Crop circles - something else the Chinese had first

Is it a teardrop, a beard, the sun or the moon? And why do alien visitors to Earth leave these mysterious signs in our fields? Some answers may lie in the wilds of north-west China. There is no Chinese equivalent for "croppies" yet, but the global army of crop-circle enthusiasts just gained a key convert the their cause, virgin lands ripe for speculation, and a great leap backwards into antiquity.

Close to the Mongolian border, a Chinese explorer has discovered a series of stone circles and other shapes he claims are the 2,500-year-old prototypes of crop patterns found in recent years everywhere from Wiltshire to Western Australia. More than 70 countries worldwide, embracing each continent, have reported ever more bizarre examples appearing in corn and wheat fields, or grass, flowerbeds and even snow.

China was among the last major nations to resist a phenomenon so intriguing it has spawned its own science – cereology – and survived the pranks of confessed circle-makers. In the past year, Chinese man of mystery Zhang Hui, research fellow at the Xinjiang Museum in Urumqi, has harvested more than 20 patterns that appear to match examples found in other countries, but may pre-date them by up to 3,000 years. While croppies in the West debate which circles are genuine mysteries and which the "agrarian graffiti" of hoaxers, the Chinese finds are clearly man-made.

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