Ley line

A supposed straight alignment connecting ancient sites or landmarks, interpreted by some as evidence of prehistoric routes or earth energies. Its existence as a deliberate prehistoric system is not supported by archaeological evidence.

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Alfred Watkins: An English antiquarian who proposed that ancient sites aligned along prehistoric trackways. His observations of mapped alignments launched the ley-line idea.
Alignment (geometry): A spatial arrangement in which multiple points lie approximately along a common straight line. A ley line is defined by this geometric relationship among landmarks.
Archaeological survey: The systematic recording of archaeological remains across a defined area. Surveys document landscapes through evidence rather than inferred straight lines.
New Age: A diverse spiritual movement drawing on alternative healing, esotericism, and personal transformation. Ley lines became part of New Age accounts of sacred landscapes and subtle forces.
The Old Straight Track: Alfred Watkins’s 1925 book proposing that ancient landmarks marked straight prehistoric routes. It presented the original case for ley lines as trackways.
Great circle: A circle on a sphere whose plane passes through the sphere’s center. Long alignments across Earth require distinguishing flat-map lines from spherical routes.
Trackway: A route or path used for travel, often identified through physical traces or landscape evidence. A trackway is an evidenced route; a ley line may be only a map alignment.
Sacred geography: The study or interpretation of places and landscapes as possessing religious or spiritual significance. Ley-line beliefs recast alignments as features of a spiritually meaningful landscape.
Herefordshire: A county in western England whose landscape and landmarks featured prominently in Watkins’s studies. Watkins first identified his proposed alignments in this region.
Cartographic projection: A method for representing Earth’s curved surface on a flat map. Different projections can alter how straight a long site alignment appears.