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Druids and Avebury Reburial - Digitaldigging - 21st March 2009
Please help yourself to salt, but as this article relates - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090320-druids-sacrifice-cannibalism_2.html - aren't we forgetting the rather sticky bits attributed to Druidism? Or is this nature, not red in tooth and claw, but pretty butterflies and flowers?
Druids and Avebury Reburial - trowelmonkey - 21st March 2009
No need for the salts! Anybody who doesn't think that the past was at least as red in tooth and claw as today is kidding themselves.....
I read Emma's eloquent essay on the display of the Lindow Man on HAD and whilst I may have much sympathy about poor display I really had to object to the premise that he WANTED to lie in Lindow Moss. We simply do not know whether he was a willing victim. Even were he such, the style of death was not very nice by anyone's reckoning. I doubt it could've been otherwise as the method was undoubtably governed by theological doctrine (yes, that too existed in the deep past) prescribing the hows and whys. I could threaten to append a proper bibliography to explain my reasoning at this point as is my wont, but will only do so if asked nicely.
What I find interesting is that nobody has yet demanded the return of "Yde girl" to her boggy grave, even though she is broadly contempoary to Lindow man and her death was at least as harrowing. I wonder whether this is because she was female? In terms of respect for the dead, the locals pillaged her body for teeth and hair when she was discovered in a way that was never done to Lindow man. Modern man has no reason to be smug or pretend squeamishness in the face of death.
Europe (including Britain) is full of what we would prefer to call grisly traces of ritual activity and yet within their time these rituals made perfect theological sense. Maybe it is one of humanity's few true intellectual advances that we currently live in a society which has been able to internalise the religious experience in order to express it on a symbolic level without the need to to spill blood? It may be our heritage, but I would like to think that we have transcended it. (BTW, the last reference to actual ritual blood drinking I can find occurred in Ireland in the 1770's, so we're not that far removed from this world at all.)
As for love and war and all its grisliness, I doubt we have made much progress at all. We said never again after the Holocaust and have carried on regardless.
I have preferred to keep out of this deeply emotive argument, but have come to the conclusion that sitting on one's hands does not help at all. I hope that no one thinks that my view of humanity is all bleak. This is far from the case. To me one has to acknowledge that humanity is as capable of destruction as creation and hate as well as love and these concepts don't always map comfortably. Most of the time though, we muddle along and there's wonder in that too.
PS- I was thinking of Yde girl[:I] both in terms of chronological relation to Lindow man and the souvenir hunting of the teeth. Incidently, Windeby girl is currently gender confused. If anybody can post the details of the 2007 re-examination of the body I'd be interested as all the pop science links say "probably a boy," which isn't really the same as definitely is it?
Druids and Avebury Reburial - YellowPete - 21st March 2009
SALT or salt
1,2,3 say no more
4,5,6 why no more
7,8,9 ten (10) some more
conventions gone crazy
txt is
Mike
Druids and Avebury Reburial - Digitaldigging - 21st March 2009
Well said Trowelmonkey - the salt was intended for the Nat Geog article incidentally. I too have few illusions about people; they can be absolutely wonderful, and bafflingly brutal.
If modern Druidism is going to ignore the the brutal bits in favour of a Lord of the Rings approach, then they shouldn't be so surprised at a little resistance.
Druids and Avebury Reburial - trowelmonkey - 21st March 2009
Quote:quote:If modern Druidism is going to ignore the the brutal bits in favour of a Lord of the Rings approach, then they shouldn't be so surprised at a little resistance.
Like WH Auden, I feel I have to defend poor Tolkien just a little
He had the historian's view of humanity and certainly didn't shirk from the darker aspects. It's just that his characters don't wring their hands constantly in the way we're used to. Sad as I am I recently reread LOTR and was impressed by how deeply his experience of the trenches during WWI coloured his writing. :face-huh:
On an aside regarding the article in question, it never ceases to amaze me how readily we treat the Romans as "other." To me they are one European Iron Age culture amongst many and that neither takes away from them nor any of their contemporaries.
Druids and Avebury Reburial - Digitaldigging - 21st March 2009
Can we settle for Dungeons and Dragons then?
Druids and Avebury Reburial - Digitaldigging - 21st March 2009
I should also qialify - I have read the Lord of the Rings books, and found them to be important and thoughtful examples of literature. Tolkein had a deep understanding of human nature. And, of course, Dwarf and Elf nature.
Druids and Avebury Reburial - trowelmonkey - 21st March 2009
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Digitaldigging
I should also qialify - I have read the Lord of the Rings books, and found them to be important and thoughtful examples of literature. Tolkein had a deep understanding of human nature. And, of course, Dwarf and Elf nature.
[8D]
Druids and Avebury Reburial - Plautus - 21st March 2009
I am seriously coming round to the opinion, that we just toss them all in a skip, just to put a stop to this intermiable thread.
Druids and Avebury Reburial - Digitaldigging - 21st March 2009
I think you're over simplifying the situation - what colour skip?