I figure what with the popularity of "Signs" that it might be a nice time to bump this thread, and open discussion to all sorts of crop circle phenomena.
My personal hunch is that there have been "genuine" crop circles throughout history, and that they're likely to be simple, rough circles (if you've ever seen chigger infestations in a lawn, you know that almost overnight, you can get a small, near-perfect circle of dead grass - similar, larger circle formations take place when sink holes open up, too). And the elaborate "signs" in corn fields are more-than-likely made by crop artists, some of whom I think are really talented visionaries.
Most of the artists seem to be based in Britain. But the rare, simple circles - they appear in all sorts of places.
Like these:
UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 7, Number 33
August 13, 2002
Editor: Joseph Trainor
CHINESE RESEARCHER STUDIES ANCIENT CROP CIRCLES
"One of the first documented reports of crop circle formation--the unexplained geometric designs that occur in fields of wheat and corn--appeared in Stirlingshire, Scotland (UK) in 1678. But the phenomenon was largely ignored until the 1970s and 1980s when formations began to appear with increasing frequency around the globe."
"Yet is China really devoid of these unusual creations? Certainly if someone or something is trying to communicate with mankind through patterns carved into crops, China's sizable population could not be ignored." "Western experts have obviously failed to carefully consider the data from this country (China). One has only to refer to the work of Zhang Hui, a research Fellow at the Xinjiang Museum in Urumqui, to find evidence which suggests that China--with its long history--experienced crop circle phenomena long before any other civilization on this planet."
"Zhang claims to have discovered more than twenty stone patterns appearing to mimic crop circle formations from other countries but pre-dating them by 3,000 years."
Zhang discovered "several of these stone circle patterns, which range from single circles to more elaborate shapes, in the grasslands of Qinghe beside" China's border with Mongolia.
"Zhang was intrigued. He quickly headed to Beijing," China's capital, "to consult Chinese translations of reference works by British crop circle experts."
"He was amazed by the similarities."
"Zhang believes the primitive people of the (Qinghe) region, after witnessing the actual formation of crop circles, concluded that the signs were a form of communication from the gods and responded in kind to the divine messages by placing rocks in the shape of the circles."
"According to Zhang, one rare eyewitness described seeing a crop circle appear in a northeastern China field in only a short time while he was in the company of Red Guards. However, the event occurred during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976), when such superstition was illegal, so the account went undocumented."
(See the Shanghai Star for August 2, 2002, "China says crop circles appeared there 3,000 years ago." Many thanks to Chen Jilin for this newspaper article.) |
