Stuclie subscribes to Usher's view that the world is only about 6,000 years old. He didn't find any problem with being clergyman and church of England at the same time. So druidism is a form of patriarchal, abramic worship. And it's not just doodly. People like Isaac Newton, suppose modern rationalists, see Stonehenge as the remnants of sort of ancient fire worship which was then contaminated by corrupt Christianity. Well, I think it's a guilty contributor. Barry, it's been discredited that the druids could possibly have built Stonehenge, it was built, hasn't it? No. Oh, quite all of
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar and Pliny, who described them as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles. They were suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication from ancient Britain. In the early modern era, however, interest in the Druids revived, and later writers reinvented and romanticised their activities. Little is known for certain about their rituals and beliefs, but modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on them.
With:
Barry Cunliffe
Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford
Miranda Aldhouse-Green
Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
Justin Champion
Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London
Producer: Thomas Morris.