CULT: Human Sacrifice: The Wicker Man

About this episode

Around 53 BC, Julius Caesar wrote that the Gauls built enormous human figures out of woven branches, filled them with living people, and set them alight. That passage, written by a general describing the enemy he was conquering, became the foundation of one of the most durable images in Western imagination: the wicker man. Later readers called it the wicker man, and it has since been a horror film, a music festival, and a shorthand for pagan savagery. What it has never been is archaeologically settled. Roman writers had every reason to describe the Celts as barbarians, and the physical evidence for ritual killing in Iron Age Europe is real but stranger and more ambiguous than a giant burning effigy. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson explores what Caesar claimed, what the archaeology of Iron Age human sacrifice does and does not support, and why a two-thousand-year-old story about a Celtic ritual refuses to die. Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-f