Ley Lines: The Greatest Landscape Mystery

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Bel Jacobs explores the history and meaning of ley lines, and talks to the artist they have inspired. I've always been interested in the opposition between the natural and the artificial, the sacred and the un-sacred," explains tan jones. In the lecture, delay becomes de-ley, meaning to be diverted from the straight path, and he finds himself explaining away places where a line clips the edge of a mound rather than running through its centre. Although he gained a small following, Watkins' ideas were never accepted by the British archaeological establishment, a fact that frustrated him. Part of archaeologists' objections was their belief that prehistoric Britons would not have been sophisticated enough to produce such accurate measurements across the landscape.

Photos, diagrams, and an excellent Directory of 50 Ley Lines add to this detailed and thoroughly enjoyable read. In 2005, Ruggles noted that "for the most part, ley lines represent an unhappy episode now consigned to history". Below: Lower Quoigs church, near Crieff, Scotland, has FIVE paths leading to ancient sites, including two logan stones, (probably rocking stones) both placed above the Highland Boundary Fault. Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" (1922).

His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star.

He was an intensely rational person with an active intellect, and I think he would be a bit disappointed with some of the fringe aspects of ley lines today. The idea that ancient sacred sites might have been constructed in alignment with one another was proposed in 1846 by the Reverend Edward Duke, who observed that some prehistoric monuments and medieval churches aligned with each other. British archaeologists were then overwhelmingly committed to ideas of cultural diffusionism, and thus unwelcoming to ideas about ley lines being an independent British development.The water fountain in the centre emits healthy negative ions, which, presumably can be carried down that energy ley. According to a review in The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Watkins sought to prove that "mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into strait tracks, i. I had only had the pleasure of reading about them in para/supernatural books and I believe in an episode of Midsomer Murders, so this book was a bit of an eye opener for me. The idea of "leys" as straight tracks across the landscape was put forward by the English antiquarian Alfred Watkins in the 1920s, particularly in his book The Old Straight Track.

It also contains an illustrated directory of over 50 ley lines from the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe and tells you how you can find ley lines for yourself. He was more concerned than many other ley hunters with finding objective evidence for the idea that unusual forms of energy could be measured at places where prehistoric communities had erected structures. Translating the term lung mei as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains. The Club survived him, although it became largely inactive at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and formally disbanded in 1948.

Archaeologists and scientists regard ley lines as an example of pseudoarchaeology and pseudoscience. Notice that it also intersects with both corner stones of the original burial ground and the end ridge is aligned with a standing stone at Dalchirla farm. The sample distribution from the standing stones was compared with the theoretical distribution to show that the occurrence of straight lines was no more than average.

Watkins died in 1935, and a decade or so later the club disbanded; the journey along the old straight track seemed to have petered out and Watkins’ work was just another dead end in the story of the relationship between the geography and history of Britain, to be filed away with the British Israelites and hunters after King Arthur’s cave. Michell's publications were accompanied by the launch of the Ley Hunter magazine and the appearance of a ley hunter community keen to identify ley lines across the British landscape.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. For six days, tan jones moved through urban and rural landscapes, on the way encountering several holloways – roads or tracks that are significantly lower than the land on either side, and not formed by recent engineering – and The Harrow Way, said to be the oldest road in Britain. However, as most authors know, books can take on a life of their own and the arc of their journeys can shift in unpredictable ways. The authors, both 'alternative archaeologists', explore the theory of ley lines with the belief that lines and patterns formed by joining up ancient sites prove the existence of a megalithic science based on a mysterious force (oh dear! The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Great Britain.