Social Factors
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Last updated
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Archaeological evidence coupled with annotations from Greek and Roman sources paint a picture common proto-Celtic and later Celtic culture's social factors.
Proto-Celtic "Oak Knower" highlights the importance of trees and the general factor of wisdom. The concept of Druid is suggested by the Romans to have originated in the north or west and come to the early Celts. This suggests it was a concept of learned class that developed in western or norther proto-Celtic cultures or from earlier cultural groups and would be later adopted by the Celts as the Romans knew them.
Rome and Greece for note had known the Celts for a long time and had be harassed by them for a considerable amount of time. It wasn't until Julius Cesar's time that Rome was finally putting down the core of Celtic culture at least as far as Roman knew it.
The Romans note that people would submit to study them selves or be sent by family. This tells us it is not a hereditary function. We know druid studies included but where not limited to science, philosophy, astronomy, history and religious topics.
We also know that druids voted among them selves to select a chief Druid, this aligning with other Celtic leadership functions favouring choosing the best person for the job as opposed to inheritance of power.
It is also noted that Druids do not write anything down ... seemingly as a matter of custom or tradition however we do have some records in the form of golden hats, calendar stones and other functional yet symbolic artefacts of useful information in particular dealing with measures of time and astronomical events.
Julius notes it could take as long as 20 years to memorize all of the required information to become a Druid, this would also tell us that there are no young Druids
We have many archaeological examples and documented occurrences of male and female persons in every role and every strata of society. Female and male alike where warriors, druids, leaders, workers, artisans, wealthy, pore, slave and master.
Gender appears important for its symbolic uses and for procreation but seems to have no barring at all with regards to the path of ones life. The concept of inhibited or limited female social opportunities seems limited to Roman, Greek and related cultures but was not a feature of proto-Celtic, Celtic and further northern and eastern tribes.
This is an interesting discovery as the common thought is of either matriarchal or patriarchal societies throughout "civilized history" it however seems that such gender elevation or suppression as your point of view may be is the oddity not the norm as is limited to Roman, Greek and related culture groups for the period in question.
We have numerous notes from both the Greek and the Roman of Celtic hospitality and reason to believe this feature was present in proto-Celtic owing to it being prevalent in other cultural groups derived from the same sources.
No group of the age is known as particularly inhospitable but the notes for these norther tribes of Europe by the people who saw them as enemy as being very hospitable and well "civilized" with regards to there treatment of guests is of note above and beyond what they felt was usual.
In may however be that the furious nature of war for proto-Celtic and Celtic peoples set an expectation of an inhospitable nature that simply contrasted with the experienced reality of a "civilized" (as described by the Greek) hospitality.
The understanding is that leadership was passed down to whom was deemed more worthy and was less a matter of heredity as we see in the later ages. Leadership selection and forms of governance that might be considered democrat have been noted by several sources. We do know that chiefs and kings do feature and that Druids where important for the process.
We have many notes from Greek and Roman sources regarding sex having no taboos with the tribes we associate with proto-Celtic and Celtic. We also have notes with regards to Celtic women interacting with Roman women on the matter showing Celtic women where just as sexually liberal as the men.
We see a similar condition in various European tribes suggesting that sexual taboos and inhibition of female sexuality is a distinctly Mediterranean concept that doesn't apply to the tribes in question for our folklore research.