64 THE ESSEX NATURALIST
In these books, Watkins built upon the already-accepted
basis that the Neolithic peoples of this Island established
trackways across the land for purposes of trade or religion,
but probably not for warfare. I propose not to restate here
the detailed steps which led Watkins to his conclusions about
these trackways; his main thesis was that the primitive
surveyors and engineers laid out straight alignments from
one centre of prehistoric importance to another, incorpora-
ting where possible useful natural features as landmarks, and
establishing monoliths, cairns, mounds or ponds as sighting
and guiding marks in places where no distinctive natural
features served these purposes. Further, he said, these sites
became sacred on account of their social importance, and long
after most of the actual artificial objects had disappeared
the sanctity of their sites remained, even into early Christian
times. It followed that a continuity of sanctity might be
assumed for some, at least, of our pre-Conquest church sites
throughout perhaps five millennia.
The basic method, according to Watkins, was that of set-
ting up two staves on high ground between the two end-
points, sighting them on to one of the points and then
correcting the alignment by "back-sighting" to the other
end-point.
If the objection were raised that the dense woodlands of
former times would make such methods impossible to a
primitive people, it must be remembered that when Meso-
lithic culture was being established here, Britain was not
long recovered from the last glaciation. Much of the land
must then have resembled the bare, wild Breckland of
present-day East Anglia, with sparse fir and pine woods;
even in Neolithic times it was not yet afforested to the extent
which we are accustomed to visualise as characteristic of the
early Middle Ages.
The Long Man of Wilmington, striding forward with a
staff in each hand, is held by Watkins to be a pre-historic
representation of one of these sacred surveyors; the aligned
track which he and his fellows laid out is referred to by
Watkins as a "Ley". Watkins claimed as sites of pre-
historic sanctity (in addition to the obviously ancient stand-
ing-stones and barrows) beacon-hills, castle sites, pre-Norman