"Ley lines" by Danny Sullivan

 A 'ley' is a line on the landscape joining points of interest, often involving religion of superstition. Originally 'discovered' by Alfred Watkins in his classic book The Old Straight Track and thought by him to be neolithic trading routes, there is considerable debate around whether they are any more than coincidental alignments and, if they are, what their function is. This book offers theories and evaluates them without seeming to come to a definite conclusion. 

For example, the author debunks the 'trading routes' hypothesis by observing that ley lines often travel through inhospitable terrain when, presumably, a trader would take a detour. He also shows that some alleged long distance lines are artefacts of mapping that don't take into account the curvature of the earth. He then considers hypotheses such as that ley lines join navigation beacons for UFOs, and that they are associated with supernatural activity, such as sightings of ghosts and death-foretelling Black Dogs. If he comes to any conclusion it is that “The ley ... is not responsible for paranormal events" but that mysterious underground earth forces, possibly related to (presumably straight line) geological faulting and seismic activity and possibly having electromagnetic effects might be responsible for "causing hallucinations, time slips and unconsciousness" and therefore causing 'sightings' of ghosts and UFOs. (Ch 6)

The arguments are mostly reasonable with the occasional lapse into rhetoric, eg when discussing Jacob's dream of a ladder going up to heaven,  “the fact that he used a rock as a pillow cannot be mere coincidence” (Ch 4; my highlight). There is a useful chapter on how to go hunting for your own ley lines and an appendix detailing some of the most well known.

Selected quotes 

• "When the brain is exposed to strong electromagnetic fields, a form of epileptic attack can be triggered and various symptoms can be experienced including hallucinations, seeing odd lights, a feeling of being watched and of paralysis. The person who undergoes these bizarre ‘attacks’ can be completely convinced the events were entirely real and physical.” (Ch 4)
• “The Indo-European root-words reg and rect mean ‘movement in a straight line’ ... The same root words also surface in ... right, righteous and rectitude, regal ... and ruler.” (Ch 5)
• "The wind blowing over the feet of the corpses on its way to the houses of the doomed.” (Ch 6)
• “The souls of the dead fly close to the ground and will not tolerate any obstructions that stand higher than an ell.” (Ch 6)

April 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Ancient Paths" by Graham Robb

This is one of those books that uncovers ancient mysteries .

Before the Romans came the Celts. They were a migratory people who lived in tribes. Their heartland was Gaul although there were lots of them in Britain and Spain and Northern Italy and Eastern Europe but they definitely weren't the Germanic tribes. The Romans portray the Celts as being barbaric (and the human sacrifice bit of their religions is a little uncomfortable) but they had roads and chariots and metalwork and jewellery and clearly a reasonably coherent society.

So far so good.

They built long roads that were aligned with lines of longitude and latitude and along the directions of the summer and winter solstices. These roads were immensely long but incredibly precise. They built sacred centres, many of which later became centres of population all along these roads but particularly where two roads crossed. These crossings had such sacred significance that when they came to do battle with the Romans they insisted on battling them on sacred sites despite sacrificing many advantages. Presumably they thought that the immense advantage of having god on your side would do the trick. They were wrong. They lost heavily and were conquered; tens of thousands were massacred and sold into slavery.

Lots of maps accompany this fascinating thesis and the straight lines join many historic sites. One line, for example, goes from the site of the last Celtic resistance in Gaul through Milan to Delphi. Another, parallel to this one, goes through three towns named Mediolanum (also the original name of Milan), Bratislava, Budapest and Ankara.

But there are a lot of these lines and you might expect that some would travel through a few cities. After all, you can draw an infinity of lines that travel from south west to north east along the solstice line, or north-south for longitude or east-west for latitude.

A key east-west meridian is that which passes through a French town once called, you guessed it, Mediolanum. This is at a latitude that has a longest day length of 15 hours and 54 minutes. This is exactly one hour longer than the longest day at the latitude of Delphi. Delphi was believed to be the centre of the Greek world therefore this Gallic town is the centre of the Celtic world. Robb is asking me to believe not only that the druids could measure in minutes, which he explicitly suggests they couldn't, but also that 15h54m is somehow significant.

This is a reasonably well written book and Robb does his best to put real science and real archaeology into it and to keep mystics, hippies and ley line hunters out of it. But in the end it doesn't quite convince.

March 2015; 298 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God