I once did a thought experiment where I tried to figure out how divination practices might directly help decisions.
The Druids were legendarily learned. What information we have says they were responsible for maintaining the oral history of their people, and for management of sacrifices, and reading of omens and the weather. They were reputed to have advanced knowledge of plants and animals.
I wondered about divination before battle. Naturally, birds aren’t really random—I expect a lot of people have noticed things like how they suddenly go quiet when a wet gust of wind blows through immediately prior to a storm. I expect if I were a Druid, I would have spent a lot of time watching birds, and know more things like this.
As a keeper of the oral history, I’ll know the reported outcome of previous battles and some important details about them (the weather, say).
Things like how many warriors my tribe has I can see with my eyes, and whether the other guys have more or less can be had by scouting like usual.
There’s also the matter of appeasing the gods, and offering them sacrifice. Now there’s a story from Greek myth about how early on the gods were tricked into accepting the fatty, gristly parts of the animal as the best parts, on the grounds that the smoke from burning those was better able to reach Olympus and nourish them. This agrees with casual observation: when I ruin a steak on the grill it smokes a lot more than when I ruin chicken on the grill. Smoke is a pretty good indicator of things like wind direction and strength, and further when it rises it can do things like show you where the wind changes above your level (like in smokestacks where it suddenly gets sheared off at a certain height).
So bird behavior provides information about barometric pressure, and the smoke from a sacrifice provides information about the movement of air pretty high up, and the oral history provides a sort of prior for similar circumstances.
So, if I were a Druid and knew what Druids know, I could make better than average predictions about the outcome of a battle if I made a burnt offering and read omens from birds.
Weather. In a nutshell, bad weather makes battles harder. This is because walking a long way while wet sucks, it damages supplies and equipment, it increases the likelihood of disease, and there are intermittent dangers like flooding that are hard to predict in unfamiliar territory. In general, people know how to manage these things where they live, so the worse the weather, the bigger an advantage for the defender (or at least whoever marched less).
I once did a thought experiment where I tried to figure out how divination practices might directly help decisions.
The Druids were legendarily learned. What information we have says they were responsible for maintaining the oral history of their people, and for management of sacrifices, and reading of omens and the weather. They were reputed to have advanced knowledge of plants and animals.
I wondered about divination before battle. Naturally, birds aren’t really random—I expect a lot of people have noticed things like how they suddenly go quiet when a wet gust of wind blows through immediately prior to a storm. I expect if I were a Druid, I would have spent a lot of time watching birds, and know more things like this.
As a keeper of the oral history, I’ll know the reported outcome of previous battles and some important details about them (the weather, say).
Things like how many warriors my tribe has I can see with my eyes, and whether the other guys have more or less can be had by scouting like usual.
There’s also the matter of appeasing the gods, and offering them sacrifice. Now there’s a story from Greek myth about how early on the gods were tricked into accepting the fatty, gristly parts of the animal as the best parts, on the grounds that the smoke from burning those was better able to reach Olympus and nourish them. This agrees with casual observation: when I ruin a steak on the grill it smokes a lot more than when I ruin chicken on the grill. Smoke is a pretty good indicator of things like wind direction and strength, and further when it rises it can do things like show you where the wind changes above your level (like in smokestacks where it suddenly gets sheared off at a certain height).
So bird behavior provides information about barometric pressure, and the smoke from a sacrifice provides information about the movement of air pretty high up, and the oral history provides a sort of prior for similar circumstances.
So, if I were a Druid and knew what Druids know, I could make better than average predictions about the outcome of a battle if I made a burnt offering and read omens from birds.
How does battle outcome relate to barometric pressure, and the movement of air pretty high up?
Weather. In a nutshell, bad weather makes battles harder. This is because walking a long way while wet sucks, it damages supplies and equipment, it increases the likelihood of disease, and there are intermittent dangers like flooding that are hard to predict in unfamiliar territory. In general, people know how to manage these things where they live, so the worse the weather, the bigger an advantage for the defender (or at least whoever marched less).