A 

crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop,[1] usually

a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s by Colin Andrews.[2] 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.[3] Although obscure natural causes or alien origins of crop
circles are suggested by fringe theorists,[4] there is no scientific evidence for such explanations, and
all crop circles are consistent with human causation.[5][6][7]
The number of reports of crop circles has substantially increased since the 1970s. There has been
scant scientific study of them. Circles in the United Kingdom 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.[8] In 1991, two hoaxers, Doug Bower and Dave
Chorley, took credit for having created many circles throughout England after one of their circles was
described by an investigator as impossible for human beings to make.[9]
Formations are usually created overnight,[10] although some are reported to have appeared during
the day.[11] In contrast to crop circles or crop formations, archaeological remains can
cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but they do not appear overnight,
and they are always in the same places every year. Nearly half of all crop circles found in the UK in
2003 were located within a 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) radius of the Avebury stone circles.[12]

History[edit]
Before the 20th century[edit]
A 1678 news pamphlet The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News Out of Hartfordshire is claimed by some
crop circle devotees[who?] to be the first depiction of a crop circle.[13] Crop circle researcher Jim
Schnabel does not consider it to be a historical precedent because it describes the stalks as being
cut rather than bent[13] (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 and proposed air flows from the sky as a cause.[14][15] 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.[n 1]
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".[n 2]

20th century[edit]
In 1932, the 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."[18]
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.
[19] Astronomer Hugh Ernest Butler observed similar craters and said they were likely caused by
lightning strikes.[20]
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.[21] 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.[22] The
most famous case is the 1966 Tully "saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-
shaped craft rise 30 or 40 feet (12 m) from a swamp and then fly away. 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.[21] 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 the causing willy-willy.
British pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley say they started creating crop circles in British
cornfields in 1978, inspired by the Tully "saucer nest" case..[13][21][23][24][25][26]
The first film to depict a geometric crop circle, in this case created by super-intelligent ants, is 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.[27]
Since the 1960s, there has been a surge of UFOlogists in Wiltshire, and there were rumours of
"saucer nests" appearing in the area, but they were never photographed.[25] 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.[21] In Fortean Times David Wood
reported that in 1940 he had already made crop circles near Gloucestershire using ropes.[28] In
1997, the Oxford English Dictionary recorded the earliest usage of the term "crop circles" in a 1988
issue of Journal of Meteorology, referring to a BBC film.[29] The coining of the term "crop circle" is
attributed to Colin Andrews in the late 1970s or early 1980s.[30][31]
The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared and spread since the late 1970s[13] as many
circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. This phenomenon became widely
known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire.
After Bower's and Chorley's 1991 statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles
started appearing all over the world.[10] To date, 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. Sceptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and
the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation.[32]
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.[24] The market for crop-circle interest consequently generated bus or helicopter tours of
circle sites, walking tours, T-shirts, and book sales.

21st century[edit]
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[10] and some incorporating complex mathematical and
scientific characteristics.[33][34][35]
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, burial
mounds such as Silbury Hill, long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow, and white horses in
chalk hills.[8]

Bower and Chorley[edit]

In 1991, two self-professed pranksters, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, made headlines by claiming
that it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978 with the use of 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.
[36] 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.[9][36][37] 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).[10]
[38] 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."[10]

Art and business[edit]

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.[39]
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.[40]
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.
 Aerial view of a crop circle in Diessenhofen

On the night of 11–12 July 1992, a crop-circle-making competition with a prize of £3,000[41] (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.[42] 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."[43]
In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students
from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to
distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley.
The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop
Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.[44]
In 2009, The Guardian reported that crop circle activity had been waning around Wiltshire, in part
because makers preferred creating promotional crop circles for companies that paid well for their
efforts.[45]
A video sequence used in connection with the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London
showed two crop circles in the shape of the Olympic rings. Another Olympic crop circle was visible to
passengers landing at nearby Heathrow Airport before and during the Games.[46]
A 7-acre (2.8-hectare) crop circle depicting the emblem of the Star Wars Rebel Alliance was created
in California in December 2017 by a father and his 11-year-old son as a spaceport for X-wing
fighters.[47]

Legal implications[edit]
In 1992, Gábor Takács and Róbert Dallos, both then aged 17, were the first people to face legal
action after creating a crop circle. Takács and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a
high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture, created a 36-metre (118 ft) diameter crop circle in
a wheat field near Székesfehérvár, 43 miles (69 km) southwest of Budapest, on June 8, 1992. In
September, 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.[48] As a result, Aranykalász Co., the owners of the
land, sued the teens for 630,000 Ft (~$3,000 USD) in damages. The presiding judge ruled that the
students were only responsible for the damage caused in the circle itself,[48] amounting to about
6,000 Ft (~$30 USD), and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of
visitors who flocked to Székesfehérvár following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was
eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees.[citation needed]
In 2000, Matthew Williams became the first man in the UK to be arrested for causing criminal
damage after making a crop circle near Devizes.[49] In November 2000, he was fined £100 and £40
in costs.[50][51] As of 2008, no one else has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for criminal
damage caused by creating crop circles.[n 3]

Creation[edit]

Detail of a crop circle in a field in Switzerland

The scientific consensus on crop circles is that they are constructed by human beings as
hoaxes, advertising, or art.[53] 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. It is also possible to bend grass without breaking it, if it has recently rained;
a method that was used to create crop circles in Hungary in 1992.[48] Skeptics of the paranormal
point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with their being made by hoaxers.
[54][48]
Bower and Chorley confessed in 1991 to making the first crop circles in southern England.[10] When
some people refused to believe them, they deliberately added straight lines and squares to show
that they could not have natural causes. 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 2009, a circle
formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished,
with some half-made circles.[10]
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,[55] like Bower and Chorley and
tabloid Today hoaxing Pat Delgado,[36][56] the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4's Equinox hoaxing
Terence Meaden,[38][56] or a friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of the
Canadian Crop Circle Research Network.[57] In his 1997 book The Demon-Haunted World: 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.[58] Many others have demonstrated how
complex crop circles can be created.[59] Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley,
[38] 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 of
creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet.[citation needed]
Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising.[45][n 3] Many crop
circles show human symbols, like the heart and arrow symbol of love, and stereotyped alien faces.[n
4]

Hoaxers have been caught in the process of making new circles, such as in 2004 in the Netherlands
for example[60] (see more cases in "legal implications" section above).
Advocates of non-human causes discount on-site evidence of human involvement as attempts to
discredit the phenomena.[60] Some even argue a conspiracy theory, with governments planting
evidence of hoaxing to muddle the origins of the circles.[60][61] When Ridley wrote negative
articles in newspapers, he was accused of spreading "government disinformation" and of working for
the UK military intelligence service MI5.[38] Ridley responded by noting that many cereologists make
good livings from selling books and providing high-priced personal tours through crop fields, and he
claimed that they have vested interests in rejecting what is by far the most likely explanation for the
circles.[38][62]
In science magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, for example Science Illustrated, one could read
reports suggesting that the plants were bent by something that could be microwave radiation, rather
than broken by physical impact. The magazines also contained serious reports of the absence of
human influence and measurement of unusual radiation. Today, this is considered to be
pseudoscience, while at the time it was subject of serious research. At that time, it was also more
likely that an unknown factor was behind the incidents, not least seen in light of the fact that GPS
was not available to the public.[63]

Related art[edit]
Patterns similar to crop circles can also be made in snow, by using skis, snow shoes or just walking
with ordinary shoes. [64]
Patterns similar to crop circles can also be made in sand. [65]
Images can be made in forests by cutting trees, especially in areas with snow. Celebrating the
Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, a 360 meter tall stylized image of an Olympic torch
runner was made in a forest close to one of the arenas. [66]