Tasmanian archeologist, Grege Jefferys has used a combination of historical records and modern technology to locate crop circles circa 1945.
From a Story in the Huffigton Post
Crop Circles Are No Hoax, Concludes Historian After Studying Google Earth’s New 1945 Overlay (PICTURES)
Sara C Nelson [email protected]
Posted: 29/01/2013 11:59 GMT | Updated: 29/01/2013 13:55 GMTCrop circles dating back to 1945 are proof the phenomenon is no modern hoax, a Tasmanian historian claims.
The mystery of the increasingly intricate patterns was supposedly solved after several high-profile cases were revealed to be the work of artists and mischief-makers armed with barrels, planks of wood and plenty of spare time.
Credit for the hoaxes has been laid largely at the feet of pranksters Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, who in 1991 announced they had been pulling the wool over people’s eyes since 1978.
A crop circle in Halesowen. Greg Jefferys estimates this one to be about ten meters in diameter. He points out the shadow on its south east perimeter corresponds precisely with the shadows cast by the trees and hedges and that the quality of the image is high enough to show there are no tracks through the grain crop leading to or from the crop circle.
But research by Greg Jefferys has revealed evidence of the strange circles in the English countryside at least 33 years before Chorley and Bower took credit for the phenomena – which until then had been attributed to UFOs and alien activity.Jefferys, who has a degree in archaeology, was prompted to research the matter after reading a report on crop circles in an 1880 edition of the science journal Nature.
“Using aerial photographs primarily from the Google Earth 1945 overlay, that the number of crop circles appearing each summer has been relatively constant for at least the last 70 years and that these crop circles cannot be explained by the ‘hoax theory’. This removal of the validity of the hoaxer’s claims means that crop circles remain an unexplained natural phenomenon deserving of serious investigation by academic institutions and other research organisations.”
The 59-year-old’s research focuses on images from Google Earth’s new 1945 overlay, which Jefferys studied for more than 300 hours.
The overlay is a series of photos taken towards the end of World War II by the RAAF and comprises around 35% of the 1945 overlay of England presently available online.
I will happily grant Mr. Jefferys that the image above predates the circles admittedly created by Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, and others who have admitted following in their footsteps. However there is a significant difference between the simple ten meter circle above and something like, say…
This, from Alton Barnes, England, 2004
Or any of the far more elaborate designs that have been recorded, primarily in the south of England. When you look at the worldwide distribution of crop circles as found at Crop Circles and More, you will find a strange pattern. Now I am not claiming that there are not circles found elsewhere, there certainly are, but it is curious that few of those places have generated a tourism industry around their occurrence. The one place that has developed a tourism industry around it’s crop circles is also the place where the wide majority of reported circles occurs.
As far as Mr. Jeffreys’ discovery. It is interesting though not exactly revelatory. Crop circles date back hundreds of years, or more.
Crop circles are not a modern phenomenon and may have been occurring for hundreds to thousands of years or longer. They exist in the centuries-old folklore of South Africa and China, and are in Native American Indian legends. The first written account of a crop circle is from August 8, 1590 and is found in “The Natural History of Stafford-Shire”, published in 1686. There are also other references from England’s 15th century that suggest crop circle formations. In John Aubrey’s “Natural History”, a 1633 school teacher seen green circles made by the spirits in the grass. Another early historical record of a crop circle from 1678, is the “Mowing Devil” case, where a farmer’s field was believed to have been visited by a devilish entity that trampled the crops down in a circle. There is a wood engraving of this event. In 1686, a book entitled “A Natural History of Staffordshire”, made reference to rings, circles and other shapes found in grassy fields.
In those times they were attributed to other supernatural phenomena, such as the Devil, fairies, or name your local trickster or evil spirit. Whether the circles discovered by Jeffreys are the work of pranksters or no, it is still a long jump to the conclusion that an alien species can find no better way to communicate with us than relatively minor acts of vandalism in rural England.
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