The Crop Circles Myth
In 1976, people in Wiltshire, England, were baffled by a wheat field whose crops were mysteriously flattened in a circle. Soon, mysterious circles of flattened crops, in increasingly elaborate patterns, began to appear in other fields throughout Britain. Once the phenomenon became widely known, it attracted self-declared experts, who offered mystical, magical, and pseudo-scientific explanations for the mystery. Theories ranged from secret weapon tests, to restless spirits and ghost, to Gaia, the primal Mother Earth, distressed at what humans had done to her planet.
Early on, one explanation that gained great currency was that the circles were created by space aliens. Presumably, extraterrestrials were trying to communicate with mankind in code. Needless to say, all the pseudo-scientific and mystical explanations were pure bunk and a myth. The argument that aliens were behind the circles was buttressed by the fact that a decade earlier, mysterious circles had appeared in Australian crops. Many had attributed the Australian circles to UFO landings, and labeled them “[flying] saucer nests”.
