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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ley line | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:22:20.506063+00:00 | kb-cron |
His ideas were rejected by most experts on British prehistory at the time, including both the small number of recognised archaeological scholars and local enthusiasts. His critics noted that the straight lines he proposed would have been highly impractical means of crossing hilly or mountainous terrain, and that many of the sites he selected as evidence for the leys were of disparate historical origins. 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. Part of archaeologists' objections was their belief that prehistoric Britons would not have been sophisticated enough to produce such accurate measurements across the landscape. British archaeologists were then overwhelmingly committed to ideas of cultural diffusionism, and thus unwelcoming to ideas about ley lines being an independent British development. In 1926, advocates of Watkins' beliefs established the Straight Track Club. To assist this growing body of enthusiasts who were looking for their own ley lines in the landscape, in 1927, Watkins published The Ley Hunter's Manual. Proponents of Watkins' ideas sent in letters to the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then editor of the Antiquity journal. Crawford filed these letters under a section of his archive titled "Crankeries" and was annoyed that educated people believed such ideas when they were demonstrably incorrect. He refused to publish an advert for The Old Straight Track in Antiquity, at which Watkins became very bitter towards him. Watkins' last book, Archaic Tracks Around Cambridge, was published in 1932. Watkins died on 7 April 1935. The Club survived him, although it became largely inactive at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and formally disbanded in 1948. The archaeoastronomer Clive Ruggles noted that after the 1920s, "ley lines soon faded into obscurity". The historian Ronald Hutton similarly noted that there had been a "virtual demise" in the idea by the 1950s, in part due to "a natural weariness with a spent enthusiasm". There was academic work in the following period by e.g. Oxford engineer Alexander Thom that worked on the engineering feasibility of ancient metrology and archeo-astronomy. 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.
=== Earth Mysteries movement ===
From the 1940s through to the 1960s, the archaeological establishment blossomed in Britain due to the formation of various university courses on the subject. This helped to professionalise the discipline, and meant that it was no longer an amateur-dominated field of research. It was in the latter decade of this period that a belief in ley lines was taken up by members of the counterculture, where—in the words of the archaeologist Matthew Johnson—they were attributed with "sacred significance or mystical power". 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". In his 1961 book Skyways and Landmarks, Tony Wedd published his idea that Watkins' leys were both real and served as ancient markers to guide alien spacecraft that were visiting Earth. He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French ufologist Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. Wedd suggested that either spacecraft were following the prehistoric landmarks for guidance or that both the leys and the spacecraft were following a "magnetic current" flowing across the Earth. Wedd's ideas were taken up by the writer John Michell, who promoted them to a wider audience in his 1967 book The Flying Saucer Vision. In this book, Michell promoted the ancient astronaut belief that extraterrestrials had assisted humanity during prehistory, when humans had worshipped these entities as gods, but that the aliens left when humanity became too materialistic and technology-focused. 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. Michell repeated his beliefs in his 1969 book The View Over Atlantis. Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". Here he interpreted ley lines by reference to the Chinese concept of geomantic energy lines which he transliterated as "lung mei", i.e., "dragon veins" (龙脉; 龍脈; lóngmài; lung2-mai4). He proposed that an advanced ancient society that had once covered much of the world had established ley lines across the landscape to harness this lung mei energy. 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. Hutton later noted that Michell's ideas "embodied a fervent religious feeling, which though not Christian was heavily influenced by Christian models", adopting an "evangelical and apocalyptic tone" that announced the coming of an Age of Aquarius in which ancient wisdom would be restored. Michell invented various claims about archaeological evidence to suit his purpose. He viewed archaeologists as antagonists, seeing them as the personification of the modern materialism he was railing against. In the mid-1970s Michell then published a detailed case study of the West Penwith district of Cornwall, laying out what he believed to be the ley lines in the area. He presented this as a challenge to archaeologists, urging them to examine his ideas in detail and stating that he would donate a large sum of money to charity if they could disprove them. Hutton noted that it represented "the finest piece of surveying work" then undertaken by a pseudo-archaeologists in Britain. However Michell had included natural rock outcrops as well as medieval crosses in his list of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments.