Ley Lines: The Greatest Landscape Mystery

Product Information

Taking his map to the top of the hill, he observed that other similar alignments lay all around him. According to his account, he was driving across the hills near Blackwardine, Herefordshire, when he looked across the landscape and observed the way that several features lined up together. Still in print, the book speaks from a more innocent age: blending a love of rural and historic Herefordshire with quotes from WB Yeats and George Borrow, and a charming openness about his own assumptions. The author gives an update of the theories behind the straight lines, quoting in detail from a variety of sources. We also use them to help detect unauthorized access or activity that violate our terms of service, as well as to analyze site traffic and performance for our own site improvement efforts.

Some of Watkins' other ideas, such as his belief that widespread forest clearance took place in prehistory rather than later, would nevertheless later be recognised by archaeologists. Thom lent the idea of leys some support; in 1971 he stated the view that Neolithic British engineers would have been capable of surveying a straight line between two points that were otherwise not visible from each other. First published in 1925 THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK remains the most important source for the study of ancient tracks or leys that criss-cross the British Isles- a fascinating system which was old when the Romans came to Britain. See also Stonehenge Complete , The Holy Kingdom and The Isle of Avalon Sacred Mysteries of Arthur and Glastonbury . And with each twist and turn, it became ever more firmly enmeshed in a thicket of mysticism, neo-paganism and plain superstition.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.

Ruggles noted that in this period, ley lines came to be conceived as "lines of power, the paths of some form of spiritual force or energy accessible to our ancient ancestors but now lost to narrow-minded twentieth-century scientific thought". A statistical analysis of lines concluded: "the density of archaeological sites in the British landscape is so great that a line drawn through virtually anywhere will 'clip' a number of sites. He also argued that humanity's materialism was driving it to self-destruction, but that this could be prevented by re-activating the ancient centres which would facilitate renewed contact with the aliens.Attitudes to the archaeological establishment varied among ley hunters, with some of the latter wanting to convert archaeologists to their beliefs and others believing that that was an impossible task. Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Many attempts have been made to understand and explain the extraordinary phenomenon of dead straight lines of prehistoric monuments, such as stone circles and standing stones, ancient and forgotten churches, wind-swept hill tops and stretches of antique trackways.

Photos, diagrams, and an excellent Directory of 50 Ley Lines add to this detailed and thoroughly enjoyable read.Born in 1855 into a well-to-do farming family, Watkins was also an amateur archaeologist; it was while out riding in 1921 that he looked out over the landscape and noticed what he later described as a grid of straight lines that stood out like "glowing wires all over the surface of the county", in which churches and standing stones, crossroads and burial mounds, moats and beacon hills, holy wells and old stone crosses, appeared to fall into perfect alignment. Danny Sullivan's Ley Lines does this with reference to all the theories that have ever been put forward to explain the archaic landscape line. A 130 paged book designed to run as a parallel piece to my moving image and image-installation To a line, to expand and explore the themes further. He put forward his idea of ley lines in the 1922 book Early British Trackways and then again, in greater depth, in the 1925 book The Old Straight Track. Ultimately, this compilation reminds readers how closely the act of creating art—written and visual—is linked to the art of listening.