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File:CropCircleSwirl.jpeg
A crop circle pattern. See also: A crop circle on google maps.

This article is about the phenomena of crop circles. For the music band, see Crop Circles.

Crop circles are areas of cereal or similar crops that have been systematically flattened to form various geometric patterns. The phenomenon itself only entered the public imagination in its current form after the notable appearances in England in the late 1970s. Various scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations were put forward to explain the phenomenon, which soon spread around the world. In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, revealed that they had been making crop circles in England since 1978 using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Many other people around the world are also openly making crop circles, notably Circlemakers.org. Although the commonly accepted view today is that crop circles are a man-made phenomenon, paranormal explanations, often including UFOs, are still popular.

People who study crop circle phenomena sometimes humorously call themselves "cerealogists", after the usually known name for the pseudoscience that studies crop circles: cereology. Cerealogists call these designs agriglyphs.

History of crop circles

The phenomenon of crop circles became generally known in the 1970s, after the start of the hoaxes perpetrated by Bower and Chorley. Subsequently crop circle enthusiasts have tried finding examples of the phenomenon before this. Supposedly, the earliest recorded crop circle is depicted in a 17th Century woodcut called the Mowing-Devil. The image depicts a strange creature creating a circular design in a field of corn. The legend suggests that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have the devil himself perform the task. Proponents of the belief that crop circles are either naturally caused, or are formed by as yet unknown entities, often support their viewpoint with this old tale. It is worth noting, however, that this is little more than a tale—the circular formation supposedly caused by the creature may be coincidental, or may have been caused by any number of natural or human processes.

Although the pixie circles created by Elves in Scandinavian folklore were most likely caused by fungus colonies, there was also a rarer kind, consisting of circular patches where the grass had been flattened:

On lake shores, where the forest met the lake, you could find elf circles. They were round places where the grass had been flattened like a floor. Elves had danced there. By Lake Tisaren, I have seen one of those. It could be dangerous and one could become ill if one had trodden over such a place or if one destroyed anything there (an account given in 1926, Hellström 1990:36)

Not long after WWII, the aerial surveys that were being made over large areas of Britain revealed some unexpected phenomena, undetectable from the ground. When the surveys photographed ripening crops or drought-stressed terrain they revealed what were soon termed "crop marks", the differential ripening of the crop that revealed differences in the subsoil. These patterns were found to be caused by the buried remnants of ancient buildings. Archaeological investigations were soon instigated, but, though many previously unsuspected archaeological sites were found, no crop circles were ever recorded. Skeptics argue that this would have pointed to circles as a modern phenomenon, even if the initial pranksters had not revealed themselves; believers reply different agendas may simply be at work in the modern day.

Crop Circles shot into prominence in the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. To date, thousands of circles have appeared at sites across the world, from disparate locations such as the former Soviet Union, the UK and Japan, as well as the U.S. and Canada.

Creators of crop circles

In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomena began, two men announced that the phenomenon of crop circles was an idea thought up one evening in a pub in Southampton, England in 1978. World War II veteran Doug Bower and his friend Dave Chorley revealed that they made the crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools. Bower and Chorley stated to reporters that a small group of people can stomp down a sizeable area of crop in a single night. "Stomp" does not mean using the feet: simple tools to make crop circles have been demonstrated. .

The pair became slightly frustrated that their work had not received as much publicity as they had hoped. In 1981 they created a crop circle in a highly visible area called the Winchester Punchbowl - an area surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers passing by.

Bower's wife had become increasingly suspicious of him due to noticing particularly high levels of road mileage in their car. Eventually, fearing that his wife suspected him of something else, Bower confessed to her what he had been doing and subsequently informed a British national newspaper.

Bower revealed on TV the method used, which was that of a four-foot-long plank with rope attached and circles of eight feet in diameter could be easily created. He stated that a 40-foot circle could be created by two men in a quarter of an hour. The designs were simple at first, just being circles. However, when Bower and Chorley had read newspaper reports claiming that the circles could eaily be explained by natural phenomena, they decided to up the stakes. A simple wire with a loop, hanging down from a cap - the loop positioned over one eye - could be used to focus on a landmark to aid in the created of straight lines. Later designs of crop circles were to become increasingly complex.

Dave Chorley died in 1996 though Doug Bower has made the occasional crop circle as recently as 2004 — over ten years after he revealed it to be a hoax. Bower has said that, had it not been for his wife's suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was a hoax.

Circlemakers.org, the most famous group of crop circle makers founded by John Lundberg have demonstrated that making what self-appointed cerealogist experts state are "unfakeable" crop circles is possible. One such cerealogist, G. Terence Meaden, was filmed claiming that a crop circle was genuine when the night before the making of that crop circle by humans was filmed. On the night of July 11-12, 1992, a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of several thousand pounds (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three helicopter engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope. The size and complexity of the designs produced demonstrated the minimal equipment and preparation required to produce a crop design, lending more credence to the fact that this phenomenon is purely and solely the result of humans playing pranks.

Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley (August 2002, p. 25), who started making crop circles in Texas 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 hoaxed crop circle have been well-documented on the Internet.

A counter argument to hoaxing is that where circles appear in crops mature enough that they carry seeds (as they do so often) seed-pods are unbroken, whereas trampling causes seed-pod breakage. Crop circle hoaxers counter that it is easy to leave dry seed pods unbroken during stomping and also leave no trace of entrance and egress trampling when the plants and ground are both dry and some care is taken while walking. Several crop circles later to have been determined to be hoaxes, were at first certified as being 'genuine' by cerealogists due to the lack of seed pod breakage. Entry to a field without leaving traces is also easy, since there always are several tracks made by the machines used to spray insecticides on the crop that people can use.

Some claim that the circles might still have merit as a social phenomenon regardless of their legitimacy. New Age experts have expressed interest in researching the shapes and symbols depicted.

Circlemaker Matthew Williams was the first circlemaker ever to be arrested and charged with criminal damage to farmland in 2000. Since then, Matthew has gone on to give many public demonstrations on how circles are made in complete darkness with simple tools such as a tape measure and board.

Some crop-circle photographs are hoaxes, created using image manipulation.

Crop circle designs

Early examples of this phenomenon were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes, which led some people to speculate that it was a natural phenomenon. But after some years more and more elaborate and complex geometric patterns have emerged.

There have been many recurring themes over the years. In general, the early formations (1970 - 2000) seemed to those who believe in a para-normal origin of the circles to be based on the principles of Sacred Geometry. Later formations, those occurring after 2000, appear to be based on other principles, natural sciences and mathematics designs, including fractals. Many crop circles have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition.

Sometimes complex crop illustrations have also appeared, including cartoon characters. Crop circles have also started being used in advertising. Weetabix, Mountain Dew and Mitsubishi are examples of products that have had commercials made for them in the form of crop formations.

Contending beliefs

Most critical observers, and the scientific mainstream, are convinced that crop circles are sniggles or hoaxes engineered by humans, and indeed more and more crop formations have been claimed by their makers. This explanation, supported by the documentation produced by some crop-circle hoaxers, has the advantage of not requiring us first to assume the existence of flying saucers or other as-yet-unobserved phenomena. However, there are many contending hypotheses which assume that at least some crop circles are not the products of mundane hoaxers; these hypotheses vary in their degree of scientific rigor, but all fall to some extent outside the mainstream.

One modern unscientific belief, is that crop circles are created by flying saucers landing in fields and flattening a neat circle in the crop. However, the increasing complexity of formations from the 1980s on, and the implausibility of the idea that extraterrestrial beings would travel to Earth for the sole apparent reason of flattening crops, make this conjecture seem unlikely.

Cereology
Claims
  • Extraterrestials visit Earth and employ either mysterious vibrations or waves or mysterious force beams to create crop circles.
Related scientific disciplines
Year proposed
  • c. 1975
Original proponents
Subsequent proponents
  • unknown
(Overview of pseudoscientific concepts)

Some pseudoscientifically inclined enthusiasts suggest that an explanation more plausible than flying saucers might be cymatics, the visualisation of vibration or sound. According to this hypothesis, the complex patterns are two-dimensional geometric or visual representations of sound frequencies, with higher sound frequencies producing more complex shapes similar to both mandalas and crop circle designs.

Another pseudoscientific hypothesis is that a man-made satellite in Earth orbit is using some kind of beam (e.g., microwaves) to create the designs. Heating stems of wheat with a short intense burst of microwave energy can produce wilting similar to that in a crop circle. Flattened stems often have the bend just below a stem-node, and also may feature blackened burn holes indicative of intense heating. Microwave heating has been shown to be capable of producing these effects. It is postulated by believers of this theory that the U.S. Pentagon's "Star Wars" program has a satellite capable of delivering such a microwave beam. However, there is a reasonable counter-argument to this stating that there were no traces of supposed radiation detected in the crop circles. Crops that were bent using the microwave technique showed all signs of various radiations and moisture differences. The original crops in the crop circle showed no abnormalities compared to normal crops, except for being mysteriously bent.

Often touted as evidence for the mystic origin of crop circles is the coincidence that many circles in the Avebury area of southern England occur near ancient sites such as earth barrows or mounds, white horses carved in the chalk hills, and stone circles. Other ideas on their formation have been proposed include tornadoes, freak wind patterns, ball lightning, and something called "plasma vortices".

A number of witnesses claim to have observed circles being created, saying that it takes a few seconds and the corn falls flat like a fan being opened – though these accounts are always anecdotal and have never been supported by any evidence beyond the claimants' assertions. Crop circle enthusiasts, though they do not always have scientific backgrounds or credentials, claim that there are other features of crop circles that undercut the hoax theory. They say that bends in the corn in many circles occur just below a joint, while the flattening of the corn by hoaxers produces a crack at any point in the stem, and some scientific studies on apical nodes bear them out. Also they say that flattened corn often lies in groomed layers, rather than random crushings. While there have been cases in which believers declared crop circles to be 'the real thing', only to be confronted soon after with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud, the bending issue remains in dispute. For this reason, skeptics prefer the explanation that there are simply different hoaxers employing different techniques.

Similar phenomena

  • Lawn Cross of Eisenberg an der Raab
  • Unusual Ground Markings
  • In an unrelated phenomenon, fungal circles formed by a spreading mycelium are familiar, though on a much smaller scale. Older, larger fungal circles are not recognized when they have broken into arcs or patches. In Scandinavia and in Britain, the phenomenon of mushrooms or puffballs forming circles in a patch of meadow or pasture was referred to in folklore as älvringar, pixie circles or elf circles, and was attributed by countryfolk to mystical forces. This phenomenon is both commonplace and much smaller in scale, however, and is recognized as the natural growth of fungus colonies.

In fiction

Advertising

In July 2005 Swedish Railways AB launched an advertising campaign where the company leases space on crop fields to display adverts created by mowing crops. The campaign is aimed at air travellers since the company competes with domestic airlines for customers. Consequently the adverts are placed near the approach paths of major Swedish airports. ( in swedish, with links to images)

Further reading

  • The Hypnotic Power of Crop Circles, by Bert Janssen, 2004. ISBN 1931882347
  • Round in Circles: Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers, by Robin W. Allen and Jim Schnabel, 1994. ISBN 1591021103.
  • Circular Evidence: Bloomsbury, London by Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, 1989, ISBN 0747506353.
  • The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles: Scientific Research and Urban Legends, by Eltjo H. Haselhoff, ISBN 0285636251.
  • Opening Minds by Dr. Simeon Hein, ISBN 0971586306.
  • Hellström. 1990. En Krönika om Åsbro. ISBN 91-7194-726-4
  • Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle, 2004, Pitkin (an imprint of Jarrold Publishing) (largely in favour of the supernatural explanation of Crop Circles), ISBN 1841651389.
  • Carl Sagan, 1996. The Demon-Haunted world: Science as a Candle in the Dark; "Aliens" pp 73ff.
  • DVD Documentaries Contact and Crop Circles - The Research crop circle documentaries
  • Keith Mayes on crop circles

External links

Crop circle galleries:

Skeptical and scientific analysis:

Websites of self-confessed circle hoaxers:

Pro paranormal explanation websites:

Categories: