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WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT WE ARE TOLD

The modern history of crop circles truly begins in the 1980s, when simple circles start appearing regularly in the fields of Hampshire and Wiltshire, England.

Two engineers, Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, begin investigating these strange traces. Colin Andrews would go on to popularise the term “crop circles”, which eventually became the established name for the phenomenon.

As the years pass, the formations change. They become more numerous, larger and, above all, more complex.

By 1989, the subject appears to have attracted enough attention to reach the British government. Margaret Thatcher asks for the matter to be looked into. At the time, no one yet really knows what is happening in the English countryside, but one thing is becoming clear: crop circles are no longer merely a local curiosity.

1990: EAST FIELD

In 1990, Polly Carson, whose husband farms East Field at Alton Barnes in Wiltshire, notices that crop circles are appearing regularly in the surrounding area, but never in their field.

That is about to change.

On the morning of 12 July 1990, an enormous formation is discovered at East Field.

It is spectacular.

Its size, design and visibility immediately make it one of the most remarkable crop circles of the period. The site quickly becomes a destination for curious visitors and researchers alike.

The formation even gains a level of fame far beyond the small world of crop circles when it is used on the cover of a Led Zeppelin album.

Meteorologist and researcher Terence Meaden devotes several lines to it in his 1991 book Circles from the Sky. He notably describes the considerable influx of visitors to East Field and farmer Tim Carson’s decision to allow access to the field in exchange for a one-pound fee.

But only two weeks after the appearance of this formation, a much stranger event is about to take place.

On 25 July 1990, Operation Blackbird begins.

And at this point, a question arises.

Had the operation already been planned before the East Field crop circle appeared? Was it connected to the government discussions of the previous year? Or did the arrival of this particularly spectacular formation accelerate events?

At this stage, it is important to distinguish clearly between what we know and what we merely assume.

OPERATION BLACKBIRD

Operation Blackbird was intended to make it possible to observe the possible appearance of crop circles through organised surveillance on the ground. But events did not unfold as expected. A formation was discovered and, for a time, presented as potentially highly significant, before objects left at the site led to the conclusion that it had been made by humans. The episode would have an important consequence: the idea of the hoax began to take on considerable importance in the public perception of the phenomenon.

From that point on, another question became unavoidable.

If these are hoaxes, who is making them?

Blackbird at Bratton Castle

DOUG AND DAVE

One year later, two British men in their sixties, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, claim to have been responsible for a very large number of crop circles that had appeared in southern England.

The press immediately seizes on the story. The two men become famous and are presented as the people who had managed to fool researchers, journalists and the public for years.

The explanation is appealing because it is simple: two men, a few rudimentary tools, and the mystery is solved.

At least… apparently.

Because although Doug and Dave undoubtedly made crop circles, their media appearance does not settle every question. Nor does it allow all the formations observed during the previous years to be automatically attributed to them. And above all, it certainly does not bring the phenomenon to an end.

The crop circles continue.

1996: THE JULIA SETS

In 1996, two formations suddenly bring the subject back into the spotlight: the famous Julia Sets at Stonehenge and Windmill Hill. This time, we are a very long way from a simple circle in a field.

The designs are enormous, highly structured and made up of dozens, even hundreds, of individual elements. During the final years of the twentieth century, the formations reach a level of complexity never seen before.

Interest returns. It even extends far beyond the circle of enthusiasts. The British Royal Family takes an interest in the subject and, in 1999, Laurence Rockefeller provides financial support to Colin Andrews so that he can continue his research.

Then comes the year 2000. And a statement that will deeply divide the crop-circle community. Colin Andrews concludes that around 80% of crop circles are of human origin, while a smaller proportion remain unexplained.

This position causes a split with some researchers. But above all, it raises a very practical problem.

Saying that a formation is human is one thing. Showing who made it, how it was made and under what conditions is quite another.

And when the formations become enormous, geometrically complex and sometimes composed of hundreds of individual elements, that question takes on an entirely different dimension.

THE CIRCLEMAKERS

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new generation of self-declared crop-circle makers begins to move into the spotlight. It is no longer just about Doug and Dave. Now, circlemakers openly acknowledge creating formations, sometimes highly complex ones, and some of them even begin to become known for it.

It is in this context that Matthew Williams appears.

At the end of the summer of 2000, Michael Glickman publicly discusses the difficulty of creating, in a field, a formation built around a geometry based on the number 7. Matthew Williams decides to take up the challenge. He creates a seven-armed formation, later claims responsibility for making it, and is subsequently prosecuted and convicted for the damage caused to the crop.

His name then becomes one of the best known among self-declared crop-circle makers. And this is where the story becomes interesting.

At the same time, Matthew Williams is involved in a film project entitled A Place to Stay, in which he is expected, among other things, to demonstrate his ability to reproduce a complex formation in a field. After Doug and Dave, the public now has new faces capable of very concretely embodying the human explanation for the phenomenon.

Was this simply the natural development of his growing media profile? Perhaps. But after the claim that a large majority of crop circles were of human origin, showing the public people capable of making complex formations was rather convenient timing.

This, of course, proves nothing in itself. But the chronology is worth examining.

And above all, something is about to seriously complicate the story.

11 AUGUST 2001: GALAXY

While filming for A Place to Stay is under way in the area, a gigantic formation appears at Milk Hill. It will become known as Galaxy.

And with it, the scale changes once again. Hundreds of circles. An immense structure. A geometry clearly visible from the air. Galaxy immediately becomes one of the landmarks in the history of crop circles.

From that point on, it is no longer enough to say: “humans know how to make crop circles”. Of course they do. We know that.

The real question is far more precise: who made this one?

With how many people? In how much time? From what plan? Using what measurements? And above all: can it be demonstrated?

This is precisely where the problem lies that will accompany the entire history of crop circles from then on. There is a considerable difference between showing that a human being can make a crop circle and demonstrating who made a specific formation.

THE 2000s

Human-made formations then become increasingly visible. Groups such as Team Satan or The Circlemakers, associated in particular with John Lundberg, openly claim responsibility for creating formations. Some are made for artistic projects, documentaries, companies or advertising campaigns.

This proves something that is perfectly ordinary today: yes, humans know how to make crop circles, including complex formations.

But that observation still does not automatically tell us the origin of every formation. Yet this is precisely the assumption that gradually takes hold. Because some are fake, then all of them could be. And because they could all be human-made, it becomes tempting to assume that they necessarily are.

That reasoning is far more fragile than it appears. A possibility is not an attribution. A general demonstration is not proof of a specific case. And the presence of hoaxers within a phenomenon is not enough to explain every event that forms part of it.

This is precisely why Culture-Crop does not treat every formation in the same way. We are not trying to defend “crop circles” as one indivisible whole. On the contrary, we are trying to isolate the formations that still resist analysis.

For Culture-Crop, the last formation clearly belonging to this corpus dates back to Rutlands Farm in 2009, in a field of oilseed rape. After that period, the number of formations reported in England gradually declined. In 2023, only around twenty were recorded.

So has the phenomenon disappeared? Perhaps. Or perhaps the question needs to be asked differently.

Because if an intelligence really was behind some of these formations, there is no reason to assume that it had to keep filling English fields with designs forever.

A language can have a beginning. A development. And perhaps an end.

That leaves a far more interesting question: have we understood what we were being shown?

But to understand what was being shown, we need to stop looking at crop circles as a succession of attractive, independent shapes. And start looking at what they tell us when considered together.