From: John Rimmer <j.rimmer.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:21:32 +0100
Archived: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:05:28 -0400
Subject: Re: Crop Circles Discussion


>From: Sergey Shpakovsky <sergejsh.nul>
>To: ufoupdates.nul
>Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:00:25 -0400 (EDT)
>Subject: Re: Crop Circles Discussion

>>From: John Rimmer <j.rimmer.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:19:12 +0100
>>Subject: Re: Crop Circles Discussion

><snip>

>>There is no, repeat no, historical evidence for crop circles,
>>as they are presently understood, before the 1980s.

><snip>

>I would not agree with that. I found cases of pre-1980's crop
>circles, some of which even show connections with UFO phenomena.

>Source: BLT Research Team, LTD.

>Historical Indications That Crop Circles Are Not "New

>http://www.bltresearch.com/otherfacts.html

No-one doubts that there are many examples of circular crop
damage in fields from a variety of meteorological causes. The
reports cited in the wepage above are interesting, but there are
serious problems in interpreting some of the older reports,
which are not neccessarily objective descriptions of physical
phenomena. One of the most-quoted early corn-circles accounts -
the so-called 'Mowing Devil' - is almost certainly an allegory
rather than a description.

One of the earliest examples I am aware of which explicitly
links crop damage to UFOs appears in the May/June 1968 issue of
Flying Saucer review, which was then Britain's leading UFO
journal. The "Whippingham Ground Effects" was a series of
markings found in barley fields on the Isle of Wight, off the
south coast of England. The UFO-propulsion theoretician Leonard
Cramp investigated them and linked the with previous UFO
activity in the area. He found rows of small, irregular circles
running parallel to the field boundary hedges.

Looking at the report in retrospect, and subjectively, I think
there is little doubt that the 'ground effects' were caused by
some meteorological phenomenon, but Cramp theough differently,
quoting local farmers who could not accept the idea of a
weather-based cause, as the damage was too localised. Cramp also
made a great deal of a dead pigeon which was found in one on the
areas of damage, and of the UFO reports in other parts of the
Island at about the same time. At this remove it is probably
impossible to determine exactly what casused these markings.

However the significance of this report is that it demonstrates
that there was a great deal of interest in ground markings and
so-called 'landing traces'. This is also demonstrated by the
case of the 'Charlton Crater' in the eponymous village in
Wiltshire. This was a crater about 1 foot deep, 8 feet in
diameter, with a hole in the centre about 3 feet deep which was
found on the boundary between a potato field and a barley field.
It created an enormous amount of attention, leading to military
investigations and questions in Parliament. Other craters and
ground markings were investigated at Tyneham in Wiltshire and in
Berkshire.

But despite all this careful scrutiny of anomalous ground
markings and crop damage there was nothing resembling what we
now understand as a 'crop circle', and as I noted in my previous
posting, nothing like a crop circle has emerged from the massive
amount of data that surrounds the Warminster phenomena.

So I see no challenge to my suggestion that, although there are
a small number of reports from earlier times suggesting some
form(s) of anomalous ground markings, the crop circle phenomena
itself is a product of the 1980s, and the most likely
explanation for it is human ingenuity. As, despite the self-
hatred towards our own species often expressed on this
List, we are actually quite a clever little animal!



John Rimmer
<j.rimmer.nul>



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