Posted on 01/18/2009 2:32:39 PM PST by BGHater
A group of militant Druids has forced an expensive official inquiry after demanding that a museum releases a 4,000-year-old skeleton called 'Charlie' so they can rebury it.
They claim the bones of a young girl and seven other sets of prehistoric remains excavated near the ancient stone circle in Avebury, Wiltshire, are their 'tribal ancestors'.
If their claim is rejected, they have threatened to take a test case to the High Court under the Human Rights Act.
The row has triggered two years of meetings and reports by state-funded English Heritage and the charity The National Trust, which have been given powers by the Government to decide the case.
They are conducting a public consultation before issuing a judgment later this year. English Heritage said it could not estimate the cost but one source said: 'It could run into tens of thousands of pounds.'
Archaeologists fear that if the Druids' claims are successful, they could open the floodgates to increasingly bizarre demands, stripping museums of their collections.
Critics say the group making the claim, the Council of British Druids Orders, is unrepresentative and has hijacked legislation enacted after Tony Blair was lobbied to return Aboriginal remains kept in Britain, some of which were repatriated.
The Druids made their demand to the Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury under the Human Tissue Act, which allows museums to return human remains.
They claim that remains in the museum include their ancestors Hawk, from the ancient Order of the Sidhe, and Lydia, Swordbearer of the Glastonbury Outer Order of Druids.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
OMG!
Don’t dare utter that truth while amongst a group of “militant Druids”!
You’ll be whacked with hazel staves and flogged with Mistletoe!
They turned me into a newt.
I didn’t get better....:(
The Archbishop of Canterbury is an honorary Druid. Wonder if he’ll get involved...
(The guy on the right looks like actor Peter O’Toole.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/aug/06/religion.world
Besides, everyone knows the Basques built Stonehenge.
The fine line between archaeology and grave robbing is crossed again...
Shouldn’t that read “Militant Posers Pretending to be Druids...”?
NUTS.
It was inevitable. After the Federal Government in the U.S. recognized the “rights” of American indian tribes ot non-hisotircal burials - a gross act of politically correct lunacy - other wack-job radical groups would soon follow.
‘Politcally correct lunacy’? So would you be happy if instead of being allowed to rest in peace, your mortal remains were disinterred by archeologists and shoved in a museum for crowds of slack-jawed tourists to gawp at?
Not that I have any respect for the “druids” in question. The mysteries of the ancient British religion are lost in the mists of time, because it was a closely-guarded secret passed down from druid to druid by word of mouth. What these people are practising is at best, some half-arsed bull that they have gleaned from fragments of information passed down from observations by outsiders (i.e. the Romans) who would not have understood the full reason and context of the ceremonies, and certainly wouldn’t have been privy to the full details that only the druid priests themselves were permitted to know....
‘Politcally correct lunacy’? So would you be happy if instead of being allowed to rest in peace, your mortal remains were disinterred by archeologists and shoved in a museum for crowds of slack-jawed tourists to gawp at?”
I couldn’t care less what happens to my mortal shell after I’m dead - I won’t be around to notice.
As for the “gawking slack-jawed tourists” the people like these wack job “Druids”, oppose even the very private study of these remains to obtain important, significant, or just enlightening information about these people and their times.
They are intellectual luddites.
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