THE 2001 MILKHILL SPIRAL

Anybody who's witnessed the creation of a crop circle by people, knows the flattening is executed with a plank of wood about 1 meter long. I have witnessed this myself and also given it a try. Even as an amateur researcher I consider it essential to know how the human circle makers work. The only reliable way of knowing this is to see how it's done (see more information here).

The speed of flattening is crucial here. Based on my observations a speed of one half meter step in one second would be quite a reasonable, in other words 1 square meter in 2 seconds (when the plank is 1 meter long). This equals 1,8 km per hour, which is a very slow walking speed. You can try walking one 50 cm step in one second to see for yourself!

1800 square meters per hour that is. Divide 30.000 with 1800 and you get 16,67 hours. Let's round that up to 18 hours. In other words:

30.000 square meters of crop with the speed of roughly 1 meter per 2 seconds takes roughly 18 hours to flatten - providing there's only one person working without rest.
From six people the same would take 18 / 6 = 3 hours, from 12 people only 1,5 hours!

Of course it's not that simple. Though flattening is the hardest job, there is much more. The entire project could proceed like this:

1. Entering the field and taking positions.
2. Measuring out the 6 semi-circle arcs.
3. Marking the border of each circle element over the large arcs (and the small circles next to them)
4. Flattening the inside of each circle element.
5. Some rest every now and then.
6. Collecting tools and exiting the field.

Let's assume at this point there is a group of 12 people.
Now we start following the process from the beginning. Turn the page...