Wicker man since 1986, an effigy of a man has been burned during Burning Man, a week-long annual event currently being held in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Wicker man A wicker man was a large wicker statue reportedly used by the ancient Druids (priests of Celtic paganism) for sacrifice by burning it in effigy. The main evidence for this practice is one sentence in Julius Caesar's "Commentary on the Gallic war", which modern scholarship has linked to an earlier writer, Poseidonius. Modern archaeological research has not yielded much evidence of human sacrifice among the Celts, and the ancient Greco-Roman sources are now
Burning Man 1996 event, co-founder and partner John Law broke with Burning Man and publicly said the event should not continue. 1997 marked another major pivotal year for the event. By 1996, the event had grown to 8,000 attendees and unrestricted driving on the open playa was becoming a major safety hazard. To implement a ban on driving and re-create the event as a pedestrian/bicycle/art-car-only event, it was decided to move to private gated property. Fly Ranch, with the smaller adjoining Hualapai dry lake-bed, just west of the Black Rock desert, was chosen. This moved Burning Man from Pershing County/federal BLM land