Re: John Michell lecture | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Rhiannon May 6, 2016 19:42:53

Replying to tiompan

If I were a prehistoric person going from place to place (or indeed if I were going to go from place to place today) I wouldn't find it much use to be pointed in a straight line to something 100miles away. I think I'd travel from landmark to landmark, river crossing to weird shaped hill. I might pop in on stone circles on the way. But I don't know why there's this thing about straight lines. Other than things lining up occasionally with the sun at the solstices, that might be interesting. But otherwise I wouldn't be moving in straight lines. Things don't really work like that in nature.

anyway that's just a reflection of my own mind. I'm not that bothered that X is exactly the same as Y. But I concede that whoever it was building the circles, if they did it because they liked Rules and Order and getting people to do what they were told, they might have liked that sort of thing. But I wouldn't.

thesweetcheat May 6, 2016 20:46:42

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

But I concede that whoever it was building the circles, if they did it because they liked Rules and Order and getting people to do what they were told, they might have liked that sort of thing. But I wouldn't.

Bloody anarchist. Where will it end?

tiompan May 6, 2016 20:53:44

Replying to Rhiannon

That is why the earliest incarnation of the ley thinking didn't make much sense either .It was map based , people don't do straight lines in the real world unless it is on a bowling green or sports ground .
Too many interesting things to see , awkward things to avoid or simply keeping to the contours .
The same type of problem is inherent in the equidistant type stuff they measure the distance from A-B on a map and forget about how long it might actually take to traverse the distance i.e. two 4000 feet high hills might only be a mile apart but if you have to descend 3500 to get to the other it's not really a mile in the real world . The same applies to low heights where the ground is not uniformly flat .