A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was coined in the early 1980s.Colin Andrews, Pat Delgado Circular Evidence: A Detailed Investigation of the Flattened Swirled Crops. Phanes Press, 1991. 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.Edis, Taner. Science and Nonbelief. Prometheus Books. 2008, p. 138. "Skeptics begin by pointing out that many paranormal claims are the result of fraud or hoaxes. Crop circles—elaborate patterns that appear on fields overnight—appear to be of this sort. Many crop circle makers have come forth or have been exposed. We know a great deal about their various techniques. So we do not need to find the perpetrator of every crop circle to figure out that probably they all are human made. Many true believers remain who continue to think there is something paranormal—perhaps alien—about crop circles. But the circles we know all fall within the range of the sort of thing done in hoaxes. Nothing stands out as extraordinary."
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.Soto, J. Crop Cirles. In Michael Shermer (ed.). The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. ABC-CLIO. pp. 67–70. Radford, B. "Crop Circles Explained". LiveScience. In 1991, two hoaxers, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, took credit for having created over 200 crop circles throughout England in widely-reported interviews. The number of reports of crop circles increased substantially after interviews with them. In the United Kingdom, reported circles 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. They usually appear overnight. Nearly half of all crop circles found in the UK in 2003 were located within a radius of the Avebury stone circles.
In contrast to crop circles or crop formations, archaeological remains can cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but these do not appear overnight, and are always in the same places every year.
History
Before the 20th century
A 1678 news pamphlet, The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News Out of Hartfordshire, describes a crop whose stalks were cut rather than bent. (See folklore section.)
In 1686, an English naturalist, Robert Plot, reported on rings or arcs of mushrooms (see fairy rings) in The Natural History of Stafford-Shire, proposing air flows from the sky as a cause. at Project Gutenberg 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 several circles of flattened crops in a field were formed under suspicious circumstances and possibly caused by "cyclonic wind action", stating "as viewed from a distance, circular spots ... they all presented much the same character, viz, a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle round the centre, and outside there a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered".
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."Sussex Notes and Queries, 1937 Eliot Cecil Curwen pp. 139–40
In Fortean Times, David Wood reported that in 1940 he made crop circles near Gloucestershire using ropes. citing:
In 1963, Patrick Moore described a crater in a potato field in Wiltshire that 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.Moore P. 'That Wiltshire Crater' Letter to the editor New Scientist 8 August 1963 Astronomer Hugh Ernest Butler observed similar craters and said they were likely caused by lightning strikes.Hugh Ernest Butler 'That Wiltshire Crater', New Scientist issue 352, 15 August 1963 Letters to the editor
During the 1960s, there were many reports of UFO sightings and circular formations in swamp reeds and sugarcane fields in Tully, Queensland, Australia, and in Canada. 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. At Library and Archives Canada. (Original in French). The most famous case is the 1966 Tully "saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise from a swamp and then fly away. On investigating he found a nearly circular area long by 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 a willy-willy.
After the 1960s, there was a surge of UFOlogists in Wiltshire, and there were rumours 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.
British pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley reported they started creating crop circles in British cornfields in 1978, inspired by the Tully "saucer nest" case.
The first film to depict a geometric crop circle, in this case created by super-intelligent ants, was the 1974 science-fiction film Phase IV. The film has been cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this phenomenon.Pilkington, Mark (2010) "History, the Hive Mind, and Agrarian Art". In The Anomalist, Vol. 14. http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/4106/
The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared and spread since the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. Around this time, researcher Colin Andrews began documenting the phenomenon, and in 1989 he co-authored Circular Evidence with Pat Delgado, a work that compiled reports and photographs of early formations. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower and Chorley gave interviews in 1991 about how they had made crop circles, circles started appearing all over the world. By 2001, 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. Researchers have noted 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, earthen mounds such as Silbury Hill, long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow, and white horses in chalk hills.
Bower and Chorley In 1991, two self-professed pranksters, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, made headlines by saying they had started the crop circle phenomenon in 1978, using simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in straight lines. To prove their case they made a circle in front of journalists; a "cereologist" (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 1,000 other circles not being made by them). Writing in Physics World, Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon said that "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."
Art and business
After reports of simple circles in the 1970s, increasingly complex geometric designs have been created by anonymous artists, in some cases to attract tourists to an area.
Since the early 1990s, the UK arts collective Circlemakers, founded by Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg, and subsequently including Wil Russell and Rob Irving, has been creating crop circles in the UK and around the world as part of its art practice and also for commercial clients.
The Led Zeppelin Boxed Set that was released on 7 September 1990, along 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 organised 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."