''The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones'' is a book by
Alfred Watkins
Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English author, self-taught amateur archaeologist, antiquarian and businessman who, while standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921 experienced a revelation. He notice ...
, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged
ley lines
Ley lines () are straight alignments drawn between various historic structures and prominent landmarks. The idea was developed in early 20th-century Europe, with ley line believers arguing that these alignments were recognised by ancient socie ...
in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
.
Presentation
Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" (1922). The book has a preface, thirty chapters, four appendices and an index. There are many figures, and photographs taken by the author.
The book is considered the first book written about leys, and the first book to document and map alleged ley lines in Britain, primarily southern England. According to a review in ''
The Geographical Journal
''The Geographical Journal'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). It publishes papers covering research on all aspects of geography. It also publishes shorter C ...
'' of the
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
, Watkins sought to prove that "mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into strait tracks, i.e. sighted lines, throughout Britain, with fragmentary evidence of trackways on the alignments."
The book was disregarded by archaeologists but saw a resurgence of interest with the rise of
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
ideas in the 1960s. Watkins' ideas also influenced contemporary
psychogeography
Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutiona ...
, including
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL (born 11 June 1943) is a writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, recently within the influences of psychogeography. Biography Education
Sinclair was born in Cardiff in 1943. From 1956 to 1961, he was educate ...
's ''Lud Heat'' (1975), which in turn influenced
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...
's novel ''
Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principa ...
'' (1985).
Criticism
Watkins' work met with early scepticism from archaeologists, one of whom,
O. G. S. Crawford
Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as th ...
, refused to accept advertisements for ''The Old Straight Track'' in the journal ''Antiquity''.
One criticism of Watkins' ley line theory states that given the high density of historic and prehistoric sites in Britain and other parts of Europe, finding straight lines that "connect" sites is trivial and ascribable to
coincidence
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead t ...
. 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."
Reprints
The book was reprinted as on April 2, 1994 by "Abacus". Editions or reprints were published in 1925, 1933, 1945, 1948, 1970, 1974 and 1994. The Abacus edition of 1970 was reprinted up to 1999 at least, and carries a copyright dated 1970 "Allen Watkins and Marion Watkins".
See also
*
Alignments of random points
Alignments of random points in a plane can be demonstrated by statistics to be counter-intuitively easy to find when a large number of random points are marked on a bounded flat surface. This has been put forward as a demonstration that ley lin ...
*
Earth mysteries
Earth mysteries are a wide range of spiritual, quasi-religious and pseudoscientific ideas focusing on cultural and religious beliefs about the Earth, generally with regard to particular geographical locations of historical significance. Belie ...
*
Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and le ...
*
Position lines
A position line or line of position (LOP) is a line (or, on the surface of the earth, a curve) that can be both identified on a chart (nautical chart or aeronautical chart) and translated to the surface of the earth. The intersection of a minimum ...
*
Ley lines
Ley lines () are straight alignments drawn between various historic structures and prominent landmarks. The idea was developed in early 20th-century Europe, with ley line believers arguing that these alignments were recognised by ancient socie ...
Notes
Further reading
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Old Straight Track, The
1925 non-fiction books
Geoglyphs
Cartography by country
Ley lines
Pseudohistory
Pseudoarchaeological texts