These grow and are harvested in an overlapping progression: canola from April through May, barley throughout May and June, and wheat from June until early September. In southern England, which sees most activity, circle-makers tend to concentrate on canola, barley and wheat. Since then, crop circles have been reported worldwide in a multitude of crops. It was such legends that Bower had in mind when, over a drink one evening in 1976, he suggested to his pal Chorley: “Let’s go over there and make it look like a flying saucer has landed.” It was time, thought Doug, to see a saucer nest for himself. At around the same time in England, the Wiltshire town of Warminster became a center of UFO-seeking “sky watches” and gave birth to its own rumors of crop circles, or “saucer nests.” None of these, unfortunately, was photographed. In Australia, the mid- to late-1960s saw occasional reports of circles in crops, and they were often ascribed to UFO landings. Before today’s circle-makers entered the picture, there had been scattered reports of odd patterns appearing in crops, ranging from 17th century pamphlets to an 1880 account in Nature to a letter from astronomer Patrick Moore printed in 1963 in New Scientist. To appreciate how these exotic responses arose, we need to delve a little into history. Today, one of the more vigorously promoted ideas is that they are messages, buried in complex numerological codes, concerning a Great Change connected to the pre-Columbian Mayan calendar and due to occur in 2012. The patterns stamped in fields were treated as a lens through which the initiated could witness the activity of earth energies and ancient spirits, the anguish of Mother Earth in the face of impending ecological doom, and evidence of secret weapons testing and, of course, aliens. An efflorescence of mystical and magical thinking, scientific and pseudo-scientific research, conspiracy theories and general pandemonium broke out. When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a “flying saucer nest” in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.Īlmost as soon as crop circles became public knowledge, they attracted a gaggle of self-appointed experts.
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