A twenty-year mystery solved: the crop hieroglyphs of Wiltshire 1990-1993 and Alton Barnes 1999 are purely astronomical, and show various events in Earth's sky contemporary with their appearances

 
Many people living on Earth became startled or even terrified in the summer of 1990, when dozens of so-called "alien hieroglyphs" suddenly began to fill the fields of southern England near Wiltshire. Were extra-terrestrial aliens trying to talk to us? If so, why would they choose such a bizarre means of communication?
 
Possibly out of fear, certain government officials and/or newspaper owners quickly went into a state of mind that psychologists call "denial" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial), and concocted an elaborate story that two old English gentlemen had made all of those crop pictures after leaving the pub late at night, using boards and rope, in much the same way that Santa Claus brings presents to young children on Christmas Eve:
 
"Denial is a defence mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too painful to accept, and so rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true, despite what may be overwhelming evidence."
 
Of course, we can be sure now from the recent 2007 experiments of Terje Toftenes and Gary King that some crop pictures could not possibly have been made by local humans: see www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1559662.0.the_crop_circle_mystery.php or
www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1288&category=Environment), but many people still remain in denial out of fear.
 
Time to do away with fear through detailed knowledge
 
The purpose of this essay is to remove such fear, by explaining what the earliest and "most fearful" crop pictures were all about! There is essentially zero chance that they could have be made by terrifying, extra-terrestrial aliens. Instead, they seem to have been made by other humans like ourselves who lived on Earth long ago---the builders of great megalithic sites all across the world including Stonehenge, Avebury, and perhaps various pyramids in Egypt or central America.
 
Those ancient people were great scholars and astronomers, far beyond what most current academic historians believe. And somehow they came into the possession of a very sophisticated technological device known as an "engineered wormhole", that can send messages forward in time. Indeed, they have been showing schematic pictures in crops of that engineered wormhole almost continuously since the phenomenon began. 
 
So now those ancient scholars are apparently talking to us across thousands of years of time, using a space time wormhole or "portal". Researchers such as Toftenes have clear photographs of their wormhole opening in Earth's sky above a crop-circle field, then closing again. Some of their remotely-controlled devices have been well-documented on film. Those are the facts, not simple-minded fables for young children. But what might their messages be saying? Can we somehow read and understand them as for ordinary English?
 
A universal astronomical language
 
Well, not as an ordinary human language, it seems. The vast majority of their messages seem to be purely astronomical in meaning, and show various events in Earth's sky contemporary with their field appearances:
 
"As in the sky above, so on Earth below."
 
That makes sense, because we do not know their written or spoken language, and they may not be able to understand ours very well. So they have chosen to send us other messages of a more universal nature, just like those which Carl Sagan sent out on Voyager, or beamed into space from Arecibo. Those same people also built spectacular monuments around the world that were similarly aligned with astronomical cycles: whether at Knowth in Ireland, the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, or a Pyramid of the Sun in central America.
 
In previous essays, I explained how some of their crop messages show megalithic sundials or calendars, while others show lunar phase diagrams, and still others show the phases of Venus, or even an ancient Sun-Venus calendar that they use to keep time in our modern era. A few pictures show modern sky appearances by the planets Mercury, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn.
 
Yet for the past 20 years, all of those terrifying "alien hieroglyphs" from Wiltshire 1990 to 1993 have remained a mystery: what could they possibly mean? Are aliens talking to us in some strange extra-terrestrial language? What fear will do! When we do not clearly understand something, our most basic human tendency seems to be fear and/or rejection.
 
Here I will show how 30 representative crop hieroglyphs from Wiltshire 1990 to1993, including Alton Barnes in 1999, are also astronomical in meaning, and again show various events in Earth's sky contemporary with their appearances. Crop pictures might be considered as one of the greatest language-translation problems of the 21st century, if most modern scholars did not choose to reject this amazing phenomenon out of hand, before learning anything about it.
 
Ancient astronomical symbols for conjunction or opposition.
 
Most early crop pictures from 1990 to 1993 had the shape of "dumbbells". One can learn from Wikipedia that such dumbbell shapes actually symbolize two ancient astronomical concepts known as conjunction or opposition:

 
The detailed meanings of astronomical conjunction or opposition are explained further below:  

 
Any simple conjunction involves a close approach in the sky of two heavenly bodies, say Venus and Jupiter. But sometimes we see a conjunction of three or four planets at once. Similarly, any simple opposition involves a close approach through space of two planets, say Earth and Mars. But sometimes we see an opposition of three or four planets at once.
 
Three fundamental symbols for Sun, Moon or Earth
 
Having explained that crop "dumbbells" symbolize the well-known astronomical phenomena of conjunction or opposition, our next task will be to understand which two heavenly bodies might be connected at any given point of time? For that purpose, we will need to learn which specific symbols those crop artists have assigned to various planets, the Moon or the Sun, so as to create specific messages? By comparing many of their pictures with known events in Earth's sky on a similar calendar date, one can deduce fairly easily that their three most fundamental symbols are as follows:  

 
Their symbol for "Sun" is just a big inscribed ring (as in modern astrology), while their symbol for "Moon" is a dumbbell that has been attached on one end to a small white ball (symbolizing a full Moon). Two thin lines have been drawn next to that Moon symbol on either side, in order to emphasize "rapid motion through our sky". Lastly, their symbol for "Earth" is a Celtic-Cross shape that resembles our planet with a single moon in orbit about it. All three of those symbols appeared in close succession on May 18, May 23 or May 28, 1990.
 
Moon symbols were next shown overlaid with Sun symbols to portray solar eclipses
 
Now having three astronomical symbols in hand for Sun, Moon or Earth, how can we use those symbols to "write sentences" so to speak, and say something useful about what might be happening in Earth's sky on any given calendar date? The most basic kind of astronomical event that we can now describe would be a solar eclipse, where those Moon and Sun symbols should be laid on top of one another as seen from Earth:  

 
And that is exactly what the crop artists showed us next. They used a series of simple Moon-Sun crop pictures as shown above (and summarized below) to tell us when solar eclipses would be seen in Earth's sky during the summers of 1990, 1991 and 1992.  
 

Table 1. Total solar eclipses 1990-1992 

 

Crop date

Field location

Sky event

Astronomical date

June 28, 1990

Longwood Estate

Moon-Sun-Jupiter

July 21, 1990

July 7, 1990

Chilcomb Down

Moon-Sun-Jupiter

July 21, 1990

July 13, 1990

Crawley Down

Moon-Sun-Jupiter

July 21, 1990

June 15, 1991

Westwoods

Moon-Sun

July 11, 1991

July 7, 1991

Alton Barnes

Moon-Sun

July 11, 1991

July 11, 1991

Ogbourne

Moon-Sun

July 11, 1991

August 5, 1992

Ogbourne

Moon-Sun-Venus

June 30, 1992

 

 Other crop symbols for Venus, Mars or Jupiter

 
So far, so good. But now we need to add other symbols for the brightest planets, in order to expand our astronomical vocabulary. And indeed, such symbols soon appeared for the three brightest planets Venus, Mars or Jupiter:  

 
By the mid-summer of 1990, a more complex kind of message was being shown, telling us about a double conjunction in Earth's sky between Jupiter and Venus, plus Jupiter and the Moon, on August 12-17, 1990:  

 
Likewise by the summer of 1991, another complex message had appeared, telling us about a double conjunction between Mars and Jupiter, plus Venus and the Moon, on June 15, 1991 (see above).
 
With those two clear examples in hand, I found it quite easy to deduce the detailed astronomical meanings of 20 more crop pictures of a similar kind, that also describe contemporary events in Earth's sky from 1990 to 1993. Those correlations are listed in Table 2 below, and may be confirmed with the help of an astronomical almanac from Jodrell Bank (www.jb.man.ac.uk/almanac). Most of those old crop pictures may be accessed through the archives of this website, after paying a small membership fee.  
 

Table 2. Planetary conjunctions and/or oppositions 1990-1993

 

Crop date

Field location

Sky event

Astronomical date

July 12, 1990

Alton Barnes

Jupiter-Venus

Jupiter-Moon

August 12, 1990

August 17, 1990

July 12, 1990

Stanton St. Bernard

Jupiter-Venus

Moon-Sun

(solar eclipse)

August 12, 1990

July 21, 1990

July 26, 1990

Allington Down

Jupiter-Moon

Venus-Moon

August 17, 1990

August 18, 1990

August 1, 1990

Barn Field

Jupiter-Sun (conjunction)

July 15, 1990

August 3, 1990

Hazely Farm

Jupiter-Sun (conjunction)

Saturn-Sun (opposition)

July 15, 1990

 

July 14, 1990

August 7, 1990

Westbury

Saturn-Moon

August 31, 1990

June 25, 1991

Litchfield

Saturn-Sun

(opposition)

July 27, 1991

June 30, 1991

Newton St. Loe

Venus-Moon

Jupiter-Mars

June 15, 1991

June 15, 1991

July 12, 1991

Stonehenge

Saturn-Sun

(opposition)

July 27, 1991

July 18, 1991

Alton Barnes

Jupiter-Moon

July 12, 1991

August 9, 1991

July 23, 1991

East Kennett

Jupiter-Moon

July 12, 1991

August 9, 1991

July 30, 1991

Lockeridge (whale)

Venus-Regulus

July 11, 1991

August 1, 1991

Cheesefoot Head

Saturn-Sun

(opposition)

July 27, 1991

August 4, 1991

Firs Farm (whale)

Mars-Regulus

July 14, 1991

August 18, 1991

Froxfield (whale)

Jupiter-Regulus

Sept. 10, 1991

July 24, 1992

East Meon

Jupiter-Sun-Mercury

(conjunction)

Sept. 16, 1992

August 5, 1992

Upton Lovell

Jupiter-Venus

August 23, 1992

August 1, 1993

Windmill Hill

Moon-Sun-Mercury

July 19, 1993

 

Notes to Table I. When any planetary conjunction or opposition involves the Sun, typically a large

round circle is drawn over the connecting line. When any planetary conjunction involves the Moon,

typically two small lines are drawn on either side of the connecting line. 

 

 Three successive conjunctions of Venus, Mars or Jupiter with a bright star Regulus in 1991

 

Some crop pictures from 1990 to 1993 did not follow the same symbolic logic. Yet it was easy to figure out that a "whale" picture that appeared three times in the late summer of 1991 was meant to inform us about three successive conjunctions of the planets Venus, Mars or Jupiter with a bright star Regulus, by means of a characteristic asterism in Leo that resembles a whale:  

 
The northern constellation Cygnus and Messier object M56
 
A few other crop pictures from those years showed only stars, and no planets. One such example involving the northern constellation Cygnus is shown below:  

 
More crop symbols for Mercury and Saturn
 
Other astronomical symbols soon appeared for the less-bright planets Mercury or Saturn. One of their two chosen symbols for Mercury shows a "round ball with two wings", thereby indicating its great speed (whereas their symbol for Venus has only "one wing" or half the speed: see above). Both of their symbols for Saturn show "two ears", to comically describe what the two rings of Saturn look like in a low-resolution telescope:  

 
Alton Barnes of June 1999 portrayed a grand conjunction on May 5, 2000
 
Now with so many different symbols in hand, we can explain the detailed meanings of six glyphs drawn across 1 km of field at Alton Barnes on June 12, 1999. Three glyphs from its left-hand end describe (i) a Moon-Saturn conjunction on May 4, 2000, (ii) a Jupiter-Sun-Mercury conjunction on May 8, 2000, or (iii) a view of Earth's sky as seen on both sides of the ecliptic (or in other words, on both sides of the Sun):  

 
Three other glyphs from the right-hand end of Alton Bames describe (iv) a five-body planetary conjunction on May 5, 2000 involving the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus (actually there were seven bodies, but Venus and Mars remained distant), (v) a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction with the Sun on May 8, 2000, and (vi) a Jupiter-Moon conjunction with Mercury on May 4, 2000:  

 
All of those six glyphs referred to a grand conjunction of seven bodies that occurred one year later on May 5, 2000:  

 
If they wanted to inform us that dumbbell-type hieroglyphs mean conjunction or opposition, what could have been a better way than to show us a spectacular, 1 km long crop picture to mark the grand conjunction of May 5, 2000? To me, their intended meaning was absolutely lucid and clear.
 
An overlay of two symbols for Earth and Milky Way in 2005: what could it mean?
 
After 1999, very few astronomical hieroglyphs appeared in new crop pictures. Their general style had moved onto other kinds of symbolism such as sundials, sacred geometry or Mayan Sunstones. But in late 2005, one more example of the hieroglyph for "Earth" did appear at Marden, with an ancient Mayan symbol for "Milky Way" or "white road of stars" superimposed upon it: 

 
What could that possibly mean? One week later, another picture showing 18 triangles (to symbolize 18 months in a Mayan Long Count year) appeared nearby, and pointed to the earlier one. When studied together, those two pictures seem to say: "our ancient Long Count calendar will end when Earth's view of the Milky Way is eclipsed by your Sun, on the winter solstice of 2012".
 
Now on the same day that Marden appeared, another famous crop picture appeared at Wayland's Smithy. It came in the form of a Mayan Sunstone, and showed two coded dates from their ancient Sun-Venus calendar that counts time in cycles of 52 years. Our current cycle began with a Sun-Venus conjunction on April 10, 1961, and will end with another Sun-Venus conjunction on March 28, 2013.
 
Their first date "13-10-7" translated from base-16 into August 9, 2005, which was the day when that crop picture (and also Marden) had appeared. Their second date "14-5-11" translated into November 21, 2007 plus or minus two days. Evidently some major astronomical event will happen on November 21, 2007 (just one month from now). but I cannot find anything significant using an astronomical almanac (www.jb.man.ac.uk/almanac). Well, there are still some important problems left to be solved!

 

Red Collie


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Mark Fussell & Stuart Dike

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