The Celts
Review "The Celts".
"Northern and western Europe were colonised by Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
and H. heidelbergensis before modern humans. The first
H. sapiens sapiens arrived around 40,000 years ago. The new arrivals
remained and their DNA can still be found, notably in populations
like the Basques of southwest France and northern Spain. These
people hung on to their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and it now appears
that agriculture was spread to Europe by people from Anatolia, who
migrated into Europe and brought their technology and culture with
them." ~ quote from Why Men Made God, pg. 165.
Find out more about this in the article How European Farmers Spread Agriculture Across Continent by Jennifer Welsh, April 2012. Read the article...
Written by one of the foremost scholars of the Celtic Iron Age, Miranda Green, Exploring the World of the Druids (1997) explores Druidic history from the ancient world to the present, including chapters on Druids and Celtic religion, female Druids, Druids in myth and the resurrection of Druidic beliefs in the seventeenth century.
"Druidic learning, however, was secret. Druids were only permitted
to pass a little of their knowledge on to non-druids. Knowledge
made the Druids indispensable in a culture that did not write, and the
Druids encouraged this, decrying written knowledge as corrupt and
not truly learned. There is an analogy here with music, where a piece
is not considered ‘learned’ until it can be played without reference to
notation. It means that the piece and all its nuances have been fully
internalised. This is how Druids saw learning and their nineteen years
of study was devoted to learning by heart the ancient lore transmitted
to them, in small groups or individually, by qualified druids. Almost
certainly this knowledge was preserved in the form of songs and repetitive
chants." ~ quote from Why Men Made God, pg. 167.
Scientist Joshua Fore describes a technique for memorizing large amounts of information. This may not have been the technique the Druids used, but it might convince you that you can train your memory too.
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