The crop circle phenomenon was first reported during modern times in 1973. But it was not until a decade later that it began to really manifest itself in a quantitative manner. To date there have been over 5000 reported and documented cases of formations throughout the world, with some 90% of them coming from England. It is also fair to say that many more go unreported each year, mostly because the public in general still have no idea of the phenomenon, or if they do, simply don't know whom to contact should they see one (India has just announced that there have been some 2000 formations there since 1986 but the info has only just now become public).

If you happen to believe the story that all these crop circles were done by two elderly men with rollers, string and a weegie board, you are not in the minority. Once in a while, governments like to control public interest in an unexplained phenomenon by generating a disinformation method called 'debunking', a technique invented during the Cold War. The sad thing is that this method works because there are simply too many misguided and trusting members of the public who still believe their governments have their best interests at stake. So let's put this story to rest.

First of all, Doug and Dave were paid a handsome, five figure sum by the British government- in collusion with the CIA, among others- to admit they made all the formations. There is plenty of evidence to prove this. But what the public was never showed was the pathetic mess they made, compared to the geometric fluidity of the genuine phenomenon. The pictures on the right show four man-made formations- now compare these to the genuine crop formations throughout this site and its links.

Since Doug and Dave's unveiling in 1990, many copycat hoaxers have appeared on the scene; some do it to disprove or derail researchers, some for profit, some because they are sociopaths, some because they genuinely believe they can communicate back to the phenomenon (with very positive results, I may add). Given that scenario it's true to say that, overall, some 30% of formations are now man-made or hoaxed.

Which leaves us some 70%. The problem with hoaxing is that it requires a physical object to flatten the crop to the ground, resulting in the breaking of the plant stems. In genuine formations, the stems are not broken but bent (left), normally about an inch off the ground. THIS HAS YET TO BE MADE BY HUMANS, and is the singlemost method of identifying the real phenomenon.

Other features that cannot be replicated in hoaxed formations are the expanded stem walls and node bends in fresh formations (right). If you were to bend a plant it would just breakbetween the nodal points.

Yet another feature that is only common to genuine formations is the disrupted cell structure of the plant or DNA. As these microscope photos demonstrate (left), the top picture shows the normal plant with its chromozones as they should be. On the bottom, however, the chromozones have been drastically altered. No hoaxed crop circle to date has shown the ability to do this.

Other anomalies indicate the ability of the Circlemakers to increase infra red output within and around a new formation, to build the formations using extremely complex Euclidian geometry, to alter the magnetic structure so that compasses and aircraft equipment fail whilst in or over formations, and so on.