science

The Old Straight Track

The Old Straight Track is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Old Straight Track rather than just read about it. In short: The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Great Britain. Presentation Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" (1922).

Key takeaways

The Old Straight Track belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Old Straight Track to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Old Straight Track from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Great Britain.

Presentation Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" (1922). The book has a preface, thirty chapters, four appendices and an index. There are many figures, and photographs taken by the author. The book is considered the first book written about leys, and the first book to document and map alleged ley lines in Britain, primarily 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 book was disregarded by archaeologists but saw a resurgence of interest with the rise of New Age ideas in the 1960s. Watkins' ideas also influenced contemporary psychogeography, including Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat (1975), which in turn influenced Peter Ackroyd's novel Hawksmoor (1985).

Criticism Watkins' work met with early scepticism from archaeologists, one of whom, O. G. S. Crawford, refused to accept advertisements for The Old Straight Track in the journal Antiquity. One criticism of Watkins' ley line theory states 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 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."

Reprints The book was reprinted as ISBN 0-349-13707-2 on April 2, 1994 by "Abacus". Editions or reprints were published in 1925, 1933, 1945, 1948, 1970, 1974 and 1994. The Abacus edition of 1970 was reprinted up to 1999 at least, and carries a copyright dated 1970 "Allen Watkins and Marion Watkins".

See also Alignments of random points Earth mysteries Nazca Lines Position lines Ley lines

Notes

Further reading Stout, Adam (2008). Creating Prehistory: Druids, Ley Hunters and Archaeologists in Pre-war Britain. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

External links The Old Straight Track at the Internet Archive

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Old Straight Track

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Old Straight Track claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Old Straight Track before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Old Straight Track ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Old Straight Track

In research: The Old Straight Track appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Old Straight Track in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Old Straight Track is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1925 non-fiction books, Cartography by country, Geoglyphs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Old Straight Track outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Old Straight Track in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Old Straight Track means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Old Straight Track out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Old Straight Track in simple terms?

The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones is a book by Alfred Watkins, first published in 1925, describing the existence of alleged ley lines in Great Britain. Presentation Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following…

Why does The Old Straight Track matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Old Straight Track?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Old Straight Track.