Druids And Stone Circles

OBOD: Druids love stones and stone circles. For the last two hundred years Druids have been creating them and celebrating in them. The classical writers say nothing about stone circles. Instead they say that Druids gathered in sacred groves, caves, or remote valleys. But in the seventeenth century a few scholars began to take interest in the mysterious monuments – the artificial mounds, stone circles, dolmens and standing stones – that filled the countryside around them. They read the classical accounts of the Druids and suggested that these monuments were built by them.

This forged an indelible association in the popular imagination between Druids and stone circles such as Stonehenge. But until recently academics dismissed this idea. Historians used to say that the Druids couldn’t have used Stonehenge and all the other stone circles in Britain, because the Druids were the priests of the Celts, and the Celts only arrived in Britain in 500 BCE. Since no stone monuments were built after 1400 BCE, they pointed to the gap of nine hundred years separating the last of the stone circles from the arrival of the Druids. But in the sixties many historians changed their minds. They realized that the origin of the so-called Celtic tribes was far more complex than originally presumed, and suggested instead that early or Proto-Celts were probably in Britain as early as 2000 BCE - when the great stone monuments were still being built - and that they could well have been involved in their use or construction...read more>>>...