Strangest Mysteries of the World and Beyond !

Mystery of Crop Circles

CROP CIRCLES-

Crop Circles are geometric patterns that appear mysteriously in crop fields. The crop is not cut, but is usually laid flat and most often swirled into an attractive floor pattern.

Most patterns appear in cereal crops such as wheat and barley, but circles have been known to occur (in lesser numbers) in oilseed rape, maize, linseed, grass and even borage - to name a few. In the US; many circles appear in soya, as it grown prevalently in that part of the world.

Early claims of crop circles

Many people believe that crop circles have been reported for centuries, a claim repeated in many books and websites devoted to the mystery. Their primary piece of evidence is a woodcut from 1678 that appears to show a field of oat stalks laid out in a circle. Some take this to be a first-hand eyewitness account of a crop circle, but a little historical investigation shows otherwise.

The woodcut was actually used to illustrate what in folklore is called a "mowing devil" legend, in which an English farmer told a worker with whom he was feuding that he "would rather pay the Devil himself" to cut his oat field than pay the fee demanded. The source of the harvesting is not unknown or mysterious — it is indeed Satan himself, who can be seen in the woodcut holding a scythe.

According to the original text of the legend, the devil "cut them in round circles, and plac't every straw with that exactness that it would have taken up above an Age for any Man to perform what he did that one night." This story cannot be related to crop circles because it states explicitly that the crop was cut (i.e., harvested) rather than laid down, as occurs in crop circles.

Some claim that the first crop circles (though they were not called that at the time) appeared near the small town of Tully, Australia. In 1966 a farmer said he saw a flying saucer rise up from a swampy area and fly away; when he went to investigate he saw a roughly circular area of debris and apparently flattened reeds and grass, which he assumed had been made by the alien spacecraft (but which police investigators said was likely caused by a natural phenomena such as a dust devil or waterspout). Referred in the press as "flying saucer nests," this story is more a UFO report than a crop circle report.

As in the 1678 mowing devil legend, the case for it being linked to crop circles is especially weak when we consider that the impression or formation was not made in a crop of any kind but instead in ordinary grass. A round impression in a lawn or grassy area is not necessarily mysterious. Indeed, mysterious circles have appeared in grass throughout the world that are sometimes attributed to fairies but instead caused by disease.

In fact the first real crop circles didn't appear until the 1970s, when simple circles began appearing in the English countryside. The number and complexity of the circles increased dramatically, reaching a peak in the 1980s and 1990s when increasingly elaborate circles were produced, including those illustrating complex mathematical equations such as fractals.

Crop Circle Designs

Crop circles are not just circles -- they can come in many different shapes. The most basic (and the most common) crop circle is the single circle. Circles may also come in sets of two (doublets), three (triplets) or four (quadruplets). Circles also may be enclosed in a thin outer ring.

The stalks inside a crop circle are typically bent into what is known as a swirl pattern, and the circles may spin clockwise or counterclockwise. In patterns with several circles, one circle may spin clockwise and another counterclockwise. Even a single circle may contain two "layers" of stalks, each spinning in a different direction.

Crop circles can range in size from a few inches to a few hundred feet across. Most early crop circles were simple circular designs. But after 1990, the circles became more elaborate. More complex crop patterns, called pictograms, emerged. Crops can be made to look like just about anything -- smiling faces, flowers or even words. Crop circles are sometimes unique designs, but they can also be based on ancient motifs.