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Ley lines are, in the older sense, ancient, straight trackways in the British landscape, or in the newer sense, spiritual and mystical alignments of land forms. The phrase was coined in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, referring to supposed alignments of numerous places of geographical and historical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths, natural ridge-tops and water-fords. In his books ''Early British Trackways'' and ''The Old Straight Track'', he sought to identify ancient trackways in the British landscape. Watkins later developed theories that these alignments were created for ease of overland trekking by line-of-sight navigation during neolithic times, and had persisted in the landscape over millennia.〔 〕 In a book called ''The View Over Atlantis'' (1969), the writer John Michell revived the term "ley lines", associating it with spiritual and mystical theories about alignments of land forms, drawing on the Chinese concept of feng shui. He believed that a mystical network of ley lines existed across Britain.〔 〕 Since the publication of Michell's book, the spiritualised version of the concept has been adopted by other authors and applied to landscapes in many places around the world. Both versions of the theory have been criticised on the grounds that a random distribution of a sufficient number of points on a plane will inevitably create alignments of random points purely by chance. ==Alfred Watkins and ''The Old Straight Track''== (詳細はNorman Lockyer, who argued that ancient alignments might be oriented to sunrise and sunset at solstices. On 30 June 1921, Alfred Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire, and had been driving along a road near the village (which has now virtually disappeared). Attracted by the nearby archaeological investigation of a Roman camp, he stopped his car to compare the landscape on either side of the road with the marked features on his much used map. While gazing at the scene around him and consulting the map, he saw, in the words of his son, "like a chain of fairy lights" a series of straight alignments of various ancient features, such as standing stones, wayside crosses, causeways, hill forts, and ancient churches on mounds.〔 He realized immediately that the potential discovery had to be checked from higher ground when, during a revelation, he noticed that many of the footpaths there seemed to connect one hilltop to another in a straight line. He subsequently coined the term "ley" at least partly because the lines passed through places whose names contained the syllable ''ley'', stating that philologists defined the word (spelled also as lay, lea, lee, or leigh) differently, but had misinterpreted it.〔Ruggles, Clive L. N., page 224.〕 He believed this was the ancient name for the trackways, preserved in the modern names. The ancient surveyors who supposedly made the lines were given the name "dodmen".〔 Watkins believed that, in ancient times, when Britain was far more densely forested, the country was criss-crossed by a network of straight-line travel routes, with prominent features of the landscape being used as navigation points. This observation was made public at a meeting of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club of Hereford in September 1921. His work referred to G. H. Piper's paper presented to the Woolhope Club in 1882, which noted that: "A line drawn from the Skirrid-fawr mountain northwards to Arthur's Stone would pass over the camp and southern most point of Hatterall Hill, Oldcastle, Longtown Castle, and Urishay and Snodhill castles."〔Piper, G.H. (1888). Arthur's Stone, Dorstone. ''Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club'' 1881-82: 175-180.〕 It has also been suggested that Watkins' speculation (he called it 'surmise')〔 stemmed from reading an account in September 1870 by William Henry Black given to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled ''Boundaries and Landmarks'', in which he speculated that "Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe".〔 〕 He published his book ''Early British Trackways'' the following year, commenting: "I knew nothing on June 30th last of what I now communicate, and had no theories". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ley line」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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