Home ›› 16 Feb 2022 ›› Opinion
Crop circles — strange patterns that appear mysteriously overnight in farmers’ fields and often attributed to aliens or UFOs — are not simply the wild fantasies of Hollywood directors. No, Crop circles are real. This phenomena provokes puzzlement, delight and intrigue among the press and public alike.
The circles are mostly found in the United Kingdom, particularly in South-West England according to BBC Travel, but have spread to dozens of countries around the world in past decades. The mystery has inspired countless books, blogs, fan groups, researchers (dubbed “cereologists” according to Pacific Standard) and even Hollywood television series and films such as The X Files and M Night Shyamalan’s Signs.
Despite having been studied for decades, the question remains: Who, or what, is making them?
Many people believe that crop circles have been reported for centuries, according to The Smithsonian Magazine . Their primary piece of evidence is a woodcut from 1678 that appears to show a field of oat stalks laid out in a circle, according to The Independent. Some take this to be a first-hand eyewitness account of a crop circle, but a little historical investigation shows otherwise. The chapbook itself, entitled The Mowing Devil (according to Oxford Reference), illustrates a folklore legend, in which an English farmer told a worker with whom he was feuding that he “would rather pay the Devil himself” to cut his oat field than pay the fee demanded. The source of the harvesting is not unknown or mysterious; it is indeed Satan himself, who — complete with signature horns and a tail — can be seen in the woodcut holding a scythe.
According to the Australian Geographic, the worldwide crop circle phenomenon was heralded by an event in Tully, Australian 1966, a farmer said he saw a flying saucer rise up from a swampy area and fly away. When he went to investigate he saw a roughly circular area of debris and apparently flattened reeds and grass, which he assumed had been made by the alien spacecraft, but which Australian Geographic suggests might have been unusual animal behaviour. Referred in the press as “flying saucer nests,” this story is more a UFO report than a crop circle report.
As in the 1678 mowing devil legend, the case for it being linked to crop circles is especially weak when we consider that the impression or formation was not made in a crop of any kind but instead in ordinary grass. A round impression in a lawn or grassy area is not necessarily mysterious (as anyone with a kiddie pool in the backyard knows). Indeed, mysterious circles have appeared in grass throughout the world that are sometimes attributed to fairies but instead caused by fungus, according to RHS.
In fact, the first real crop circles didn’t appear until the 1970s, when simple circles began appearing in the English countryside. The number and complexity of the circles increased dramatically, reaching a peak in the 1980s and 1990s when increasingly elaborate circles were produced, according to an article by Nature, including those illustrating complex mathematical equations.
In July 1996, according to Harry Eilenstein one of the world’s most complex and spectacular crop circles appeared in England, across a highway from the mysterious and world-famous Stonehenge monument in the Wiltshire countryside. It was an astonishing fractal pattern called a Julia Set, and while some simple or rough circles might be explained away as the result of a strange weather phenomenon, this one unmistakably demonstrated intelligence. The only question was whether that intelligence was terrestrial or extraterrestrial.
Making the design all the more mysterious, it was claimed that the circle appeared in less than an hour and during the daytime, according to BriteEvents — which, if true, would be virtually impossible for hoaxers to accomplish. The circle became one of the most famous and important crop circles in history.
Livescience
