In modern media, information about crop circles and UFO sightings is quite common. Therefore, many are accustomed to view reports of this as a "newspaper duck".
Everyone knows about the existence of circles, so why worry if someone is walking around the field with a lawn mower to get attention or make a joke.
When Queen Elizabeth put the book on crop circles on her summer reading list in 1989, interest in the topic increased and there was also more talk about pranks.
But crop circles are not a modern fad At various times, even before the appearance of the term "crop circles", there were reports of this phenomenon. This does not mean that earlier these circles did not explain the same as today - a joke. This means that people have thought about their origins for centuries.
Some explanations from history refer to natural phenomena, but there are also assumptions about supernatural causes.
Devil's Mower
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A 1678 news pamphlet, The Devil's Mower or a Strange Phenomenon in Hertfordshire, describes the appearance of a circle in a field in Hertfordshire, England. The post was republished in 1913 by the Hartforshire folklorist Gerish. The article said:
“A farmer bargained with a poor mower to mow three and a half acres of his oats. When the mower asked for too many oats, the farmer began to swear and said that the devil would rather mow the field than him. And so it happened, on that very night, the field with the harvest looked like on fire; but in the morning they saw that the oats were not burned, but carefully cut, as if the devil or some hellish spirit were mowing it down. No mortal could do such a thing."
It seemed to the farmer that on that night, when the oats were mowed in an unusual way, he saw a bright, like fire, light in his field. The message goes on to say that the farmer was very scared and did not pick up the mown oats.
Crop circles caused by a storm?
On July 29, 1880, Nature magazine published an article by John Rand Capron entitled "Storm Effects." It described crop circles in detail.
One of the descriptions read: "They all had a similar character, such as … several stems standing in the center, several fallen stems that spread out exactly in the direction of the formed circle around the center, and outside this round wall the stems did not suffer at all."
He wonders if this was caused by a "cyclical wind" and notes that "storms in this part of Surrey have been localized and very severe lately."
Increased fertility in crop circles
In 1686, Robert Plot, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford, mentioned geometric shapes in the margins in his book The Natural History of Staffordshire.
He noted: "the quality of the soil beneath them has improved significantly, filled with fertile sulfuric substance … the effect was felt from the very first harvest, although the quality of soil fertilization appeared a little later."
Increased soil fertility is found in some crop circles today.
A sketch by Robert Plot from Staffordshire Science of Natural History illustrates Plot's hypothesis about how the field drawings were created by forces emerging from the sky during a thunderstorm.
The raft suggests that these circles were created by lightning or some kind of force during a thunderstorm. Gary Bobroff, in his book Crop Circles, Jung and the Rebirth of Archetypal Femininity, writes: “Today, circles continue to find themselves in the morning after severe storms - the circle formed on Milk Hill in 2001 consisted of 409 separate circles and occupied more than three hundred meters diagonally - perhaps the most beautiful example."
Some have suggested that Raft was not describing crop circles, but marks that appear due to differences in soil conditions. This is often due to a relic structure such as an underground ditch or buried wall.
The difference affects how much water will accumulate in the ground, and results in different plant growth abilities. This sometimes creates well-defined border patterns.
Henry VIII's courtiers are celebrating the appearance of circles on the field with a dance?
John Leyland, chronicler of the court of King Henry VIII, wrote about the traditional English dance maypole (the British dance around a flower-decorated pole on May 1): "We go out early in the morning and study the patterns that appear on the grass overnight."
Fairy work
Walter Evans-Wentz published a collection of Celtic folklore in 1911 called Faerie Beliefs in Celtic Countries. Bobroff noted that many of the descriptions he has collected of rings on grass refer to mushrooms that grow in a circle and have long been known as "fairy circles."
But in some cases he seems to be talking about crop circles, since he clearly describes the pinching of the stems. For example, Evans-Wentz writes: "Sometimes fairies helped people to work, coming in at night to finish spinning or … to cut grain or clean threshed grain."