Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge

Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge: The Living Libraries and Healers of Megalithic Culture
By Graham Philips
Published in June 2019
288 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

After Philips’s book on Doggerland, I had high hopes. However, this book just rehashed most of the same content as his last book, but less concisely.

A mysterious group of people built megalithic monuments over Britain. They were then replaced or merged with various waves of immigrants. Incredibly, despite massive changes in terms of culture and archeology, they continued maintaining, and upgrading the megaliths. This continued well into the days of the Celts.

These people were demographically replaced by Indo-European invaders or immigrants. However, a small remnant of megalithic builders survived.

Over time, the original megalithic builders became their own social class - sometimes compared to the Indian Brahmin - called the druids. Genetics seems to suggest that the druids were ethnically different from the rest of the population. They may have come from the remnants of the pre Indo-European megalithic population. They often had ginger hair, and other recessive traits that separated them from the rest of the population. The druids seem to have maintained an oral tradition, passing on and preserving an echo of the knowledge of the megalithic people.

This oral tradition made the druids into “living libraries” which survived in Ireland until the 5th century AD, and in England until the 7th century AD.

This book was neither good nor bad. The writing style was acceptable. I would maybe recommend it to a novice who is first getting interested in this historical period, but wouldn’t to anyone doing a deeper dive. It would definitely not be my first choice for a book on European prehistory.

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