Ley line

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Some writers refer to the linear arrangements of landmarks, such as megaliths , prehistoric places of worship and churches, as ley lines (also known as sacred lines ) .

Map of two British ley lines (A. Watkins, 1922)

The name is derived from a line of English villages with the endings -leigh or -ley (Old English for "clearing, clearing"). Its existence was first postulated in 1921 by the British amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins .

There have been various non-scientific explanations:

  • Alfred Watkins suspected u. a. old trade paths, "old straight tracks" with the shortest line of sight.
  • The lines should go back to a prehistoric system of land surveying on astronomical and religious bases.
  • Geomantic ideas are based on supposed force fields or earth radiation; they often contain water veins and "energy lines" analogous to the "meridians" of acupuncture . In 1969 the writer John Michell linked Ley lines with spiritual and mystical theories and revitalized the subject.
80 four-point connections from 137 randomly distributed points

In contrast, several studies came to the conclusion that Ley lines are based only on statistically expected distributions of points. Analyzes of the point distributions showed that there is no significant statistical deviation that suggests the existence of actual Ley lines.

The archaeologist Richard JC Atkinson (1920–1994) used the position of telephone booths as an example to show hypothetical " telephone box leys " to demonstrate that the existence of connecting lines is accidental and that such lines are not deliberate artifacts are - especially since it is known that telephone booths were not distributed with such considerations in mind.

Ley lines in fictional works

Various fantasy writers use ley lines in their works, where they are mostly described as currents of magical energy that serve as sources of strength for magic users. These include Harry Turtledove's Darkness series, Robert Asprin's Demons series , Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series , Michael Scott in The Secrets of Nicholas Flamel , Joseph Delaney's Spook cycle , Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, Diana Gabaldon in the Highland Saga , in The Dawn of Darkness series by Mark Chadbourn , Terry Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman in A Good Omen , Charles Stross in his Laundry Files series, Robert N. Charrette's Shadowrun novel Choose Your Enemies Carefully or in the Sisters des Mondes series by Yasmine Galenorn , as well as in Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle series and Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare . The popular MMORPGs Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft also feature ley lines within the ongoing living stories of these online games.

In the movie Ghostbusters , ley lines are also addressed and are part of the plot. Ley lines also play an important role in the series The Quest .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Alfred Watkins, Early British Trackways , 1922
  2. ↑ John Michell: The View Over Atlantis. Sago Press, 1969.
  3. ^ Matthew Johnson: Archaeological Theory: An Introduction , 2nd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-0015-1 , pp. 4–5 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ^ David G. Kendall: A Survey of the Statistical Theory of Shape . In: Statistical Science . Vol. 4, No. 2 (May 1989), pp. 87-99.
  5. ^ Clive LN Ruggles: Ley lines . In: Ders .: Ancient astronomy: An encyclopaedia . ABC-CLIO, 2005, ISBN 1-85109-477-6 , pp. 224-226 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).