments in the regions that today form the countries of Spain, France, Ireland, Britain and Sweden. Archaeologists believe the civilizations that built these megalithic structures throughout Western Europe may have developed farming around 4500 B.C. Several centuries later, the first megaliths were built in Brittany and Ireland in approximately 4300 B.C., followed by the building of more elaborate megalithic structures in the centuries that followed. The most famous of these megalithic monuments are Stonehenge, the Ring of Brodgar and Stoney Littleton.

Stonehenge, perhaps the most impressive of these megalithic monuments, is located in southern England. Stonehenge was built in three stages. The first phase, a circular earth bank bordering the monument was probably made around 3100 B.C. The second phase consisted of a timber structure build within the circular earth bank of the first phase. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Stonehenge was used as a cremation cemetery beginning in this second phase of development. The stones themselves however, were probably not erected until several hundred years later, around 2400

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B.C. The megaliths formed a circle of eighty huge shaped upright stones linked by beams. Then, over the course of approximately two hundred years later, thirty enormous stones were added to the site.

Two other noteworthy ancient megalithic structures are: the Ring of Brodgar and Stoney Littleton. The Ring of Brodgar is located in the Orkney Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland. The large stones found at Brodgar are approximately the same age as the megalithic stones of Stonehenge and their tall, thin and pointed profiles are eerily similar to Stonehenge’s larger ones. Stoney Littleton near Bath, England on the other hand is entirely different in appearance with a long exposed barrow that leads to three different burial chambers.

Though no written records from the civilization that created Stonehenge and the other megalithic structures exist, it is apparent that they displayed some knowledge of engineering and metallurgy. Archaeological evidence suggests that the megalithic monument of Stonehenge could have been used as an astronomical observatory, a religious site used by Druids or a burial ground. And it is known that in approximately 2400 B.C., the megalithic civilizations learned to mine and use copper , a significant step in the development of the human race.

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