Direction sense (AW)

A DIRECTION SENSE.

To the Editor of the “Weekly Westminster Gazette.”

Sir,—While this problem in the case of animals is of great interest, especially as recorded by Mr. Hutchinson’s pen, all out-door people know that something of a similar “sense” is present, if in a lesser degree, in man himself, although varying in individuals down to zero. Perhaps in both cases it is an error to speak of it as a distinct “sense,” for even the apparently primary impression we call “sight” is usually not merely the image transmitted to the brain by the eye, but includes additional brain memory and brain logic. So marked is this, that the art of conjuring is created by the fact.

To keep to the human “direction sense.” Let me give an example. On my first visit to Switzerland with an older hand (the late Dr. T. A. Chapman), we crossed from the head of the Rhone Valley by a simple and easy pass, called, I think, the Gries Pass, into Italy past the Tossa Falls. A porter, a Swiss lad who knew the pass, piloted us. The summit was a small snow-field supposed to present no difficulty, as being free from crevasses, the route being straight across it. But a fog had obliterated landmarks. Our guide was confident of the right direction. But after a little progress I felt sure that he was walking in a curve. My companion decided we must trust our pilot. But a little later we both felt so certain that the lad’s “sense of direction” was entirely lost that we took the matter out of his hands, decided by map and compass the right course, had to turn almost “to the right-about” and safely hit upon the head of the pass down the other side. I give this as an instance of a wide difference in the degree of “sense of direction” between different persons. I have found myself with sufficient to take me over unknown mountain country, and meet with others who have it in a keener degree.

But I do not think that man ever possessed it in the degree which Mr. Hutchinson and others claim for animals.

Eighteen months ago, I discovered the fact that all Britain is covered by a net-work of straight prehistoric tracks, with stones, moats, and tumuli marking the way. Such sighting points would not be needed if the direction sense were all-sufficient. But a little thought will show that a direction sense (as apart from observations of local topography) will probably either depend on the magnetic axis or upon solar (or astronomical) facts. Many prehistoric people were sun-worshippers, and left monuments to record the line of its position at certain hours, and certain seasons.

Roughly speaking, is not the human direction sense based on the recollection of the average position the sun occupies at its highest point (mid-day), the power to imagine a line from this to the observer, to estimate mentally the angle of divergence from this north and south line, and keep straight in the direction dictated by such angle?

In my work of investigating the early marked-out trackways, I have already found one or two links between such tracks and sun-worship. For example, the well-known line of observation of Midsummer day sunrise at Stonhenge continues to an artificial elevated point, Sidbury Camp, 7 miles to the north-east, and to the south-west through tumuli, church sites, and earthworks down to a terminal on the Dorset coast.—Yours, &c.,
Alfred Watkins.
  Hereford, December 29th, 1922.