A
crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a
crop such as
wheat,
barley,
rye,
maize, or
rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as
crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape. While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. Twenty-six countries ended up reporting approximately ten-thousand crop circles, in the last third of the 20th century, and 90% of those were located in southern England.
[1] Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as
Stonehenge. Nearly half of all circles found in the UK are located within a 15 km radius of
Avebury.
[2]. Formations usually are made overnight, but have also been made during the day. The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point, and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. More recent methods include the use of a lawn roller.
Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, 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 extraterrestrials.
[15][16][17][18]
The location of many crop circles near ancient sites such as
Stonehenge,
barrows, and
chalk horses has led many
New Age belief systems to incorporate crop circles, speculating their existence in relation to
ley lines.
[15][19][20]
Some
New Age supporters have related crop circles to the
Gaia hypothesis, alleging that "Gaia", the earth, is actually alive and that crop circles are messages or responses to stimuli such as
global warming and human
pollution. It asserts that the earth may be modeled as if a single super-organism, in that earthly components (e.g.
biota, climate, temperature, sunlight, etc.) influence each other and are organized to function and develop as a whole.
[21]
The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, some 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).
[22] 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.
[23] Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created.
[24][25] Scientific American published an article by
Matt Ridley,
[26] 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.
[24]
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