Crop circle
Crop circles are areas of a grain field in which the stalks of corn have been bent, bent or mowed in a regular manner. The resulting circles or more complex geoglyphs are often only recognizable from an elevated position or from the air.
History, dissemination, exploration
The first documents that could indicate crop circles appeared in France. The Lorraine aldermen and later Procureur Général Nicolas Remy describes in his book Dæmonolatria a process in which a group of men and women are accused of calling goofed beings in a circle dance on July 24, 1590. The judge visited the crop circle with witnesses. Much better known is the British pamphlet from 1678 entitled The Mowing Devil , which regards the circles as the work of a mowing devil . In the 20th century, farmers in southern England referred to crop circles as "Devils Twist"; Amish of German origin call them "Hexendanz" and "Deiwelskreis" even today. In the two cases mentioned, nothing can be said about their shape due to the lack of detailed information. Many legends and fairy tales also tell of fairy and elf rings that are said to come from dancing fairy tale characters. In 1686, in The Natural History of StaffordShire , Robert Plot describes strange circles in the grass as "fairy rings".
In 1880, the science magazine Nature reported on crop circles in a Surrey field . Such phenomena have also been known in Germany since the 19th century at the latest.
Probably the first photo of a crop circle was taken in 1932 and added in 1937 by Cecil Curwen to the article “Crop-Marks on Stoughton Down” in the archaeological newspaper “Sussex Notes and Querries”. Only a circle on Bow Hill near Chichester can be seen on it, but the author reports a formation of four circles, the inner part of which alone is said to have been about 36 meters tall.
In January 1966, a farmer in Tully , Australia, claimed he had seen a UFO over a swamp . When a circular area with a diameter of about 9 meters was discovered there, on which the reeds lay flat on the ground clockwise, this triggered intense media coverage of the "Tully Saucer Nest" and its possible causes. Inspired by newspaper reports about these events, the two artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley created the first crop circles in southern England in July 1978.
They were reported particularly frequently in the late 1980s, after increasing media coverage. Since then, between 150 and 300 crop circles have been reported annually, mostly from southern England. In 2004 about a third of all known cases of crop circles occurred here. In 2003 it was around a quarter of the cases in Germany. Here crop circles occur mainly in Northern Pomerania (around Stralsund and on Rügen ), in Northern Hesse, the region of Sinsheim and in Schleswig-Holstein . Such phenomena are increasingly being reported from other countries and continents, albeit much less frequently. So far, over 6,000 different crop circles have been documented in over 50 countries around the globe.
The shapes became larger and more complex in the early 1990s. This development can be tied to the pattern often called "bicycle", which was found on July 17, 1991 at Barbury Castle, with its triangles, saw blade and photo cover-like patterns for the first time contained more than circles and lines. The longest with 756 m was discovered on July 26, 1996 in Ashbury . It is similar in type to that of July 11, 1990 in Alton Barnes , which became one of the most famous crop circles as the cover of the Led Zeppelin best-of album . The formation with the largest surface area so far found was found in August 2001 in a wheat field on Milk Hill in Wiltshire (southern England). It had a diameter of 240 meters and consisted of 409 partial circles. Viewed from the air, they resulted in the overall geometric pattern of a six-pointed vortex shape.
2002 saw the film Signs (by M. Night Shyamalan with Mel Gibson ); he depicts the crop circles as symbols of extraterrestrials and showed modifications of the 1990 pattern of the "Alton Barnes" type.
Those interested in crop circles can explore the phenomenon as part of a branch of research known as “cerealogy” or “crop circle science”. While some cerealists research the causes of crop circles in an interdisciplinary manner, but based on conventional methods, others associate them with the UFO phenomenon and resort to methods from the field of ufology .
to form
The shapes and arrangements of the so-called “historical circles” are not known in detail, as there are no images of them. In 1880 Nature described “[…] a field full of circles”. It is not known whether this circular field was arranged geometrically or irregularly.
Crop circles do not only occur in grain fields: They have been discovered in almost every type of vegetation. Since the 1990s in particular, crop circles have increased in number, size, shape and richness of detail. They usually have a diameter between 10 and 100 meters. Documented are polygonal , elliptical , intertwined , spiral and fractal form elements, some of which also combine with irregular formations. But there are also symbolic crop circles such as the Firefox logo.
Some of these images of the ground could point to astronomical, physical and mathematical facts, since the basic shapes of different sizes and distances arranged in them repeatedly represent both whole-number and irrational numerical relationships, such as the golden section .
In addition, crop circles were examined that have no geometrically regular shape at all, but rather have similarities with traditional shapes, such as cave paintings , Indian pictograms or mystical-magical symbols such as the kabbalistic tree of life .
Scientific attempts at explanations
Robert Plot proposed a first theory on the subject in the 17th century: He believed in falling air vortices as the cause of the early simple crop circles that had been described to him. Small, stable cyclones may have been responsible. The variety of explanations has grown with the abundance of crop circle shapes. Some of the theories put forward are intended to explain all the circles observed, others only part of them. Some have been considered by scientists as possible explanations, including:
Artificial creation
There is no observation of the natural formation of crop circles; the only form currently proven is that of human hands. One known manufacturing method is to create a circle with the help of a stick placed in the center and a rope by running circles with the taut rope in the hand and kicking stalks. A clear indication of this is given by the tractor tracks already present in the grain field, which run through the center of almost all crop circles and are used as access to the starting point without the grain being bent over in unwanted places. A single person walks in a circle starting from the center point and gradually releases the rope until the desired radius is reached. If several people are involved, this is faster, as is the case with the use of wooden rollers (tree trunks), which are rolled and can also produce other, non-concentric shapes.
For complex shapes, combinations of different methods are often used. The effort is relatively high and requires precise coordination and sophisticated techniques, which the helpers have to plan out beforehand using sketches. If the making of the crop circle is to be done secretly (e.g. at night), more helpers are needed, as only a limited number of hours are available and no half-finished circles should be created. Once the helpers have been trained, it is possible to create very complex shapes with the help of compass , pantographic or spirographic techniques. In many cases, after the work was uncovered, it became known that the locations of the districts had been precisely planned (motorway exits, easily visible valley depressions) in order to attract onlookers. Concepts made up of humans, such as a. the stereotypical morphology of extraterrestrials or religious symbols (e.g. yin and yang ) are deliberately chosen to indicate a supernatural connection and thus to achieve a higher degree of attention. Occasionally, commercially available semiprecious stones or shiny coal splinters were distributed on the crop circles to encourage the onlookers to search and linger. Some works were known to have been discussed with the owners of the fields. The agreed making of crop circles, the marketing as well as the claim that the circle is "real" is not punishable in Germany.
Many crop circles were demonstrably created by humans for different reasons. It can be assumed that this also applies to crop circles of unknown origin and that these cannot be traced back to supernatural causes either. By contrast, the cerealists have been trying for years to provide evidence of the existence of “real” crop circles, that is, those not created by humans. To this end, they point out that people could not produce certain complex shapes in tests under realistic conditions. However, there have already been major setbacks for researchers who argue in this way. For example, the cerealist Pat Delgado once described a circle as real, which had been made by people shortly before in front of the camera. This is not an isolated case: circle makers like to amuse themselves that circles they have made are certified that they come from a “higher intelligence”, and they agree.
In 1991, for example, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two artists from Southampton , announced that in 1978 in a pub in Winchester, Hampshire, they came up with the idea of making patterns in cornfields for fun. They only used boards, ropes, specially made caps with visors made of wire: with a 1.2 meter long board on a rope, they created circles with the board as a radius. It took a quarter of an hour to make a circle ten times the radius.
Frustrated by the fact that their work was not noticed by the public, in 1981 they chose a field at Winchester that offered good all-round visibility from the streets. At first, Doug n Dave made only simple circles, but when the newspapers claimed that the circles could simply be created by a natural phenomenon, they turned to more complex patterns. It was only when Bower's wife suspected of infidelity for his high gas mileage that he confessed to his nocturnal activity, and shortly afterwards he and Chorley went public. For their artistic activities, both received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 “for their circular contributions to the field theory of the geometric destruction of English cornfields”.
Natural origin
"Plasma Vortex Clouds"
The physicist and landscape architect Terence Meaden represented a popular and widely discussed theory. According to his "plasma vortex theory", ionized gases formed a special type of cloud that would develop into rotating spheres that, when descending, cause crop circles in rare cases.
Rutting rings
Rutting ring is the hunter's name for circularly trampled spots in cornfields or meadows, as they arise during the rut when the roebuck drives the doe around. Many hunters also refer to them as "witch rings".
Intoxicated kangaroos
In Australia, wallabies have been seen stepping round crop circles in opium fields . After eating the opium poppy , they become intoxicated and start walking in circles in the fields until they fall over.
Scientifically rejected explanations
The following statements have been postulated but rejected by the scientific community as either implausible or unprovable:
- "Messages", e.g. B. "Warnings" from supernatural or unknown powers (be it from the earth itself, from gods or an extraterrestrial intelligence) - this is mostly rejected by scientists, as there are no credible indications for the existence of such life forms
- Expression of a postulated collective intelligence of plants, which is supposed to be composed of a mass of individually primitive entities similar to a bee state
- Magnetic anomalies, since supposedly ionized liquids in the grain can be influenced by magnetic forces
- Transmission of morphogenetic fields , the existence of which has not been scientifically proven
See also
literature
- Werner Anderhub, Andreas Müller : The phenomenon of crop circles . Research between folk tradition, border and natural science. AT Verlag, Baden AG / Munich 2005, ISBN 3-03800-251-8 .
- Florian Brunner, Harald Hoos: Crop circles - puzzles in a mystical landscape . Approaching a phenomenon. Beust, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-89530-096-9 .
- Florian Brunner, Harald Hoos: Crop circles - The biggest prank since Max and Moritz . Geistkirch, Saarbrücken 2006, ISBN 978-3-938889-42-8 .
- Sabine Doering-Manteuffel : The Occult: A Success Story in the Shadow of the Enlightenment - From Gutenberg to the World Wide Web . Siedler, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-888-5 .
- Eltjo Haselhoff: Fascinating crop circles . Scientific research and urban legend building. Beust, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-931652-04-1 .
- Michael Hesemann: Crop circles . The story of a phenomenon. With a foreword by Johannes von Buttlar . 2nd Edition. Die Silberschnur, Neuwied 1996, ISBN 3-931652-04-1 (1st edition 1993).
- Michael Hesemann: The crop circle chronicles . The story of a phenomenon continues. 1st edition. The silver cord, Güllesheim 2002, ISBN 3-89845-012-0 .
- Jürgen Krönig (Ed.): Traces in the grain . New photos and facts about the phenomenon of soil patterns in grain fields. Two thousand and one , Frankfurt am Main 1992.
- Jürgen Krönig (Ed.): And crop circles again . The search for facts and encounters of the dark kind. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-86150-023-X .
- Andreas Müller: Crop circles . Geometry, phenomena, research, with a contribution by Jan Schwochow. AT, Aarau 2001, ISBN 3-85502-760-9 .
- Werner J. Neuner: The crop circles: the secret deciphered . Lebensrau, Bramberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-903034-00-6 .
- Werner Schäfer: The crop circles - a mystery of our time . Attempt at an anthroposophical decoding. 1st edition. Novalis, Schaffhausen 2003, ISBN 3-907260-19-8 .
- Milo Sediq, Christoph Koschnitzke: Crop circles . Theories about a Phenomenon - A Modern Myth? Bimax, Schrobenhausen 2003, ISBN 3-932540-34-4 .
Web links
- Article from the magazine of the “Society for Anomalistics e. V. " (PDF; 367 kB) Retrieved September 15, 2009 .
- International Crop Circle Archive. Retrieved August 4, 2010 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Mowing Devil . In: WB Gerish, Hertfordshire Folk Lore '1913/1970, p. 5.
- ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Irish fairy tales. Leipzig 1826. Chapter 9.
- ↑ J. Rand Capron: Storm Effects (Brief), Nature , Volume 22, No. 561, July 29, 1880, pp. 290-291.
- ↑ Henssen, Gottfried In: Sagen, Märchen und Schwänke des Jülich Land 1955, p. 55.
- ↑ See: Sabine Doering-Manteuffel: The Occult: A Success Story in the Shadow of the Enlightenment , Munich, Siedler, 2008, p. 229 ff.
- ↑ Mario Enke: The Pictogram: On the trail of the riddle of the fishing crop circles . 1st edition. Books on Demand, Lindaunis 2000, ISBN 3-89811-939-4 , pp. 29-85 .
- ↑ firefoxcropcircle.com
- ↑ In: Plott, Robert, A Natural History of Staffordshire. Oxford 1686
- ↑ Circlemaker make formation for News of the World , Youtube, Retrieved on September 1, 2014
- ↑ Circlemakers timelapse crop circle , Youtube, accessed September 1, 2014
- ↑ The phenomenon of crop circles A question of the ear - Spiegel Online - "One day"; September 4, 2012, accessed September 4, 2012.
- ↑ art and artifice. circlemakers.org, accessed May 15, 2012 .
- ↑ George Terence Meaden: The circles in the grain and the plasma vortex , in: Ralph Noyes (Ed.), The circles in the grain, 2nd edition Munich 1991, pp. 100-123.
- ↑ Meyer's Encyclopedic Lexicon, Vol. 11 (1978)
- ↑ 'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'. BBC News , June 25, 2009, accessed October 14, 2014 .