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The alignment of ancient sites (1500+ years) in the landscape is said to be evidence of ley lines.

In the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it is said that many Saxon churches and pre-Christian monuments or earthworks can be shown to lie in straight lines. It is suggested that pre-Roman peoples used a system of markers on the landscape to find their way across great distances, and that these may have been the basis for some of the Roman roads. Similar straight lines are said to exist in South America.

In addition to the physical reality (or otherwise) of ley lines, there is the further idea that they carry some kind of "earth energy", linking sacred sites such as stone circles.

I wonder whether anyone has done a scientific study of this.

Mad Scientist
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2 Answers2

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Have a look at Simulating the Ley Hunter, Simon Broadbent

Megalithic sites, especially isolated standing stones, are believed by some to have been deliberately set out in straight lines known as leys. An alternative hypothesis is that these points are uniformly and independently distributed.

Lots of cool math. The bottom line: Ley lines are statistically random.

Rusty
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  • Thanks. Some good old-fashioned stats is likely the best way to answer this. The human eye likes to see patterns in randomness. –  Mar 13 '11 at 09:33
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Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_lines shows how to find ley lines in random points.

You can do some critical thinking on that yourself. Why should Saxon churches line up on lines? Why at all, and why in lines? Why not in circles or triangles, in elliptic curves, parables, sinus curves or Hebrew glyphs? Simple lines show not much fantasy or divine inspiration.

Without straight claims, which points exactly build a line, there isn't much to disprove. Which markers help to find a way over big distances? I would perhaps prefer to follow a river to a certain point.

What shall carry some kind of "earth energy" mean? Is that measurable or just imaginable, fantastic? You can carry a barrel or oil, a pound of coals or a kilo of plutonium. But how shall a line carry something? What does 'carry' mean in this context? Nothing? We thought so!

If there is nothing concrete enough to be proven or disproved - what might that indicate? In most cases it is just a vehicle to sell some books, or sell a seminar.

user unknown
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  • I'm not making any claim for or against this question. I'm a skeptic, too :) –  Mar 13 '11 at 09:10
  • I make no claim for or against this question. I'm a skeptic, too :) Supporters of the Ley Line hypothesis say that many Saxon churches were built on pre-Christian sites and those sites have the alignment. The church builders were unaware of this. Church towers make the [alleged] alignments easier to see. Much of Europe was covered with dense forest, and rivers may not have been trackable, hence the use of reference points on the higher ground where many churches stand. Energy carrying: Who knows? How does an em wave propagate? Perhaps belief in Ley Lines is like belief in god[s]. –  Mar 13 '11 at 09:29
  • Can you name such saxon churches and their coordinates on OpenStreetmap? How far are they away from each other? How could such a line be seen in a forest? For orientation purpose, you would just need to see the next point, but they don't need to line up - do they? If we don't know what carries the energy and which, how did the saxons knew? How can you know that the energy is oriented along such a line, if nobody can measure it? You can make any random claim like that. 'There is something or something else, which nobody knows, sees, hears and smells!' Yes, and it's called nothing. – user unknown Mar 13 '11 at 13:47