There's something odd going on in the United Kingdom. Unusual crop patterns are surfacing near Bradford Abbas, Dorset. But unlike most crop-circle stories, this one doesn't involve rumors of visitors from another planet. This time the circles come from civilizations past.
An intriguing BBC News article helps to make some sense of the mystery. Thousands of years ago, prehistoric and Roman settlements dotted the English countryside. In the years since, crops have grown where the settlements used to be. Thanks to the crop marks, the settlements are never really gone.
English Heritage, an organization that "promotes and protects" the nation's historic environment, has remarked that these discoveries are being aided by this year's dry weather and the Icelandic ash cloud from several months back.
English Heritage senior investigator Dave MacLeod explains, "Crop marks are always at their best in dry weather, but the last few summers have been a disappointment." This is the best summer since the drought of 1976 for viewing the marks.
Aerial photographs "show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby." Up close, they're impossible to see. But from the air, a pattern emerges.
Of course, this summer's "discoveries" are really nothing more than faded lines, but they do offer a long-lost look into English history. Some of the crop marks reveal an outline of what was once a "lightly built defensive enclosure," the BBC says. Others reveal "livestock and settlement enclosures, field systems and trackways," English Heritage says.
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