The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925. It was the first to document and map alleged ley lines in Britain, primarily in southern England. According to a review in The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Watkins sought to prove that “mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into straight tracks, i.e. sighted lines, throughout Britain, with fragmentary evidence of trackways on the alignments”. The review ends by describing Watkins as “a bold, painstaking, and ingenious trafficker in coincidence”.[1]
Another archaeologist, O. G. S. Crawford, refused to accept advertisements for The Old Straight Track in the journal Antiquity.[2] The fundamental criticism of Watkins’ ley line theory is 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 statistical analysis of ley 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”.[3]
Although discounted by archaeologists, the rise of New Age ideas in the 1960s led to a resurgence of interest in the book and its promotion of the idea of ley lines.[4]
