Speaker A
The beautiful rolling countryside of England has a long history, but in recent years there's been a strange phenomenon here, one which people all over the world have been studying with great interest: crop circles. These strange and mysterious circles have many people, even some scientists, asking who or what could have made them. Since the beginning of time, human beings have created signs such as unusual constructions or animals carved into the hillsides. Some people suggest that different cultures may have constructed them as ways of communicating with aliens. Others say that ancient peoples must have created them to please the gods. Did people create these crop circles, or are they messages made by aliens from outer space? The question has been the cause of much debate. I walked into the first crop circle in 1990, and I thought, "Hmm, I love puzzles." What I did was say, "Right, I'm gonna try and find out what this puzzle is all about." I think probably 95% of them are man-made, but there was one particularly here just over on the hill, Milk Hill. It's so enormous that you can't even see the other side of the crop formation. Pressley then explains that the formation is over a kilometer wide. He feels that people couldn't have made such an enormous circle without other people knowing about it. He also points out that these formations appear all over the world. He tells of a circle in a forest near Vancouver, Canada. In it, only the top 2 metres of the trees were bent and shaped in a circle. Remarkably, the trees were not broken suddenly and quickly but bent over without breaking when they were arranged. Presley has also heard of ice circles, in which a circle of ice is missing from a body of water while the area around it remains frozen. For Pressley, a connection between these mysterious circles almost certainly exists. But to a young Englishman named Matthew, they're not all that mysterious. "Yeah, a lot of circles have been appearing in this area. It's lovely landscape, and the fields are just very clean and open, like a canvas." In the area near Matthew's home, many crop circles have recently appeared. While he will not admit to making any of these, Matthew has offered to demonstrate exactly how crop circles are made. "Well, if there is, if there are aliens out there doing it, they're using stomper boards and these little markers because, I mean, there's these things, they're like combing effects, which is people are going round and round around the same area flattening it down. That wouldn't be there with aliens, I'm sure." In fact, Matthew thinks aliens would more likely use a faster, instantaneous technique, something obviously real to everyone, even him. Matthew's never seen this kind of evidence. The only crop circles he's seen are undoubtedly made by humans. As Matthew and his team begin the long evening task of making a crop circle, he talks about some of the beliefs regarding them. He explains how people imagine seeing extraterrestrial strange balls of light or UFOs when they see a crop circle. Matthew, however, claims that crop circle design is actually a creative art done by human beings. He also explains that teams sometimes challenge each other to amaze the public by showing what they can do in an evening. "It is a bit like a military operation. You've got to get in, do the job, get out, not to get caught, you know. It's SAS, I suppose. Who dares wins." "I'm a little bit worried about some of the beliefs on here going around. Some of this stuff is a bit apocalyptic at times." Matthew is disturbed by some of the beliefs about crop circles. He thinks that some people are using the circles to push their own unusual theories. In his years of making crop circles, Matthew's never seen any evidence that aliens made them. In his opinion, crop circles are definitely not signs of intelligent life in outer space. But perhaps opinions like Matthew's are a sign of one kind of intelligent life: intelligent life on Earth. [Music]
