Crop Circles

Crop circles gained widespread public attention in England during the late 1970s and early 1980s, with simple circular formations appearing primarily in the wheat fields of southern England, particularly around Wiltshire. Early formations were relatively basic patterns, but designs became increasingly elaborate throughout the 1980s, evolving into complex geometric patterns incorporating mathematical principles and intricate detail work.

The phenomenon attracted serious investigation from researchers Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews, who documented formations and proposed various explanations including earth energy lines, plasma vortices, and extraterrestrial visitation. Their 1989 book “Circular Evidence” helped establish “cereology” as a field of study and popularized the idea that crop circles represented non-human intelligence attempting to communicate with humanity.

UFO researchers incorporated crop circles into broader extraterrestrial contact theories, arguing that the patterns served as landing sites for spacecraft or encoded messages from alien visitors. The geometric precision and overnight appearance of formations seemed to exceed human capabilities, particularly given the lack of obvious access routes or disturbance to surrounding crops.

The mystery collapsed in September 1991 when two Englishmen, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, demonstrated to reporters from Today newspaper how they had created numerous famous formations using simple tools including planks, rope, and wire. The pair revealed they had been making crop circles since 1978 as an elaborate prank, inspired by reports of UFO “nests” found in Australia in the 1960s.

Bower and Chorley’s demonstration showed how teams of people could create complex patterns during nighttime hours without leaving obvious traces, using techniques that became publicly available and adopted by other “circle makers” worldwide. The revelation explained the increasing complexity of formations as human artists refined their methods and competed to create more impressive designs.

Despite the demonstrated human origin of crop circles, some believers maintain that a subset of formations remain unexplained and continue to represent genuine anomalous phenomena. However, scientific analysis of allegedly “genuine” circles has found no physical evidence distinguishing them from known human-made formations, while the complete absence of crop circles in regions without human circle-making communities suggests entirely human causation.