If crop circles are a real phenomenon, why are there so few records of them before the 1970s? Folklore mentions them, but written accounts are scarce. Here are some possible reasons.
Lost and destroyed records
For much of the medieval period, writing that touched on the supernatural could be treated as heresy. Books were burned and records were lost. A pattern appearing overnight in a field would most likely have been blamed on the devil or on witches. Few people would have wanted to write that down. Fewer still of those records would have survived.
The Mowing Devil
The Mowing Devil pamphlet of 1678 is one of the earliest known accounts of something like a crop circle. A Hertfordshire farmer refused a mower’s price and swore the devil could mow his oats instead. The next morning the field was found cut in perfect circles. The pamphlet survived because it was a sensational story. Quieter accounts are likely to have been lost.
A wider pattern
We think the same reluctance shapes other subjects today. Mainstream archaeology still holds that hunter-gatherers built G├Âbekli Tepe and that the pyramids were raised with ramps and copper tools, despite open questions about both. Recent testimony about UFOs, such as David Grusch’s evidence to the US Congress in 2023, suggests that unexplained events have been kept quiet for decades.
Summary
Lost records, fear of heresy and a habit of explaining away the unexplained could all account for the gap in the history of crop circles. A thin record is not proof that nothing happened.
