Crop circle

For the irrigation method that produces circular fields of crops, see center pivot irrigation.

File:Crop circles Swirl.jpg

A 780 ft. crop circle in the form of a double (six-sided) triskelion composed of 409 circles. Location: Milk Hill (England), 2001

Crop circles are sizeable patterns created by the flattening of crops such as wheat, barley, rye, or maize. The term crop circle entered the Oxford Dictionary in 1990.

Self-described pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley claimed to have started the crop circle phenomenon in 1978. Their work is continued by other groups of crop circle makers such as the circlemakers arts collective founded by John Lundberg in the early 1990s.

Some assert that photographs of bent or warped crop growth nodes support non-human origins of crop circles. Biophysicist W. C. Levengood's Crop Circle Reports claims that circles with such "node-warping" are not man-made, that they could not have been made through snapping or breaking or from impact or by crushing, but instead must have been made by some intensely focused energy such as microwaves or spinning plasma vortex.

While it has been suggested that ball lightning and vortices in the wind might rarely produce isolated indentations in crops, neither is capable of the complex and often delicate patterns seen in more elaborate crop circles.

History

1678 pamphlet on the "Mowing-Devil"

The earliest recorded image resembling a crop circle is depicted in an English woodcut pamphlet published in 1678 called the "Mowing-Devil". The image depicts a demon with a scythe mowing an oval design in a field of oats. The pamphlet's text reads as follows:

Being a True Relation of a Farmer, who Bargaining with a Poor Mower, about the Cutting down Three Half Acres of Oats, upon the Mower's asking too much, the Farmer swore "That the Devil should Mow it, rather than He." And so it fell out, that that very Night, the Crop of Oats shew'd as if it had been all of a Flame, but next Morning appear'd so neatly Mow'd by the Devil, or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like.

Also, How the said Oats ly now in the Field, and the Owner has not Power to fetch them away.

A more recent historical report of crop circles was published in Nature, volume 22, pp. 290–291, 29 July 1880, and republished in the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Meteorology. It describes the 1880 investigations by amateur scientist John Rand Capron:

"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,..."

There are also many other anecdotal accounts of crop circles in Ufology literature that predate the modern crop circle phenomena, though some cases involve crops which were cut or burnt, rather than flattened.

A crop circle in the form of a Triskelion

Patterns

Early examples of crop circles were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes. After some years, more complex geometric patterns emerged. In addition to circle designs based on sacred geometry, some of the later formations, those occurring after 2000, are based on other principles, including fractals. Many crop circles now have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition. Elements of three-dimensionality have been introduced, and some crop circles appear to be inspired by animals or religious symbols.

Creators

In 1991, two men from Southampton, England, announced that they had conceived the idea as a prank at a pub near Winchester, Hampshire, during an evening in 1976. Inspired by the 1966 Tully Saucer Nests, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools: using a four-foot-long plank attached to a rope, they easily created circles eight feet in diameter. The two men were able to make a 40-foot (12 m) circle in 15 minutes.

The pair became frustrated when their work did not receive significant publicity, so in 1981, they created a circle in Matterley Bowl, a natural amphitheatre just outside Winchester, Hampshire—an area surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers passing by. Their designs were at first simple circles. When newspapers claimed that the circles could easily be explained by natural phenomena, Bower and Chorley made more complex patterns. 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 creation of straight lines. Later designs of crop circles became increasingly complicated.

Bower's wife had become suspicious of him, noticing high levels of mileage in their car. Eventually, fearing that his wife suspected him of adultery, Bower confessed to her, and subsequently, he and Chorley informed a British national newspaper. Chorley died in 1996, and Doug Bower has made crop circles as recently as 2004. 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.

The main criticism of human creation of crop circles is that Bower and Chorley could not have covertly travelled internationally and executed all if indeed any known circles prior to their claims in 1991, and that still-secret cells of hoaxers are allegedly unlikely to have spontaneously and successfully joined the game. However Bower has admitted that he was asked to claim credit for more formations than the pair had created for purposes of newspaper publicity. There were at the time of the newspaper article known to be other teams of Circlemakers operating.

Thanks to interest generated by crop circles, International teams of Circlemakers started making crop designs. In the United Kingdom one of the teams rose to the fore: Circlemakers.org, a group of crop circle makers founded by John Lundberg, have demonstrated that making what self-appointed cereologist experts state are "unfakeable" crop circles is possible. On more than one occasion, such cereologists have claimed that a crop circle was "genuine" when in fact the people making the circle had previously been filmed making the circle.. John Lundbergs team is reputed to have disbanded in 2008, however 29 other anonymous Circlemakers continue to work in Wiltshire creating circles each year.

A crop circle in Switzerland

Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley, 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.

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 which was Judged by famous author Dr Rupert Sheldrake 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 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.

In 2000 Wiltshire resident and crop circle artist Matthew Williams was arrested and subsequently prosecuted for creating a crop circle near his home in Bishops Cannings. He claims to have been trying to demonstrate to researchers that circles could be created at night without any lights. Williams was well known as a paranormal researcher and news of his involvement in making circles came as a shock to some. News of the arrest made front page news and national TV news. The court case was concluded and Williams was fined the sum of £125 for criminal damages.

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".

Paranormal and alternative explanations

Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, crop circles have become the subject of various paranormal and fringe beliefs, ranging from the hypothesis that they are created by freak meteorological phenomena to the belief that they represent messages from extraterrestrials.

Other hypotheses, insufficient to explain myriad circles with clearly discernable images and complex geometric patterns, attribute them to atmospheric phenomena, such as freak tornadoes or ball lightning.

The location of many crop circles near ancient sites such as Stonehenge, barrows, and chalk horses has led to many New Age belief systems incorporating crop circles, including the beliefs that they are formed in relation to ley lines and that they give off energy that can be detected through dowsing.

UFOs and other lights in the sky have been reported in connection with many crop-circle sites, leading to their becoming associated with UFOs and aliens. Some people claim to have seen images of UFOs forming crop circles or overflying them, though photographs have been dismissed by experts as being indistinct or clear hoaxes.

Analysis

The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, many 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). Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles are created.

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. Specifically, that there were no credible cases of UFOs being observed creating a circle, yet there were many cases when it was known that human agents, such as Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, were responsible. Circle creators Doug Bower and Dave Chorley concur.

In 1999, researcher Colin Andrews received funding from Laurence Rockefeller to conduct a two- year investigation into crop-circle hoaxing. Andrews put together a team that studied crop circles that had been commissioned by various media outlets and infiltrated several groups known to be creating man-made circles. Using these man-made circles as a base, Andrews went on to study data from circles found in England in 1999 and 2000. Andrews concluded that 80% of all circles studied showed "unassailable" signs of having been man-made, including post holes used to demarcate circle layouts or evidence of human tracks underlying the circle sites, but could not account for the remaining 20% Andrews's figures have been disputed by CSICOP who argue that his criteria for distinguishing between man-made circles and non-man-made circles were insufficient, as no official standard exists for determining the nature of a crop circle. Furthermore, these circles were in England, where the hoax is most operative.

Similar phenomena

• Lawn Cross of Eisenberg an der Raab
• Nazca Lines
• Fairy rings: An unrelated phenomenon where fungal circles are formed by a spreading mycelium. 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", "heksering", "pixie circles" or "elf circles" and was attributed by countryfolk to mystical forces. This phenomenon is commonplace and is recognized as the natural growth of fungus colonies.
• Geoglyph

Further reading

• Vital Signs: A Complete Guide to the Crop Circle Mystery and Why It is Not a Hoax by Andy Thomas and Mike Leigh, 2002, ISBN 1-58394-069-3.
• The Hypnotic Power of Crop Circles by Bert Janssen, ISBN 1-951882-34-7.
• Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle, 2004, Pitkin (an imprint of Jarrold Publishing) (largely in favour of the supernatural explanation of Crop Circles), ISBN 1-84165-138-9.
• Crop Circles – Signs of Contact by Colin Andrews and Stephen Spignesi, ISBN 1-56414-674-X.
• Circular Evidence: Bloomsbury, London by Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, 1989, ISBN 0-7475-0635-3.
• Secrets in the Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles by Freddy Silva, 2002, ISBN 1-57174-322-7.
• The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making by Rob Irving and John Lundberg, edited by Mark Pilkington, 2006, Strange Attractor, ISBN 0-9548054-2-9.
• Round in Circles: Physicists, Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers by Jim Schnabel, 1993, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-017952-6.
• The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles: Scientific Research and Urban Legends by Eltjo H. Haselhoff, ISBN 0-285-63625-1.
• Carl Sagan, 1996. The Demon-Haunted world: Science as a Candle in the Dark; "Aliens" pp 73ff.
• Noyes, Ralph (editor) The Crop Circle Enigma: Grounding the Phenomenon in Science, Culture and Metaphysics The Hollows, Wellow, Bath U.K.:1990 Gateway Books, ISBN 0-946551-66-9

External links

• Crop Circle Connector Up-to-date crop circle event database using Google Maps.
• National Geographic News This is an introduction to crop circles with a special emphasis on their value as art.
• The Center for Scientific Investigation, a sceptical look at crop circles by Joe Nickel "Circular Reasoning: The 'Mystery' of Crop Circles and Their 'Orbs' of Light"
• Circlemakers videos Circlemakers documentary 3hrs interviewing key circlemakers.
• Circlemakers.org Crop circle making arts collective in the UK.
• How Stuff Works: Explains how crop circles are made and how to make your own, with step-by-step pictures and complex circle patterns.
• Video demonstration of circle making techniques, CSI