A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created
by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early
1980s by Colin Andrews. Crop circles
have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing
done in hoaxes" by Taner Edis, professor of physics at Truman State
University. Although obscure natural
causes or alien origins of crop circles are suggested by fringe theorists,
there is no scientific evidence for such explanations, and all crop circles are
consistent with human causation.
The number of crop circles has substantially increased from
the 1970s to current times. There has been a little scientific study of them.
Circles in the United Kingdom are not distributed randomly across the landscape
but appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population and cultural
heritage monuments, such as Stonehenge or Avebury. In 1991, two hoaxers, Bower and Chorley, took
credit for having created many circles throughout England after one of their
circles were described by a circle investigator as impossible to be made by human
hand.
Formations are usually created overnight, although some are
reported to have appeared during the day. In contrast to crop circles or crop formations,
archaeological remains can cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of
circles and squares, but they do not appear overnight, and they are always in
the same places every year. Nearly half of all crop circles found in the UK in
2003 were located within a 15 km radius of the Avebury stone circles.
History
The concept of "crop circles" began with the
original late-1970s hoaxes by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. They said that they were inspired by the Tully
"saucer nest" case in Australia, where a farmer claimed to first have
seen a UFO, then found a flattened circle of swamp reeds.
Before the 20th
century
A 1678 news pamphlet The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News Out
of Hartfordshire is claimed by some crop circle devotees to be the first depiction
of a crop circle. Crop circle researcher
Jim Schnabel does not consider it to be a historical precedent because it
describes the stalks as being cut rather than bent.
In 1686, British naturalist Robert Plot reported on rings or
arcs of mushrooms proposed air flows from the sky as a cause. In 1991 meteorologist Terence Meaden linked
this report with modern crop circles, a claim that has been compared with those
made by Erich von Däniken.
An 1880 letter to the editor of Nature by amateur scientist
John Rand Capron describes how a recent storm had created several circles of flattened
crops in a field.
20th century
In 1932, archaeologist E. C. Curwen observed four dark rings
in a field at Stoughton Down near Chichester, but could examine only one:
"a circle in which the barley was 'lodged' or beaten down, while the
interior area was very slightly mounded up."
In 1963, amateur astronomer Patrick Moore described a crater
in a potato field in Wiltshire, which he considered was probably caused by an
unknown meteoric body. In nearby wheat fields, there were several circular and
elliptical areas where the wheat had been flattened. There was evidence of
"spiral flattening". He thought they could be caused by air currents
from the impact since they led towards the crater. Astronomer Hugh Ernest Butler observed similar
craters and said they were likely caused by lightning strikes.
In the 1960s, in Tully, Queensland, Australia, and in
Canada, there were many reports of UFO sightings and circular formations in
swamp reeds and sugar cane fields. For
example, on 8 August 1967, three circles were found in a field in Duhamel,
Alberta, Canada; Department of National Defence investigators concluded that it
was artificial but couldn't say who made them or how. The most famous case is the 1966 Tully
"saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft
rise 30 or 40 feet (12 m) from a swamp and then fly away. On investigating he
found a nearly circular area 32 feet long by 25 feet wide where the grass was
flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle, and the reeds
had been uprooted from the mud. The
local police officer, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the University of
Queensland concluded that it was most probably caused by natural causes, like a
down draught, a willy-willy (dust devil), or a waterspout. In 1973, G.J.
Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defence (Air Office), wrote
to a journalist that the "saucer" was probably debris lifted by the
causing willy-willy. Hoaxers Bower and Chorley said they were inspired by this
case to start making the modern crop circles that appear today.
The first film to depict a geometric crop circle, in this
case, created by super-intelligent ants, is Phase IV in 1974. The film has been
cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this
phenomenon.
Since the 1960s, there had been a surge of UFOlogists in
Wiltshire and there were rumors of "saucer nests" appearing in the
area, but they were never photographed. There are other pre-1970s reports of circular
formations, especially in Australia and Canada, but they were always simple
circles, which could have been caused by whirlwinds. In Fortean Times David Wood reported that in
1940 he had already made crop circles near Gloucestershire using ropes. In 1997, the Oxford English Dictionary
recorded the earliest usage of the term "crop circles" in a 1988
issue of the Journal of Meteorology, referring to a BBC film. The coining of the term "crop
circle" is attributed to Colin Andrews in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared in and
spread since the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the
English countryside. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s
after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After
Bower's and Chorley's 1991 statement that they were responsible for many of
them, circles started appearing all over the world. To date, approximately 10,000 crop circles
have been reported internationally, from locations such as the former Soviet
Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, the U.S., and Canada. Skeptics note a
correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of
fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation.
Although farmers expressed concern at the damage caused to
their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles was often
enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the increase of tourism and
visits from scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking
spiritual experiences. The market for
crop-circle interest consequently generated bus or helicopter tours of circle
sites, walking tours, T-shirts, and book sales.
21st century
Since the start of the 21st century, crop formations have
increased in size and complexity, with some featuring as many as 2,000
different shapes and some incorporating complex mathematical and scientific
characteristics.
The researcher Jeremy Northcote found that crop circles in
the UK in 2002 were not spread randomly across the landscape. They tended to
appear near roads, areas of medium-to-dense population, and cultural heritage
monuments such as Stonehenge or Avebury. He found that they always appeared in
areas that were easy to access. This suggests strongly that these crop circles
were more likely to be caused by intentional human action than by paranormal
activity. Another strong indication of that theory was that inhabitants of the
zone with the most circles had a historical tendency for making large-scale
formations, including stone circles such as Stonehenge, burial mounds such as
Silbury Hill, long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow, and white horses in
chalk hills.
Bower and Chorley
In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave
Chorley made headlines claiming it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978
with the use of simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a
baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line. To prove their case they made a circle in
front of journalists; a "cereologist" (an advocate of paranormal
explanations of crop circles), Pat Delgado, examined the circle and declared it
authentic before it was revealed that it was a hoax. Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts
from 1966, Bower and Chorley claimed to be responsible for all circles made
prior to 1987, and for more than 200 crop circles in 1978–1991 (with 1000 other
circles not being made by them). After
their announcement, the two men demonstrated making a crop circle. According to
Professor Richard Taylor, "the pictographs they created inspired a second
wave of crop artists. Far from fizzling out, crop circles have evolved into an
international phenomenon, with hundreds of sophisticated pictographs now
appearing annually around the globe."
Smithsonian magazine wrote:
Since Bower and
Chorley’s circles appeared, the geometric designs have escalated in scale and
complexity, as each year teams of anonymous circle-makers, lay honey traps for
New Age tourists.
Art and business
Since the early 1990s, the UK arts collective Circlemakers,
founded by artists Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg (and subsequently including
artists Wil Russell and Rob Irving), have been creating crop circles in the UK
and around the world as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.
The Led Zeppelin boxed set that was released on 7 September
1990, along with with the remasters of the first boxed set, as well as the second
boxed set, all feature an image of a crop circle that appeared in East Field in
Alton Barnes, Wiltshire.
On the night of 11–12 July 1992, a crop-circle making competition
with a prize of £3,000 (funded in part by the Arthur Koestler Foundation) was
held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters
engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device, and two
stepladders. According to Rupert Sheldrake,
the competition was organized by him and John Michell and "co-sponsored by
The Guardian and The Cerealogist". The prize money came from PM, a German
magazine. Sheldrake wrote that "The experiment was conclusive. Humans
could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that
time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that
followed the set design."
In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and
astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own,
aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish
"real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by
Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the
Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.
In 2009, The Guardian reported that crop circle activity had
been waning around Wiltshire, in part because makers preferred creating
promotional crop circles for companies that paid well for their efforts.
A video sequence used in connection with the opening of the
2012 Summer Olympics in London showed two crop circles in the shape of the
Olympic rings. Another Olympic crop circle was visible to passengers landing at
nearby Heathrow Airport before and during the Games.
A 7-acre (2.8-hectare) crop circle depicting the emblem of
the Star Wars Rebel Alliance was created in California in December 2017 by an
11-year-old boy as a spaceport for X-wing fighters.
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