Folklore
Researchers of crop circles have linked modern crop circles to old folkloric tales, to support the claim that they are not artificially produced. Circle crops are culture-dependant: they appear mostly in Western countries and Japan, but they don't appear at all in Muslim countries.
Fungi can cause circular areas of crop to die, probably the origin of tales of "fairie rings". Tales also mention balls of light many times, but never in relation to crop circles.
A 17th century English woodcut called the Mowing-Devil depicts the devil with a scythe mowing (cutting) a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have "the devil himself" perform the task. This is, however, not a historical precedent of crop circles because the stalks were cut down, not bent. The circular form indicated to the farmer that it had been caused by the devil.
In the 1948 German story Die zwölf Schwäne (The Twelve Swans), a farmer every morning found a circular ring of flattened grain on his field. After several attempts, his son saw twelve princesses disguised as swans, who took out their disguises and danced in the field. One scientific evaluation asserts that it was probably inspired by the belief that natural fungi rings were created by dancing wolves or fairies.
Read more about this topic: Crop Circle
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