Art, Or Freaky Coincidence?
Monday, 10th December 2007 by Alex Turnbull
We get lots of submissions from people who claim to be able to see faces, animals or even aliens in the natural landscapes of Google Earth, but often the images are so open to interpretation that we unfortunately can't see what it is that our readers are seeing.
On the other hand, when we're sent something that's clearly recognisable, in virtually every case the sight has been man made. So when we received this submission that bears an undeniable1 resemblance to the profile of a face in a field in Ohio, we initially assumed this was the work of a particularly adventurous crop-circle artist.
On closer inspection however, this face might not be so obviously man-made. Are the "eyes" actually islands of trees? Is the "mouth" just a naturally darker patch of ground? And yet, the "chin" must surely have been created by a trail left by a tractor, right?
So whilst it's possible that a farmer was getting creative, we think the most likely explanation is that this is just a particularly freaky combination of natural formation and man's influence, which is playing on our natural predilection to assign meaning wherever we look.
Still, it does look an awful lot like a face.
Thanks to Jennifer.
-
Or is that just us? ↩︎
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
That ain’t just a circle of trees. It’s an electric wire support tower. Note the streaks running NW-SE; that’s high-voltage power lines. The other “eye” is for a smaller tower. You can correspond them with the pairs of towers to the SE and to the NW. Note also the path cut through the wooded area towards the NW making way for the lines.
I agree the resemblance is very freaky but the fact that those “eyes” are just powerline towers seems to seriously reduce the likelihood of artistic intent.
The edge of the face is possibly an indication of a former stream. In fact I can’t help but wonder if the “hair” was once a lake.
When a combine harvester has to go round trees, the headlands (the border) will be about 4 combine headers thick. So any island of trees will mean theres a large border round it where the combine harvester has to go round it. You can see the usual strips of the combine in the field. The thick border also explains why the left eye is quite distinct. Even though that is just against the edge of field as a clump of trees.
As for the nose, normal harvesting practice is to turn on a bout of maybe 8 thick, you can see on the far right of the field where the combine harvester has done its turns. That is what has formed the nose, and also what appears to be the little beard!
Going here View Placemark
will show how the tractor and combine harvester marks leave those tramline effects. The tramlines are also visible in the field to the right, where it hasn’t be cut yet, and you can see how the ‘lands’ are worked, in wide loops.
So to conclude, coincidence me thinks!
I’d go for natural too. From our first use of eyes as an infant our brain is trained to see faces in everything. If you stare long enough at a rough distempered wall or a marble floor, and you allow your brain to reinterpret the shapes, you can see remarkable faces.
I’m thinking definitely natural/coincidental. If you look at the field kitty-corner to the SE you can see the same type of topographical striations running from SW to NE that would suggest streams left by ice-age glaciation all over the region. This gives the outline of the face. The placement of power towers as eyes is purely coincidental, and the chin seems to be harvester trails. The lips? Perhaps a natural depression, again glacial?
So thats amazing. I live about 2 minutes away. I think its a well of spirits from the dead, seeing as how it lies directly between a retirement community and a state prison.
My aunt’s family works these fields, so it is either them or the prison farm across the road. I’ve asked her & all post back with an update.
cool
woe that’s just wrong
Yes this is probibly man-made