What Are Ley Lines?

Ley lines are kind of like latitudinal and longitudinal lines in one sense: They're not lines we can actually see in the real world. But the theory is that big, important monuments (think Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza) are all running on a kind of energy highway that "connects" them.

The idea took hold in the 1920s when Alfred Watkins, a photographer and amateur archaeologist, noticed straight lines that connected ancient sites in certain areas of the United Kingdom. On the one hand, it made sense. A road, for instance, might be built between an ancient place of worship and a fort [source: Macfarlane].

Watkins believed these lines weren't random. He thought ancestors seemed to have constructed important sites in a deliberate linear pattern across the British landscape for navigational purposes. In 1925, Watkins published this idea in "The Old Straight Track" [source: BBC].

At some point, other interested parties hijacked the simple idea and embellished the story. Some claim that ley lines are energy lines that carry a powerful magnetic field, while others say they hold a psychic power [source: Crystal]. Still, others are pretty darn sure the lines are somehow associated with UFO landings — or that there are healing properties found in the vortex of ley lines [source: Sacred Destinations].

Of course, no one has ever found any evidence for "energies" of any kind on the lines, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of objective basis for believing that UFOs landed there. But that doesn't stop anyone from noting that you can connect lots of important points with straight lines on a map.

However, it's not exactly "science" to get a few important points to connect or to imbue significance on places that do fall on a parallel. You can make patterns from all sorts of locations. As is the case with ley lines: While there might be some compelling reasons that local sites are easily navigated between, it doesn't mean they have any mystic purpose [source: Radford].

This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.