Others claim that the circles are created by an extra-terrestrial intelligence attempting to warn humanity about climate change, nuclear war and similar existential threats. Some invoke the theory of ley lines: mystical seams of spiritual energy that intersect at sacred sites like Avebury and Stonehenge.
Crop circle season usually begins at the end of May, with the first ripening of the barley, and ends by September when the harvesting of the crops cuts away the circle canvasses.Īs the number of crop circles has grown, so has the mythology surrounding them. Formations reported in 2021 have included a hexagonal pattern overlaid with spirals in Avebury, and a pattern of concentric "bubbles" in Tidworth Down. The phenomenon peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s, but continues today an average of 30 crop circles appear each year in the UK, around 80% of them in Wiltshire. A 2008 formation near the Iron Age hill fort of Barbury Castle required decoding by an astrophysicist, who concluded that it was a geometric representation of the first 10 digits of pi.
In 1996, a crop circle appeared opposite Stonehenge depicting a mathematical fractal called a Julia set a similar formation that emerged on Milk Hill in 2001 was one of the largest ever, stretching 900ft. The intricacy and size of the formations, coupled with the fact that they would appear overnight, seemingly out of nowhere, baffled locals and farmers alike.
Circles began to appear more frequently and became far more ornate: some resembled trippy fractals others rune-like hieroglyphs others stylised animals recalling those of the Nazca Lines in Peru. Reports of mysterious patterns appearing in wheat, barley and corn fields in the area began to circulate in the 1970s, but it was in the late '80s that the phenomenon exploded. They are particularly concentrated in the county of Wiltshire, where a treasure trove of ancient history includes the Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Avebury – both crop circle hotspots.Ĭarving artwork into the landscape is an age-old tradition in these parts chalk horses adorn eight hillsides in Wiltshire while the UK's oldest geoglyph, the stunning Bronze Age Uffington White Horse, sits just across the border in Oxfordshire. "Probably man-made, this one."Īlthough such formations have appeared worldwide, from California to the rice paddies of Indonesia, south-west England is the world capital of crop circles. "That's the logo of the Barge Inn down in Honeystreet," chuckled a fellow visitor, a potbellied man in a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt.
Was this the nexus for some kind of potent Earth energy? Or, terrifyingly, a target for extra-terrestrial weaponry? In this instance, something more mundane. From the ground, I could make out nothing but intersecting lines of trampled wheat – but photographed from above the pattern resembled a crosshair. It was August – the height of crop circle season – and I'd been directed here by frenzied online reports of a new formation, which had appeared, as they are wont to do, overnight apparently unseen by observers. Ears of wheat prickled my shins and the sun beat down on my neck as I trudged through the tractor lines of a golden field on Wiltshire's Hackpen Hill.
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