The Mystery of Crop Circles

It was a moonlit night of 1972. Two Englishmen, Arthur Shuttlewood and Bryce Bond, driven by the several
reports of sight of the strange unidentified flying craft, were sitting on the slope of Star Hill
near Warminster, England, hoping to catch a glimpse of it. But instead of the UFO, what they witnessed
that night was much more thrilling to them, to the logical world as well. Nearly a hundred feet away they
saw an imprint take shape, a large circular area of plants that collapsed like a lady opening a fan.

Since then a lot of eyewitnesses from as far away as British Columbia have reported the formation of a crop circle,
which takes less than twenty seconds to materialize, often accompanied by sightings of unusual lights and structured
craft beaming shafts of light onto the field the night before.

But what is a crop circle?
Crop circles are nothing but complicated geometrical patterns, usually in wheat fields.
I crop circles, crop is mysteriously found laid flat, in patterns, that did not exist in daylight the previous day.
Till date there have been over 9000 reported and documented crop circles throughout the world, with some 90% of them coming from England.

But who creates crop circles?
Some people believe that the patterns are left by the imprint of an extra-terrestrial craft, or that they are a message
from extra-terrestrials themselves. Another theory is that natural forces such as tornadoes, heat or strong winds create
the patterns by flattering the crops, but the regular shape of most crop circles makes this unlikely.
The most likely explanation is that the circles are made by people as a hoax. They gradually build up a design
by flattening the wheat, using very basic equipment such a rope and planks of wood.

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Stonehenge

This time it is England friends. Stonehenge, a World Heritage site eight miles north of Salisbury in Wiltshire, is one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments. The reason it has such a name is that it is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones. English word ‘stan’ means stone and ‘hencg’ means hinge. More than nine hundred stone rings exist there, and archaeologists estimate that twice that number may originally have been built. Though it is nearly impossible to precisely date the stone rings, scholars believe the standing stones were erected around 2200 BC and the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. These megalithic structures should be referred to as rings rather than circles since only 2 percent of the structures are in the shape of true circles; the other 98 percent are constructed in a variety of elliptical shapes.

But who built it?

Why did they build it?

More than 5000 years ago, technology was merely known to mankind.

Then how did they build it?

A walk around Stonehenge only provokes more and strange feelings, more and more queries to be answered. It taunts us with its mystery. For over 5000 years it has stood silent vigil over the earth. It has been excavated, x-rayed, measured, and surveyed. Yet despite all that has been learned about its age and construction, its purpose still remains one of the great mysteries of the world. People believe that Stonehenge was used to predicting events of the night sky, although it’s probably a futile effort to try to understand the motives behind the construction.

The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury henge monument, and it is also a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge itself is owned by the State and managed by English Heritage while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.

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El Dorado: The Golden Mystery

In the sixteenth century Europeans presumed that somewhere deep in South America was a vast city called El Dorado that contained unimaginable mineral riches, mainly gold. This presumption started when the conquistadors were destroying and looting the ancient cultures of the Aztecs and Incas. An amazing rumour was told to them by native tribesmen. They said that there was a race, deep in the jungle, whose king was covered with gold dust and who swam in a golden lake. It was the story of ‘El Dorado’(The Golden Man).


Other sources say that Europeans first learned of El Dorado through word-of-mouth tales that circulated among South America's indigenous people. There was a small grain of truth to the story: high in the eastern range of the Andes, in what is now Colombia lived the Chibcha people. They mined gold and emeralds freely, and built a highly stratified and developed society. When they anointed a new priest-chief, they covered the man in balsam gum, and then blew gold dust all over his body through cane straws until he resembled a statue of pure gold. The new priest-chief then ceremonially bathed in Lake Guatavita, a sacred place to the Chibchans. This practice ended around 1480 when they were subdued by another tribe. But the story of the "gilded one" became part of the oral folklore traditions in South America, and in its retellings, the tale took on added dimensions: the gilded one supposedly ruled over a vast kingdom where nearly everything was made from gold, silver, or precious stone.

Even proofs of the existence of El Dorado are there. In the year 1969 some cave workers while working in a cave near Bogata, South America faced a strange incident.
Their hands struck against a model of a raft. As soon as they saw it clearly, they shrieked with surprise - “Eldorado! Eldorado!”. The model showed a king on a raft standing with his bodyguards.


The first man to think of Eldorado was Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesda. He started on his journey in 1536 with 900 men from Santa Marta, situated on Colombia's northern coast. Quesada's journey was full of peril. He and his men had to face various animals and had to fight diseases and were often decimated by fever, malaria and the attacks of hostile natives before they reached Chibehas. At Chibehas, Spaniards were told of some more tales about the Golden Man. Going by the tales, Quesada preceded the Guatavita Lake with an Indian guide. They reached the lake which was deep, dark expanse of water set in the crater of an extinct volcano almost 9,000 feet above sea-level. Few huts were there but nowhere could Quesada and his left over 200 men see the Golden Man or the Golden Land.
Quesada returned, but only to sit quiet for sometime. In 1568, the old Quesada, haunted by the lake and the possible treasures hidden beneath it restarted the journey. He left Bogota, the new city he discovered, with a force of 2,800 men. They hunted in vain for three years before Quesada gave up the search.
For centuries the legend of El Dorado, the fabulous land of gold led not only Quesada but many to undertake the courageous feat. Some lost their fortune, some their reputation and some their life. Still the men remained undaunted. Year after year, decades after decades, men went out in search of the Golden Land. After all, what were they seeking? Gold? A Golden City? A Golden Man? Or was everything just a myth, a story which destroyed many adventurers?

All the queries are still unanswered...and hopefully will be till the end of mankind.

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