A
crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a
crop such as
wheat,
barley,
rye,
maize, or
rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as
crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. Twenty-six countries ended up reporting approximately ten-thousand crop circles, in the last third of the 20th century, and 90% of those were located in southern England.
Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as
Stonehenge. According to one study, nearly half of all circles found in the UK in 2003 were located within a 15 km radius of
Avebury.
Formations usually are made overnight, but have also been made during the day. The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point, and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. More recent methods include the use of a lawn roller.
History
Certain evidence, such as the
Mowing-Devil, suggest the appearance of crop circles before the 20th century. Nevertheless, there are important differences between that story and modern crop circles. The story of the mowing devil involves the cutting of the crops following a dispute over crop harvesting and an invocation of the devil, no geometric patterns were reported.
Bower and Chorley
In 1991, self-professed
pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley stated that they had started the phenomenon in 1978 by making actual circles on crops with the use of simple tools.
[4] After their announcement, in a demonstration the two men made a crop circle in one hour.
After the revelation of the hoax, crop circle-like patterns continued to be made and became more complex. Some even came to resemble extraterrestrials as portrayed by certain science fiction movies,
fractals, and archaeological, religious, or mythological symbols. Among others,
paranormal enthusiasts,
ufologists, and
anomalistic investigators have offered hypothetical explanations that have been criticized as
pseudoscientific by
skeptical groups like the
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
[5][6][7][8]
Art and business
Since the early 1990s the UK arts collective founded by artists
Rod Dickinson and
John Lundberg (and subsequently includes artists Wil Russell and Rob Irving), named the Circlemakers, have been creating some crop circles in the UK and around the world both as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.
[9][10]
On the night of July 11–12, 1992, a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of several thousand
UK pounds (partly funded by the
Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in
Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three
Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope,
PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope.
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.
[11]
Legal implications
In 1992 Hungarian youths Gábor Takács and Róbert Dallos, both then 17, were the first people to face legal action after creating a crop circle. Takács and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in
Hungary specializing in
agriculture, created a 36-meter diameter crop circle in a wheat field near
Székesfehérvár, 43 miles (69 km) southwest of
Budapest, on June 8, 1992. On September 3, the pair appeared on Hungarian TV and exposed the circle as a hoax, showing photos of the field before and after the circle was made. As a result, Aranykalász Co., the owners of the land, sued the youngsters for 630,000
HUF (approximately $3000 USD) in
damages. The presiding judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the 36-meter diameter circle, amounting to about 6,000 HUF (approximately $30 USD), and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors who flocked to Székesfehérvár following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees.
[citation needed]
In 2000, Matthew Williams became the first man in the UK to be arrested for causing criminal damage after making a crop circle near
Devizes.
[12]
Other explanations
Weather
Some people have suggested that crop circles are the result of extraordinary meteorological phenomena. This hypothesis probably originated from a 1880 publication in
Nature by investigator and amateur scientist John Rand Capron. Part of the publication reappeared in the January 2000 issue of
Journal of Meteorology:
- "The storms about this part of Western Surrey have been lately local and violent, and the effects produced in some instances curious. Visiting a neighbour's farm on Wednesday evening (21st), we found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots... I could not trace locally any circumstances accounting for the peculiar forms of the patches in the field, nor indicating whether it was wind or rain, or both combined, which had caused them, beyond the general evidence everywhere of heavy rainfall. They were suggestive to me of some cyclonic wind action..."[13][14]
Paranormal
Colour sketch of a 'spaceship' creating crop circles, sent to UK
Ministry of Defence circa 1998.
Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, crop circles have become the subject of speculation by various
paranormal,
ufological, and
anomalistic investigators ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from
extraterrestrial beings.
[15][16][17][18]
The location of many crop circles near ancient sites such as
Stonehenge,
barrows, and
chalk horses has led many
New Age belief systems to incorporate crop circles, speculating their existence in relation to
ley lines.
[15][19][20]
Some
New Age supporters have related crop circles to the
Gaia hypothesis, alleging that "Gaia", the earth, is actually alive and that crop circles are messages or responses to stimuli such as
global warming and human
pollution. It asserts that the earth may be modeled as if a single super-organism, in that earthly components (e.g.
biota, climate, temperature, sunlight, etc.) influence each other and are organized to function and develop as a whole.
[21]
The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, some are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters and others can be adequately explained as such. There have been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud (see above).
[22] In his 1997 book
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,
Carl Sagan discussed alien-based theories of crop circle formation. Sagan concluded that no empirical evidence existed to link UFOs with crop circles.
[23] Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created.
[24][25] Scientific American published an article by
Matt Ridley,
[26] who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers. He reported on "expert" sources such as the
Wall Street Journal who had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe
supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods to create a crop circle are now well documented on the
internet.
[24]
Responding to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing in
Indonesia, the government and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan) described them as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Lapan stated: "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven. Scientists have put UFOs in the category of
pseudoscience."
[27]
Animal activity
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of
Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of
opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles.
[28]
