History[ edit ] The concept of "crop circles" began with the original lates hoaxes by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley see Bower and Chorley , below. In , British naturalist Robert Plot reported on rings or arcs of mushrooms see fairy rings in The Natural History of Stafford-Shire and proposed air flows from the sky as a cause.
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.
On investigating he found a nearly circular area 32 feet long by 25 feet wide where the grass was flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle, and the reeds had been uprooted from the mud. In , G.
Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defence Air Office , wrote to a journalist that the "saucer" was probably debris lifted by the causing willy-willy. Hoaxers Bower and Chorley said they were inspired by this case to start making the modern crop circles that appear today. The film has been cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this phenomenon.
This phenomenon became widely known in the late s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower's and Chorley's statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles started appearing all over the world.
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, burial mounds such as Silbury Hill , long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow , and white horses in chalk hills.
According to Professor Richard Taylor, "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. Since the early s, the UK arts collective Circlemakers, founded by artists Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg and subsequently including artists Wil Russell and Rob Irving , have been creating crop circles in the UK and around the world as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.
The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device and two stepladders. 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. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.
Another Olympic crop circle was visible to passengers landing at nearby Heathrow Airport before and during the Games.
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. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees. Sceptics of the paranormal point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with their being made by hoaxers.
In a copycat effect, increasingly complex circles started appearing in many countries around the world, including fractal figures.
Physicists have suggested that the most complex formations might be made with the help of GPS and lasers. In , a circle formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished, with some half-made circles. 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, [53] like Bower and Chorley and tabloid Today hoaxing Pat Delgado, [35] [54] the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4 's Equinox hoaxing Terence Meaden, [37] [54] or a friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network.
Science as a Candle in the Dark , Carl Sagan concludes that crop circles were created by Bower and Chorley and their copycats, and speculates that UFOlogists willingly ignore the evidence for hoaxing so they can keep believing in an extraterrestrial origin of the circles. 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 of creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet. Advocates of non-human causes discount on-site evidence of human involvement as attempts to discredit the phenomena. Since becoming the focus of widespread media attention in the s, 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.
Some paranormal advocates think that crop circles are caused by ball lighting and that the patterns are so complex that they have to be controlled by some entity. Gaia asking to stop global warming and human pollution , God, supernatural beings for example Indian devas , the collective minds of humanity through a proposed "quantum field", or extraterrestrial beings. Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated, "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven.
Animal activity[ edit ] In , 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. Furthermore, traces of crop circle patterns are sometimes found in the crop the following year, "suggesting long-term damage to the crop field consistent with Levengood's observations of stunted seed growth.
A 17th-century English woodcut called the Mowing-Devil depicts the devil with a scythe mowing cutting a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states 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. Crop circle researcher Jim Schnabel does not consider this to be a historical precedent for crop circles because the stalks were cut down, not bent.
After several attempts, his son saw twelve princesses disguised as swans , who took off their disguises and danced in the field. Crop rings produced by fungi may have inspired such tales since folklore holds these rings are created by dancing wolves or fairies.
The former residence of John A, Circle dating. Many of the larger and more ornate homes came with carriage houses and attached servant's quarters, which were later converted to apartments and rooming houses as the upper middle class moved elsewhere. After Bower's and Chorley's statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles started appearing all over the world. History[ edit ] The concept of "crop circles" began with the original lates hoaxes by Doug Bower and Dave Circle dating see Bower and Chorleybelow. In nearby wheat fields, there were several circular and elliptical areas where the wheat had been flattened. As a result, the area saw development of successive blocks of Victorian row houses marketed to the upper middle class, which sought to Circle dating Washington the reputation, Circle dating, modeled after European capitals, of a city of broad boulevards and well-manicured parks. In the early 20th century, Circle dating, 14th Street NW rose to prominence as a main shopping district for both black and white Washingtonians on the edge of downtown Washington D. A 17th-century English woodcut called the Mowing-Devil depicts the devil with a scythe mowing cutting a circular design in a field of oats. Methods of creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet. He reported on "expert" sources such as The Wall Street Journalwho had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for Circle dating that are not yet explained.
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