Who Flattened the Wheat? Two Men With a Plank, Mostly

Simple circles of flattened crop began being reported in southern England in the late 1970s, concentrated in Wiltshire and Hampshire, and grew steadily more elaborate through the 1980s, developing into rings, multiple circles and eventually into extremely complex geometric designs covering large areas. The escalation in complexity tracked the attention the phenomenon received, which is the pattern any hoax produces and which was noted at the time. Explanations offered included unusual whirlwinds, plasma vortices, ley lines, earth energies and visiting craft, and a substantial subculture of investigation and publication developed around them, along with organised tourism.

Several observations were presented as ruling out human construction:

• •Stems bent rather than broken at the base
• •Nodes in the stems expanded or blown out
• •No footprints or tracks entering the formation
• •Formations appearing overnight in a few hours
• •Reported electronic and compass anomalies within them
• •Geometric precision said to be impossible to achieve by hand at night

Doug Bower and Dave Chorley announced in September 1991 that they had made the formations since 1978, having begun as a joke after a conversation about reports from Australia, and demonstrated their method to journalists, using a plank on a rope, a length of wire and a simple sighting device. They accounted for a large number of the early formations. The demonstration did not end the phenomenon, since other people continued making them, several groups did so publicly as art, and a proportion of investigators rejected the confession and argued that the pair could not have made all of them, which is true and which was never claimed. Formations continue to appear annually.

The technique is simple enough to describe completely and has been demonstrated publicly many times. A centre is fixed with a stake, and a rope of measured length is used as a radius to walk out the circumference, exactly as any circle is set out. The crop is flattened with a plank on a rope, a garden roller or a length of pipe, held against the stems near the base and walked over so the stems bend rather than break, working outwards in bands. Straight lines are set out by sighting between markers. Complex designs are drawn to scale beforehand and transferred by measurement. Entering along a tractor track leaves no trace. Two or three people working through a short summer night can complete a large elaborate design.

The episode is used in teaching about evidence because of how the arguments were structured. Claims about bent nodes and precision rested on comparison with an assumed baseline that nobody had established, since no systematic study of ordinary flattened crop had been done. Absence of footprints was reported by people arriving after many others had walked the field. The argument that a pattern was too complex to make by hand was refuted by making one, which is the strongest form of refutation available and which was done repeatedly, including under controlled conditions for television. And the shift from simple to complex tracked publicity, which is evidence about the cause that no physical measurement was needed to obtain.

Simple flattened circles appeared in southern England from the late 1970s and grew more elaborate as attention grew, which is what a hoax produces. Bent nodes, absent footprints and geometric precision were presented as ruling out human work, each resting on a baseline nobody had established. Two men demonstrated their method in 1991 and formations continued regardless, which makes the episode a standard teaching case about evidence.