The phenomenon that took place in the summer of 2005 in Togliatti, in the so-called "triangle" - a field planted with buckwheat opposite the nineteenth block of the Avtozavodsky district, was unique for this city in all its characteristics.
A lot of researchers, both local and visiting, have visited the place where the circles appeared. The verdict of most of them leaned towards their anomalous origin. But was it that simple?
July 23, 2005, Togliatti, the field opposite the 19th quarter
From the notes of our expert Nikolai Gusev following the examination: “At noon on July 23, I arrived at the“scene of the incident”. A preliminary examination of the buckwheat dumps immediately suggested their man-made (anthropogenic) origin. What is this assumption based on? First, not a single whole plant could be found. In the main dumps, 85% of the plants are broken at a height of 5 cm, the rest - at the level of the plant stem emerging from the soil.
In places where the rays and small circles meet, there are misses in the installation, i.e. the plants are laid, as it were, in the extension of the beam at a distance of about 1 - 1.5 plant heights (and more), and then covered with a ring-shaped plant. The same "fly-fishing" is observed when the beam leaves in any direction.
With the general correct shape of the circles and rays, irregularities and misses during installation were noted. So, the edges of the rays "walk" - there is a slight uneven waviness of the border between the fallen plants and standing ones. In many places, semi-lying edges are noted, i.e. areas of plants near the main lines, in which the plants are broken at a height of 5-25 cm and are inclined away from the main direction.
The arrangement of plant stems inside the annular dumps can be considered annular with a rather serious stretch, because quite often one layer is located at an angle to the layer above it. The angle is usually 10-15 degrees, sometimes up to 90 degrees.
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In the centers of small circles, depressions in the ground from some sharp object were found, the size of the holes is 2-2.5 cm in diameter and the same depth. The use of "compasses" is obvious - a stake with a rope, with which the circles were marked.
In terms of sensory experience, people within and outside the circles felt the same and normal. Animals - two dogs - did not show any signs of anxiety during the entire observation period. The information provided by one of the residents of neighboring houses about the allegedly unimportant state of health cannot be reliably correlated with the fact of the appearance of circles.
Insects at the "scene" took place and behaved completely calmly, which is also uncharacteristic for "real" falls. In general, the analysis of such a "construction site" (such is the subjective feeling from the scene of the incident) suggests the rationality of the creation of this drawing, rather even its technological effectiveness. So, on radial cross-beams located on the beams, the plants are knocked down in mutually opposite directions, extending from the central line to the left in the left semi-beam and to the right in the right semi-beam. Everything was carefully calculated and executed with a minimum of physical costs."
Speculation, opinions, assumptions and versions
Over the next one and a half to two months, the most interesting social processes took place in the "circles".
As usual, in the very first days there were witnesses to the appearance of "alien ships", which on that moonlit night "roamed the expanses of the buckwheat field." Someone told about flashes of lightning over the Southern Highway. Someone linked their poor health with the fact of the appearance of "circles" on buckwheat. This place was attended by representatives of various sects, teachings and currents of popular thought. Some of them appealed to the sun, someone appealed to representatives of all kinds of "dark forces", someone considered circles to be a place of power and came "to gain cosmic energy." Someone, sorry for the details, was engaged in the conception of children. And so on and so forth. Our people reacted to this event in every way.
Plot with dead buckwheat plants
In the media, someone threw a version that it was not without reason that the drawing on the field appeared on the night of the culminating proximity of the Moon to the Earth. Supposedly it means something. True, this version could be taken seriously only by those who have never studied astronomy in their life, at least even at the level of the school curriculum.
And, accordingly, I did not imagine that such convergence of our planet and its satellite occurs periodically and does not come instantly for you in one night … However, for some reason astronomy was excluded from the school curriculum, so this level of ignorance is no longer surprising.
Another of the prevailing versions is as follows. Allegedly, the "rays" diverging in three directions pointed to the places where cataclysms were about to happen in the near future. And some began to prepare for these cataclysms. However, after eight years it became clear that those of our fellow citizens were more right who, even without special knowledge about the technology of making "circles", reacted with irony to such apocalyptic assumptions.
Alas, the primary sources do not confirm the presence of either "ships" or "lightning". And bad health is also not an argument. Imagine that you are a sociologist and you are studying the current state of health of the residents of an apartment building. Is it very likely that at least a few people at the time of your survey will feel some kind of discomfort? It is great, and, judging by medical statistics, it is close to 7-10 per 100 people.
24.07.2005, in the same place
We went round again. By the time of the secondary inspection (three days after the appearance of the "circles"), their middle part had been thoroughly trampled by residents.
However, in the part that the human foot did not have time to touch, the nature of the damage to the plants was the same, i.e. they were broken, not bent. It was not possible to find a single plant that would have characteristic signs of damage by factors of an abnormal nature. I must say that in real geoglyphs, plants continue to live until late autumn, and do not die.
In the press and in society, a stormy polemic flared up about the origin of this object.
Enthusiasts tried to prove their point of view and cited as an example that, they say, if people trampled on buckwheat, the earth under it would be trampled. However, experimental verification has shown that if you press on an array of plants with a force that gives the same footprint as in the dumps, then the lumps of earth under this mass remain not destroyed. In general, it was not possible to find a single argument that would testify in favor of the anomalous nature of the origin of the circles. We can only guess what was the tool - it could have been a sheet of plywood, a board, or a plastic barrel mounted on a lever …
By the way, folk art was not limited to the creation of the initial drawing. On the contrary! A few days later, enterprising townspeople remembered some words from the Russian lexicon and completed the initial picture. Here's what they did.
It is clear that the owners of the buckwheat field were not delighted with what they had done. About 30% of the buckwheat crop was trampled, including part of the crop died under the feet of curious citizens. So this social experiment draws on article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Intentional destruction or damage to property."
October 2005, Moscow
After the July event, we met with Alla Tarasovna Belokon, a well-known Russian researcher of anomalous phenomena, a radiophysicist by profession. Studying the mechanism of the origin of the mysterious "English circles", she suggested that the famous drawings of the Nazca plateau could be an analogue of modern geoglyphs (anomalous "crop circles"). Similar figures are found in the Andes for a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers, and were made in ancient historical times using technology that is still incomprehensible to us.
A few days later, active Togliatti residents added the circles (they brought out the word "Fuckers")
For example, these figures could be "painted" on rocky ground by a stream of specific energy directed from the air - perhaps from an aircraft of the type we now know of UFOs. The geometrical features of the Nazcan figures, the mathematical logic of the drawings, the numerous zigzag marks on the ground of this South American desert - all this confirms the stated hypothesis. Moreover, the analysis of "traces" allows one to reveal such characteristics of a hypothetical "instrument of production" as a flat controlled front of the energy flow, which is quite consistent with the known properties of the "anomalous rays" of UFOs.
As for the connection between UFOs and "English circles", it was noticed that a force zone is formed under the UFO, the energy of which leads to curling of grasses and even tops of trees, it is capable of lifting and throwing objects, sometimes very heavy. The effect of this energy on vegetation gives exactly the very characteristic deformations that were never found in Togliatti "buckwheat circles".
What is the bottom line? There were some positive moments in this story. Those who acted according to the principle “We will not wait for anomalies from nature, it is our task to create them,” without knowing it, aroused interest in the unknown, the unknown. Like a litmus paper, they showed people in our strange time, greedy for the search for a higher meaning, not indifferent to crop circles, which have firmly taken their place in the mass consciousness. Thanks to the circles, people learned about Togliatti far beyond the continent.
On hundreds of sites on the Internet, the name of our city flashed in relation to circles. So, from the point of view of PR, you can't imagine better. Let's not forget that Togliatti is a young city, distinguished by the peculiarities of its origin, historical development and, accordingly, the specificity of the emerging cultural traditions. Sometimes this specificity and violent energy manifest themselves in such rather exotic ways.
Tatiana Makarova