What do modern crop circles mean? Part I: a scientific overview for the end of 2008
Table of Contents
I. A scientific overview for the end of 2008
II. Mayan calendars and Mayan binary codes
III. More clues of various kinds
IV. Jaime Maussan and the Quetzalcoatl hypothesis
V. Some crop pictures have predicted the future
VI. Quetzalcoatl, Jesus and the year 2012
What do modern crop circles mean? Part I: a scientific overview for the end of 2008
The modern crop-circle phenomenon has been strongly ongoing now for about 18 years, from 1990 to 2008. Fifty or more complex and apparently authentic pictures appear every summer in southern England near Wiltshire, or sometimes in other places. Since 2002, there has been reasonable and undeniable evidence that most large or complex crop pictures might be non-human made, at least in the sense of local human fakers with rope and boards (see for examplewww.ufoevidence.org/topics/cropcircles.htm orhttp://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/cropcirc1.htm or http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-7441333249846634309).
During the summer of 2008, there was even more rigorous evidence for their authenticity, concerning a "pi to ten digits" crop picture that appeared on June 1 near Barbary Castle, and which was later publicized worldwide in mainstream newspapers (seewww.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027178/Easy-pi-Astrophysicist-solves-riddle-Britains-complex-crop-circle.htmlorwww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4160477.ece). Despite its amazing mathematical form, there was no trace whatsoever of possible human involvement in its construction, as evidenced by detailed inspection of the field where it appeared, before large crowds of interested people had arrived (seewww.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1435&category=Environment).
So why are not more people excited? Why isn't everyone on Earth jumping up and down in glee, that we have finally made some form of indirect contact with friendly or benevolent extra-terrestrials?
Psychological aspects of the crop-circle phenomenon: most people tend to agree with group opinion, even over what they can see with their own eyes
One reason may have to do with a strong psychological tendency among Earth humans to conform with whatever group opinion might be expressed at the time, by their peers or by governing authorities. This tendency was measured quantitatively back in 1951 during a famous experiment by Solomon Asch. He placed a small group of individuals who did not know one another into a room, then asked them to say which of three black lines on a sheet of paper---A (short), B (medium) or C (long)---matched the length of another line held by an assistant nearby? All of the individuals except one had been instructed beforehand to give the same "wrong" answer. So the question became: what would the remaining individual do? Report truthfully what he or she could see plainly with his or her own eyes, or conform with group opinion?
slide 1: Asch lines
The result surprisingly was that 80% of the individuals tested would agree incorrectly with group opinion in at least one case. And one-third of those individuals would agree falsely with group opinion most of the time! When they were interviewed later, to ask why they had conformed so readily to a clearly false answer, most of the test subjects admitted that they did not really believe in their conforming opinions, but had simply gone along with the group: for fear of being ridiculed, or being thought peculiar (seewww.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html orwww.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlJqR4GmKw&feature=related orwww.youtube.com/watch?v=R6LH10-3H8k).
A persistent debunking of crop circles by the international media has successfully influenced group opinion, so that most people have no idea about the true phenomenon as it may been seen visibly in Wiltshire each summer
Now that is one good reason, at least, why most otherwise intelligent people on Earth today do not believe in the paranormal reality of modern crop pictures! The international media have persistently refused to inform the public truthfully about this important phenomenon, although good reports are sometimes written in local newspapers from Wiltshire, or other regions of England or Italy where new crop pictures sometimes appear (seewww.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1559662.0.the_crop_circle_mystery.php orwww.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/Stambridge/Stambridge2008.html orwww.cropcircleconnector.com/inter2008/italy/Lizzano/Lizzano2008a.html).
Few if any of our world's scientists are paying attention to it either, perhaps due in part to a continual debunking of the phenomenon by large media organizations such as Wikipedia, National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. Some unknown contributors to Wikipedia write for example:
"The main criticism concerning a non-human creation of crop circles is that evidence for their origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is scant. Crop circles are usually easily explicable as the result of human pranksters" (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle).
Of course, that is not true at all. No honest, intelligent or informed researcher of the subject has ever reached such aberrant conclusions. Nor could they, since one very large crop picture was photographed during its formation two years ago in East Field at 3 AM, in the presence of multiple witnesses (seewww.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1559662.0.the_crop_circle_mystery.php).
Likewise in 2007, Lucy Pringle (an experienced investigator) became so frustrated with the apparent lack of integrity among National Geographic staff, who were preparing a TV documentary about crop pictures, that she wrote:
"There was a time when programmes produced by National Geographic were based on scientific integrity and fact. They were a scion of truth. Sadly this is no longer the case. They are now as bad as the worst tabloids, pandering to what they consider the public wants to see and hear" (seewww.lucypringle.co.uk/news/natgeog.shtml).
Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel argues in a far more abstract fashion: "Rational explanations postulate that crop circles are man-made hoaxes. Why would aliens travel all the way to our planet just to flatten a few wheat fields? Why not make contact in another, more easily recognisable way?" (seewww.discoverychannel.co.uk/conspiracies/places/crop_circles/index.shtml).
Well, it has seemed clear for many years now that modern crop pictures are made by small robotic probes, and not by any visiting extra-terrestrials who are located here in person. If NASA were to send small robotic probes to some other planet under a distant star, and then try to bring about a preliminary form of open contact with the natives there, without having any access to their formal systems of communication, or leaders in government, what would they do?
Would they perhaps instruct those probes to carve out easily visible messages in the fields or deserts, so that everyone on that world could see such messages, and come to terms with the idea of open contact while not being afraid? Then when millions of people on that distant world saw such messages, and began to consider their implications, what would their governments do? Confirm the authenticity of such pictures, and advise everyone to pay close attention? Or simply debunk them out of an irrational fear of what the future might bring? Apparently our local governments on Earth have chosen the latter.
Arguments against the reality of modern crop pictures by the skeptics show no detailed knowledge whatsoever
Now in addition to this persistent debunking of modern crop pictures by most large media organizations, probably at the behest of governments, there have also been supplementary if somewhat superfluous criticisms by a loosely organized collection of people who call themselves "skeptics". A great many of those skeptical websites can simply be ignored, especially if they cite Wikipedia or the 1991 Doug and Dave story (see below) as proof of their intellectual correctness. Nevertheless, in order to give them a fair hearing, we tried to find the best possible website that advocates pure skepticism regarding modern crop pictures, and came up with the following:
"This is one of the three best skeptical websites, written by Professor Rory Coker of the Physics Department at the University of Texas. Believers in the supernatural wonder of crop circles never bother to take a clothesline and a broomstick, to see how simple it is to make a circle precisely like the ones they find inexplicable" (see www.skeptically.org/skeptics/id6.html). As proof of their their theory, they next cite this explanatory diagram of how all modern crop circles are made (seewww.unmuseum.org/cropcir.htm):
slide 2: explanation by a skeptic
Well, there is still nothing there to be concerned about! Professor Coker seems not to have put nearly as much time or effort into studying crop pictures, as for his regular and respected research into particle physics. A little more intelligent argument (intended to debunk Milk Hill of 2001) was given onwww.youtube.com/watch?v=CBUwmPYo6Ec, but seewww.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/time2007j.html for the true facts of the matter.
Other skeptics have made fairly rudimentary attempts to create authentic crop pictures as a test of the human faker hypothesis. Yet they have never apparently examined the real ones in Wiltshire, in order to understand what they are trying to replicate. Thus all such efforts appear lame at best (seehttp://web.archive.org/web/20060707212846/http:/www.csicop.org/hoaxwatch/cropcircles.html). Likewise, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry proposed four testable hypotheses concerning modern crop pictures in 2002, but none of those seem to be even remotely supported by new field observations as of 2008 (seewww.csicop.org/si/2002-09/crop-circles.html).
Trying to find a more recent comment from those skeptics, we found this rather emotional outburst in the Bristol Daily Press on July 30, 2008: "Your researcher has no scientific background, and the same counts for all of that other so-called scientific research on crop circles. Researchers like them are only interested in two things: money and attention" (seewww.thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/mysteriouswest/Riddle-circle-makers/article-224909-detail/article.html#StartComments). Yet the primary author of this review is a well-respected professional scientist, who has never taken even one cent for his lengthy research into the subject, nor has ever sought any public attention. One is reminded here of the adage: "Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a ditch?" In other words, unless someone actually (a) observes the experimental phenomenon first-hand for themselves, or (b) gains a sound idea of the concepts that are being expressed there, then their opinions are essentially worthless: especially if swallowed whole from another third-party source, without applying any critical evaluation as to whether that third party might be telling the truth?
We can use evidence-based empiricism to find out the real truth concerning modern crop pictures
The best approach for finding out the truth, concerning any difficult or controversial matter, is known as evidence-based empiricism. It was discussed cleverly by John Locke in his famousEssay on Human Understanding (1689), by using the analogy of a king from the tropics who did not believe that water could freeze in far northern latitudes on Earth (seehttp://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book4b.html#Chapter%20XIV):
"A Dutch ambassador was entertaining the King of Siam about certain peculiarities of Holland, and told him among other things that the water in his country would sometimes become so hard in cold weather that men could walk on it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the King replied, 'Until now I have believed the strange things you told me, because I look upon you as a sober fair man. But now I am sure you are lying.' "
Well, the pond water does freeze hard in Holland or England during winter, no matter what some king from the tropics might think! And there also are plenty of non-human-made crop pictures that appear mysteriously there in summer. We have seen or studied many of them ourselves, in close experimental detail. Furthermore, we can now understand most of the concepts that they express. The insightful reader may therefore peruse this essay empirically, with regard to detailed experimental facts, in order to decide whether we are telling the truth, or else those skeptics and his TV?
Most academic scientists are sincere, honest people, and not accustomed to dealing with intellectual fraud. Hence the prospect that some ill-defined group of international media organizations might be conspiring, to keep the truth from being publicly known about modern crop pictures, simply terrifies them. Even English scientists who live near Wiltshire are often afraid to go out into the fields to inspect some new crop picture, for fear that the opinion of their peers will turn against them: leaving them unable to obtain research grants, or to publish papers in major journals. That is just what Asch found back in 1951, during his famous conformity experiment!
In any case, since this subject is of great importance for the people of Earth, we will provide below a new and updated synthesis of field data and plausible interpretations for the end of 2008. There should be no need for the casual reader to go back and read lots of earlier work on the subject, although many useful references will be cited wherever relevant. This new synthesis should not be construed to represent anymore than our own considered opinions, having studied the subject jointly for many years, although it seems to be increasingly accepted by others in the field.
I. A scientific overview for the end of 2008
II. Mayan calendars and Mayan binary codes
III. More clues of various kinds
IV. Jaime Maussan and the Quetzalcoatl hypothesis
V. Some crop pictures have predicted the future
VI. Quetzalcoatl, Jesus and the year 2012
What do modern crop circles mean? Part I: a scientific overview for the end of 2008
The modern crop-circle phenomenon has been strongly ongoing now for about 18 years, from 1990 to 2008. Fifty or more complex and apparently authentic pictures appear every summer in southern England near Wiltshire, or sometimes in other places. Since 2002, there has been reasonable and undeniable evidence that most large or complex crop pictures might be non-human made, at least in the sense of local human fakers with rope and boards (see for examplewww.ufoevidence.org/topics/cropcircles.htm orhttp://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/cropcirc1.htm or http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-7441333249846634309).
During the summer of 2008, there was even more rigorous evidence for their authenticity, concerning a "pi to ten digits" crop picture that appeared on June 1 near Barbary Castle, and which was later publicized worldwide in mainstream newspapers (seewww.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027178/Easy-pi-Astrophysicist-solves-riddle-Britains-complex-crop-circle.htmlorwww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4160477.ece). Despite its amazing mathematical form, there was no trace whatsoever of possible human involvement in its construction, as evidenced by detailed inspection of the field where it appeared, before large crowds of interested people had arrived (seewww.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1435&category=Environment).
So why are not more people excited? Why isn't everyone on Earth jumping up and down in glee, that we have finally made some form of indirect contact with friendly or benevolent extra-terrestrials?
Psychological aspects of the crop-circle phenomenon: most people tend to agree with group opinion, even over what they can see with their own eyes
One reason may have to do with a strong psychological tendency among Earth humans to conform with whatever group opinion might be expressed at the time, by their peers or by governing authorities. This tendency was measured quantitatively back in 1951 during a famous experiment by Solomon Asch. He placed a small group of individuals who did not know one another into a room, then asked them to say which of three black lines on a sheet of paper---A (short), B (medium) or C (long)---matched the length of another line held by an assistant nearby? All of the individuals except one had been instructed beforehand to give the same "wrong" answer. So the question became: what would the remaining individual do? Report truthfully what he or she could see plainly with his or her own eyes, or conform with group opinion?
slide 1: Asch lines
The result surprisingly was that 80% of the individuals tested would agree incorrectly with group opinion in at least one case. And one-third of those individuals would agree falsely with group opinion most of the time! When they were interviewed later, to ask why they had conformed so readily to a clearly false answer, most of the test subjects admitted that they did not really believe in their conforming opinions, but had simply gone along with the group: for fear of being ridiculed, or being thought peculiar (seewww.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html orwww.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlJqR4GmKw&feature=related orwww.youtube.com/watch?v=R6LH10-3H8k).
A persistent debunking of crop circles by the international media has successfully influenced group opinion, so that most people have no idea about the true phenomenon as it may been seen visibly in Wiltshire each summer
Now that is one good reason, at least, why most otherwise intelligent people on Earth today do not believe in the paranormal reality of modern crop pictures! The international media have persistently refused to inform the public truthfully about this important phenomenon, although good reports are sometimes written in local newspapers from Wiltshire, or other regions of England or Italy where new crop pictures sometimes appear (seewww.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1559662.0.the_crop_circle_mystery.php orwww.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/Stambridge/Stambridge2008.html orwww.cropcircleconnector.com/inter2008/italy/Lizzano/Lizzano2008a.html).
Few if any of our world's scientists are paying attention to it either, perhaps due in part to a continual debunking of the phenomenon by large media organizations such as Wikipedia, National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. Some unknown contributors to Wikipedia write for example:
"The main criticism concerning a non-human creation of crop circles is that evidence for their origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is scant. Crop circles are usually easily explicable as the result of human pranksters" (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle).
Of course, that is not true at all. No honest, intelligent or informed researcher of the subject has ever reached such aberrant conclusions. Nor could they, since one very large crop picture was photographed during its formation two years ago in East Field at 3 AM, in the presence of multiple witnesses (seewww.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1559662.0.the_crop_circle_mystery.php).
Likewise in 2007, Lucy Pringle (an experienced investigator) became so frustrated with the apparent lack of integrity among National Geographic staff, who were preparing a TV documentary about crop pictures, that she wrote:
"There was a time when programmes produced by National Geographic were based on scientific integrity and fact. They were a scion of truth. Sadly this is no longer the case. They are now as bad as the worst tabloids, pandering to what they consider the public wants to see and hear" (seewww.lucypringle.co.uk/news/natgeog.shtml).
Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel argues in a far more abstract fashion: "Rational explanations postulate that crop circles are man-made hoaxes. Why would aliens travel all the way to our planet just to flatten a few wheat fields? Why not make contact in another, more easily recognisable way?" (seewww.discoverychannel.co.uk/conspiracies/places/crop_circles/index.shtml).
Well, it has seemed clear for many years now that modern crop pictures are made by small robotic probes, and not by any visiting extra-terrestrials who are located here in person. If NASA were to send small robotic probes to some other planet under a distant star, and then try to bring about a preliminary form of open contact with the natives there, without having any access to their formal systems of communication, or leaders in government, what would they do?
Would they perhaps instruct those probes to carve out easily visible messages in the fields or deserts, so that everyone on that world could see such messages, and come to terms with the idea of open contact while not being afraid? Then when millions of people on that distant world saw such messages, and began to consider their implications, what would their governments do? Confirm the authenticity of such pictures, and advise everyone to pay close attention? Or simply debunk them out of an irrational fear of what the future might bring? Apparently our local governments on Earth have chosen the latter.
Arguments against the reality of modern crop pictures by the skeptics show no detailed knowledge whatsoever
Now in addition to this persistent debunking of modern crop pictures by most large media organizations, probably at the behest of governments, there have also been supplementary if somewhat superfluous criticisms by a loosely organized collection of people who call themselves "skeptics". A great many of those skeptical websites can simply be ignored, especially if they cite Wikipedia or the 1991 Doug and Dave story (see below) as proof of their intellectual correctness. Nevertheless, in order to give them a fair hearing, we tried to find the best possible website that advocates pure skepticism regarding modern crop pictures, and came up with the following:
"This is one of the three best skeptical websites, written by Professor Rory Coker of the Physics Department at the University of Texas. Believers in the supernatural wonder of crop circles never bother to take a clothesline and a broomstick, to see how simple it is to make a circle precisely like the ones they find inexplicable" (see www.skeptically.org/skeptics/id6.html). As proof of their their theory, they next cite this explanatory diagram of how all modern crop circles are made (seewww.unmuseum.org/cropcir.htm):
slide 2: explanation by a skeptic
Well, there is still nothing there to be concerned about! Professor Coker seems not to have put nearly as much time or effort into studying crop pictures, as for his regular and respected research into particle physics. A little more intelligent argument (intended to debunk Milk Hill of 2001) was given onwww.youtube.com/watch?v=CBUwmPYo6Ec, but seewww.cropcircleconnector.com/anasazi/time2007j.html for the true facts of the matter.
Other skeptics have made fairly rudimentary attempts to create authentic crop pictures as a test of the human faker hypothesis. Yet they have never apparently examined the real ones in Wiltshire, in order to understand what they are trying to replicate. Thus all such efforts appear lame at best (seehttp://web.archive.org/web/20060707212846/http:/www.csicop.org/hoaxwatch/cropcircles.html). Likewise, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry proposed four testable hypotheses concerning modern crop pictures in 2002, but none of those seem to be even remotely supported by new field observations as of 2008 (seewww.csicop.org/si/2002-09/crop-circles.html).
Trying to find a more recent comment from those skeptics, we found this rather emotional outburst in the Bristol Daily Press on July 30, 2008: "Your researcher has no scientific background, and the same counts for all of that other so-called scientific research on crop circles. Researchers like them are only interested in two things: money and attention" (seewww.thisisbristol.co.uk/wdp/mysteriouswest/Riddle-circle-makers/article-224909-detail/article.html#StartComments). Yet the primary author of this review is a well-respected professional scientist, who has never taken even one cent for his lengthy research into the subject, nor has ever sought any public attention. One is reminded here of the adage: "Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a ditch?" In other words, unless someone actually (a) observes the experimental phenomenon first-hand for themselves, or (b) gains a sound idea of the concepts that are being expressed there, then their opinions are essentially worthless: especially if swallowed whole from another third-party source, without applying any critical evaluation as to whether that third party might be telling the truth?
We can use evidence-based empiricism to find out the real truth concerning modern crop pictures
The best approach for finding out the truth, concerning any difficult or controversial matter, is known as evidence-based empiricism. It was discussed cleverly by John Locke in his famousEssay on Human Understanding (1689), by using the analogy of a king from the tropics who did not believe that water could freeze in far northern latitudes on Earth (seehttp://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book4b.html#Chapter%20XIV):
"A Dutch ambassador was entertaining the King of Siam about certain peculiarities of Holland, and told him among other things that the water in his country would sometimes become so hard in cold weather that men could walk on it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the King replied, 'Until now I have believed the strange things you told me, because I look upon you as a sober fair man. But now I am sure you are lying.' "
Well, the pond water does freeze hard in Holland or England during winter, no matter what some king from the tropics might think! And there also are plenty of non-human-made crop pictures that appear mysteriously there in summer. We have seen or studied many of them ourselves, in close experimental detail. Furthermore, we can now understand most of the concepts that they express. The insightful reader may therefore peruse this essay empirically, with regard to detailed experimental facts, in order to decide whether we are telling the truth, or else those skeptics and his TV?
Most academic scientists are sincere, honest people, and not accustomed to dealing with intellectual fraud. Hence the prospect that some ill-defined group of international media organizations might be conspiring, to keep the truth from being publicly known about modern crop pictures, simply terrifies them. Even English scientists who live near Wiltshire are often afraid to go out into the fields to inspect some new crop picture, for fear that the opinion of their peers will turn against them: leaving them unable to obtain research grants, or to publish papers in major journals. That is just what Asch found back in 1951, during his famous conformity experiment!
In any case, since this subject is of great importance for the people of Earth, we will provide below a new and updated synthesis of field data and plausible interpretations for the end of 2008. There should be no need for the casual reader to go back and read lots of earlier work on the subject, although many useful references will be cited wherever relevant. This new synthesis should not be construed to represent anymore than our own considered opinions, having studied the subject jointly for many years, although it seems to be increasingly accepted by others in the field.
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